The dairy industry warns that all dairy products will see their prices continue to rise in the coming months. For a year already, prices have been soaring under the effect of the impact of the war in Ukraine on the costs of energy, fertilizers and animal feed. Between June 2021 and June 2022, the price of semi-skimmed milk thus jumped by 4.5%, the same for yogurts. It is even more for cheese with more than 5% increase, and for butter which borders on 10% increase, still over one year.
With the drought, the grass on which the dairy cows feed will become even rarer, milk production will drop (this is already the case), and this scarcity effect will have an impact on prices, with possible one-off shortages on the shelves. More worrying, faced with the cost of feeding their animals, some breeders risk parting with part of their herd to get by.
This is also very bad news for the price of meat since it should be known that the French beef sector is already in decline. In five years, the cattle herd has lost 650,000 animals, more than half of which are beef cows. And it may not be over since, according to the Livestock Institute, France could lose an additional million cows by 2030. Repeated droughts, again, could accelerate the phenomenon with a scarcity of French beef and therefore rising prices, some breeders preferring to accelerate the slaughter of their animals rather than continuing to feed them. A trend that worries McDonald’s, the biggest customer of French Charolais beef, and large retailers.
The fruits, too, could be rarer and therefore more expensive, with the lack of water. In the orchards of Hauts-de-France, the fruit trees are under water stress, the apples are stunted, the size of a large plum, the pears are burnt by the sun. This drought is a new calamity on top of the consequences of last spring’s frost.
But there is a sector which, on the contrary, should do well, it is that of the melon. The season is in full swing, and with the high temperatures, its production could jump by at least 30% this year. The melon is a very fragile product, which fears the rain, but which likes the heat. That’s good. Still, this drought should not last too long…