French farmers made salers cheese for 2,000 years — then a drought hit
Excerpt from this story from the Washington Post:
Every year, farmers in France’s central region of Auvergne repeat the same process. During summer and fall, their cows graze in pastures, eating to their hearts’ content. It’s only during this time that farmers can produce salers, a highly regulated semihard cheese with the same buttery depth as a well-aged cheddar.
That seasonal cycle remained uninterrupted for over 2,000 years until last week, when salers became the latest casualty of severe heat waves wreaking havoc across Europe, where human-caused climate change has intensified temperatures. France’s severe drought shut down the cheese production that had continued through two world wars, collapsed monarchies and the fall of the Roman Empire.
The decision to halt the cheesemaking was based on two factors: the meadows’ utterly parched state and the rules that regulate salers’ production.
In France, the dry spell has been so severe that the country has 62 regions with restrictions on water usage — including Cantal, where salers is produced. But it’s not only a drought; wildfires have also raged, displacing thousands of people. This year’s infernos have already scorched more acres there than any year before.
French farmers made salers cheese for 2,000 years — then a drought hit