Historic heat waves are putting French dairy cows that normally graze outdoors in summer under heat-related stress.
Prolonged periods of drought are scorching French pastures, leeching them of their usual lush green vitality and leaving behind parched, lifeless yellow fields.
And French farmers bound by strict cheesemaking regulations are having to buy extra feed to supplement the animals’ diets.
Some of France’s most beloved artisanal cheeses are under threat from the effects of climate change, scientists and cheesemakers warn.
“Before, we used to have a problem with the grass every 15-20 years,” says Laurent Lours, who has been a dairy farmer and cheesemaker for 35 years. “Now, it’s about every other year. And it’s getting worse.”
The result? Dairy cows are producing less milk and birthing fewer or weakened calves. Farmers who produce many of the country’s top-tier cheeses have been forced to cease production. And the distinct flavour of France’s “terroir” cheeses are at risk.
“We’ve had five heat waves so far this year. We’ve never experienced temperatures like this before,” Lours says.
Indeed, the month of July set a new record in France, bagging the title of hottest month since record-keeping began in 1900, and the third driest month on record, according to France’s national weather service.
This summer, more than three-quarters of France’s 80 producers of Salers cheese—a semi-hard, raw cow’s milk cheese—were brought to a standstill following a series of heat waves and accompanying drought.
Salers is one of 47 French cheeses that carries the red and yellow AOP label, Appellation d’origine protégée (“protected designation of origin” in English), a certification guaranteeing that all stages of the final product — from milk production to aging — have taken place within a limited geographic area. Salers is produced mainly in the department of Cantal in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeast France, where cows graze at altitudes of between 2,630 and 4,920 feet (about 800 to 1,500 metres) above sea level on a volcanic massif, carpeted in nutrient-dense wild grasses.
While no two Salers cheeses are alike, the local terroir—a mix of climate, soil, and topography that makes a region unique—produces a flavour profile that can range from walnuts, hazelnuts and grass, to fermented cream, peppery spice and smoked, grilled onion.
It’s also one of the cheeses hardest hit by the impacts of climate change, as its production is subject to strict regulations: Salers must be produced between April 15 and November 15 by grazing cows that are mainly grass-fed. Supplementation to their diet is limited to no more than 25 per cent of dry matter and permitted feed ingredients include hay, wheat, barley, oats and maize from the same region.
This year’s drought forced Lours to drop production of Salers on July 8 and switch to making Cantal, a semi-hard cow’s milk cheese similar in profile but subject to laxer rules. Unlike Salers, Cantal can be produced year-round, while the grass to grain, hay and corn ratio is more generous. The main rule is that cows be able to graze 120 days of the year.
Last month, the government body responsible for overseeing the AOP label, the Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO), announced temporary modifications for a selection of cheesemakers in response to France’s “historic drought” this summer.
Producers of Beaufort, Comté and Abondance are among a handful of cheeses that have already been authorised to increase the share of fodder for cows to make up for the grass shortage, or source supplementary feed from outside their designated AOP zones. And the list of cheeses is expected to grow. Lours, who is also the president of the Comité interprofessionnel des fromages du Cantal and represents local cheesemakers, said their group didn’t bother requesting a temporary exemption to the rules for Salers because anything less than 50 per cent of pasture-grown grass would not “deserve the designation” of the Salers name.
For years, producers of some AOP cheeses have been asking the INAO to permanently relax some of the regulations in response to the effects of human-made climate change, be it by adjusting the grazing period, increasing the amount of hay and supplemental feed that cows can consume, and allowing farmers to source feed from outside their AOP region. The process is long and can take years to finalise.
