The president of France's largest agricultural trade union federation has asked distributors to raise the price of milk as producers are struggling with costs and cannot feed their livestock due to the drought, which may lead to milk shortages. If there is no milk, there will be no cheese, which will deliver a severe blow to France and Switzerland.

The heatwave raging across France does not appear to be subsiding and with no rainfall on the horizon, the extreme drought is unlikely to end in the coming days. The drought has dealt a heavy blow to agriculture with hardly any crops to harvest, and there will also be a shortage of animal feed. In an interview with France Info, the president of the National Federation of Agricultural Holders’ Unions (FNSEA), France’s largest agricultural trade union, expressed concern over milk production in the coming month, asking distributors to raise the price of milk, arguing that currently all the burden is on the producers.

Christiane Lambert pointed out that

sufficient milk supply in stores in the autumn and winter depended on how long the extreme drought would last.

FNSEA president has appealed to distributors, asking them to sell milk at a higher price, as milk is the cheapest in France while all the costs for producers are soaring. By comparison, she noted that milk costs 1 euro per litre in Germany, while in France, the price ranges from 74 to 78 euro cents. In addition, the Ukraine war has also driven up producers’ costs, with animal feed and fuel prices doubling and the price of fertilisers going up threefold.

There is not enough fodder to feed animals at the moment, which may easily lead to milk shortages in France as early as this fall, or winter. A severe milk shortage will affect the dairy industry, and even making cheese, the country’s signature gastronomic products, could be endangered, according to the daily L’Est Republicain. In the Doubs department on the Swiss border, dairy cows are particularly vulnerable to drought and are producing less milk. The reduced volume could have a serious negative impact on the production of Comte cheese, typical of the region. Due to the shortage of fodder caused by the drought that has hit the county since June, milk production may fall by between 10 and 45 per cent, depending on the geographical location, and this could also affect cheese production. Gerard Coquard, spokesman for the inter-professional trade union committee in the department, told the newspaper that this year is one of the most difficult for cheese producers: the quantity of cheese produced will most probably decrease, which will inevitably prompt price hikes.

But it’s not only in France that cheese makers are in trouble. The production of the famous Gruyere cheese is also threatened by the extreme drought, the Swiss newspaper Le Temps reports. Normally, cattle are moved from high alpine pastures to lower flat areas in October, but this has to start earlier this year because of the exceptional weather conditions. In the higher areas the animals already lack food.

Cows are unable to drink because of a severe water shortage, so farmers are using trucks and helicopters to deliver water to hard-to-reach areas, the article reveals.

This year there is an exceptional water shortage, with 60 out of 200 mountain pastures in the Jura Mountains suffering from a severe shortage, the newspaper quoted Frederic Menetrey, director of the Fribourg Chamber of Agriculture, as saying. The heat, which has caused grass in high alpine pastures to dry out completely, further exacerbates the situation, so in some mountain pastures, extreme weather conditions may cause a 20-30 per cent loss in milk production.

These difficulties are likely to lead to a significant drop in Gruyère production and, according to Dominique de Buman, president of the Fribourg-based Alpine Cheese Producers’ Cooperative, the increased demand for Gruyère is likely to lead to a long-term shortage from this particular cheese.