The butter boom in Sweden has been attributed to low-carb fad diets and a return to 'natural cooking' that eschews processed spreads, sauces and other products.Dori OConnell
Danes looking to sneak butter over the Swedish border to escape a new fat tax may be out of luck. After years of lukewarm interest in butter and heavy cream, Swedes have developed a new passion for the stuff.
The demand is such that Sweden is now battling a national butter shortage. Supplies were low enough at one point that a local newspaper printed instructions on how to churn it at home.
The butter boom has been attributed to low-carb fad diets and a return to "natural cooking" that eschews processed spreads, sauces and other products. But the shortage has as much to do with the rapid decline of the country's dairy industry as it does with renewed demand. Sweden is one of the few countries in Europe where milk production has consistently decreased -- a trend the industry is struggling to reverse.
"We have cheap land here and Swedish producers are paid similar prices as elsewhere," said Lennart Holmstrom of the Swedish Dairy Association. "The conditions are the same and still our production falls while in Denmark and the Netherlands they increase production. We are working very hard to mobilize and retain the farmers we have left but it is a very difficult job."
And so, in a country where eating locally produced food is a longstanding preference, milk production has plunged 15 per cent in the last 20 years. Meanwhile, demand for butter alone spiked 18.2 per cent in 2009, with the average Swede putting away 1.8 kilograms. That's not much compared to other European nations -- the French consumed 7.9 kilograms per capita in 2009 -- but as the appetite for butter and cream continues to grow, it's pushing dairy farms to their limit.
"We've had shortages before, but never this big or for this long," said Claes Henriksson of dairy giant Arla. "The gap between milk production and demand for butter has been quite high but we didn't expect demand for butter to rise so much that we'd be put in this situation."
In order to free up Swedish cream for butter production, Arla -- which controls 45 per cent of the Sweden's dairy market -- plans to import 150 tonnes of Danish cream per week to substitute into other products such as yogurt. Mr. Henriksson expects the butter supply to return to normal by the end of the month.
The Swedish Dairy Association wants to increase annual milk production by 18 per cent to 3.3 billion litres. If that fails, Swedes will likely face more shortages in the future, Mr. Holmstrom says.