The salers, victim of the drought. The production of this flagship Cantal cheese is stopped this Friday, August 12 for an indefinite period. The cows can no longer graze the grass in the meadows: everything has dried up, burned. However, one of the criteria for producing a saler is the diet of the animals. cows must eat at least 75% pasture grass.
“There’s nothing left to eat in my house. The ground is so dry, hard, that in places it looks like ashes. It’s dust“, explains Laurent Roux, breeder at the Gaec de la Calsade in Badailhac. His cows have not grazed since June 25. “We have always had dry spells in the summer, but this is hard, very hard” testifies the breeder, who has seen the drought come since January: “We didn’t have a snowflake or a drop of water in January.”
A generalized situation
Almost all of Cantal is in crisis due to drought. The majority of the 76 breeders of the AOP are therefore confronted with these green meadows that have turned yellow, burned by the sun. Would continuing to produce salers make sense? The head of the AOP, Laurent Lours is categorical: “Salers is a seasonal cheese, made with the season of grass. It is one of the pillars of its identity. With more hay, the cheese would be whiter, we would have less aromas. Our product still has a certain notoriety among consumers, we don’t want to break it.“
This halt in the manufacture of salers will cause a substantial financial loss for breeders. “We manage to value our milk at 900 euros per 1000 liters with the salers, explains Laurent Lours. As soon as we can no longer produce, we lose 200 to 300 euros per 1000 litres. It’s very complicated given the context, with inflation and rising charges.
Production down 15%
The head of the AOP estimates that the production of salers will drop at least 15% this year. A figure that is still provisional, because producers do not know when production will be able to resume. A point will be made at the start of the school year, hoping by then that the rain has arrived and that the grass is starting to grow back.