The Swiss are proud of their cheese, and most of the cheese they eat is local varieties such as Gruyère, Emmental and other hard cheeses made from the milk of the world-famous happy cow. The Swiss also eat a lot of cheese. Over £50 per person per year compared to about £40 per person in the US.
“Cheese is part of our identity,” says Daniel Koller, director of the Swiss dairy association SwissMilk. That’s why one of Koller’s colleagues, the association’s president, caused a stir this month. told a swiss newspaper Switzerland said it planned to import more cheese this year than it exported, calling it “economically, socially and environmentally irrational”.
In fact, the Swiss cheese trade balance has been shrinking for decades, especially since the market was liberalized in 2007, allowing Switzerland to trade with the European Union without tariffs or quotas in both directions. According to industry estimates, Switzerland currently exports around 40% of the cheese it produces.
But every first five months of this year, Switzerland imported more cheese by weight than it sold abroad, according to customs data. Swiss milk says Swiss people are increasingly fond of foreign cheeses, partly because local varieties accounted for 64% of their consumption last year, down from 77% in 2007.
According to Koller, the number of dairy farmers in Switzerland has been declining for decades and has fallen by more than half in the last 25 years. Moreover, Swiss agricultural operations are small. Koller said the average herd size is about 27, and dairies with more than 100 cows are rare.
An influx of foreign cheese could shake up notions of Swiss nationality, but economists say there is no need to panic. Swiss producers have become more specialized in recent years, and the cheeses they export tend to be higher value varieties such as Gruyère. Imports are cheaper, softer and mostly from France. (What the U.S. calls “Swiss cheese” is the U.S. reproduction of hard Swiss cheese, notable for its distinctive holes, of course.)
Not all cheese imported into Switzerland is consumed in Switzerland. Large chunks of cheese and curds brought into the country are refined in Switzerland and exported.
“Cheese trade differentials aren’t much to worry about,” said Martin Mosler, an economist at the IWP at the University of Lucerne’s Economic Policy Institute. “We are better than most countries in the world when it comes to quality,” he said. Switzerland continues to maintain a healthy trade surplus on cheese in monetary terms. On average, Swiss cheese exports cost around CHF 10 ($11.60) per kilo, while imports pay around CHF 6 per kilo.
Inflation is also affecting the Swiss cheese trade. 2021 was a record year for Swiss exports, but fell last year as inflation hit Germany, Switzerland’s biggest market, and squeezed shoppers’ budgets. The strong Swiss franc has also increased the price of cheese in Germany.
“These consumers are very price sensitive,” Mosler said.
By contrast, the strong franc makes imports cheaper, and more imports could be good for Swiss consumers, Mosler said. “That’s great for Switzerland itself,” he said, as people want more choice at lower prices.
But Swiss farmers who produce cheaper cheese could be affected by changes in the trade balance.
Swiss milk prices, including those used to make cheese, have risen in recent years, according to Professor Robert Finger of the ETH Zurich. He acknowledged that the number of farms in Switzerland, like the rest of Europe, continues to decline, although it is not yet “so bad”. Mr Finger said this is not strongly linked to increased imports, but is driven primarily by other economic and social developments.
A similar trend was observed in the United States, where about half of the dairy farms were lost between 1997 and 2017, in part due to the consolidation of the food system, the disappearance of many small family farms, and the , said Hannah Tremblay. , Policy and Advocacy Manager at Farm Aid, an agricultural non-profit organization.
Swissmilk director Koller said it was important to keep producing Swiss cheese for Swiss consumers. One of his goals for his organization is to encourage people to buy local products that comply with Swiss high quality and environmental standards.
But taste aside, the quality and standards in European Union countries are often similar to those in Switzerland, he added. “It doesn’t make sense to just close borders for cheese,” Mosler said.
