French butter shortage!

[LavenderHills]

Any other sufferers care to commiserate with me?

We're in Calvados and do a weekly grocery shop. Last Saturday, we could buy butter as per normal; today there was NO BUTTER available! I checked both local supermarkets. This is threatening to seriously derail my Christmas baking plans

[Mistigri]

It's patchy here (09). The supermarkets will usually have butter of some sort but not always the usual brands. Harder to buy demi-sel which my DH/ kids prefer. When I do a "drive" order at Intermarché I have taken to ordering 3 or 4 different brands in the confident expectation that all but one will be out of stock.

Some good has come of it though - in Intermarché today I noticed that the shelves were full of premium butter from a very local dairy producer. Good luck to them - we have got used to paying far too little for dairy products. I also buy the coop milk that guarantees a living income for farmers and that costs 30-40% more than the cheapest brands.

[LavenderHills]

I fully agree about the farmers and dairy prices in general, @Mistigri. I'd happily pay double the price for butter, if only there was some available! We normally shop at the local Carrefour; this morning they had nothing but small blocks of butter with salt crystals in it. I grabbed some of that and went to Leclerc, hoping for unsalted butter, but they had no butter of any description at all.

Me to DP: "Gosh, this is all a bit WW2, isn't it?"
DP: "Yes, but at least then they had butter RATIONS!"

[Genevieva]

www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/eu-heading-for-butter-shortage-by-year-end/

[clearsommespace]

The dairy farmer at my local market said she won't be increasing production because most new customers will no doubt abandon her when the supermarket shelves are restocked.