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

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.

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!"

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

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.