The Swiss are proud of their cheese, and most of the cheeses they eat are local varieties such as Gruyère, Emmental and other hard cheeses that are made famous around the world from the milk of happy cows. The Swiss also eat a lot of cheese: more than 50 pounds per person per year, compared to about 40 pounds per person in the United States.
“Cheese is part of our identity,” said Daniel Koller, director of Swissmilk, Switzerland’s dairy association. That’s why one of Mr Koller’s colleagues, the association’s president, created a storm this month when he told a Swiss newspaper that Switzerland was on track to import more cheese than it exported this year, calling it “economically, socially and environmentally absurd”.
In fact, the Swiss cheese trade balance has been shrinking for decades, and especially since the market was liberalized in 2007, which allowed the country to trade with the European Union in both directions without tariffs or quotas. Switzerland now exports about 40 percent of the cheese it produces, according to industry estimates.
But in the first five months of this year, Switzerland imported more cheese by weight than it sold abroad, according to customs data. In part, according to Swissmilk, the Swiss have developed a taste for foreign cheeses, with 64 percent of local varieties in consumption last year, down from 77 percent in 2007.
The number of dairy farmers in Switzerland has fallen in recent decades, more than half in the past 25 years, Mr Koller said. On top of that, farming operations in Switzerland are small: the average size of a herd is about 27 cows, Mr. Koller said, and dairy farms with more than 100 cows are rare.
Although the influx of foreign cheeses may challenge notions of Swiss national identity, economists say there is no need to panic. In recent years Swiss producers have become more specialized and the cheeses they export are high-value varieties such as Gruyère. Imports are cheap – and soft – and mostly come from France. (What is known in the United States as “Swiss cheese” is an American reproduction of Swiss hard cheeses, known for their signature holes.)
Not all cheese imported into Switzerland is consumed there. A large part of the cheese and yogurt brought into the country is processed in Switzerland and then exported.
“The trade differential in cheese is not a major issue to worry about,” said Martin Mosler, an economist at the IWP, an economic policy institute at the University of Lucerne. “We are better than most of the world in terms of quality,” he said. Switzerland continues to trade a healthy surplus in cheese by economic value: on average, Swiss cheese exports fetch roughly 10 Swiss francs (about $11.60) per kilo, compared to six Swiss francs per kilo paid for imports.
Inflation also played a role in the Swiss cheese business. While 2021 was a record year for Swiss exports, last year saw a decline as Switzerland’s biggest market, Germany, was hit hard by inflation, squeezing shoppers’ budgets. A strong Swiss franc made cheese more expensive in Germany.
“These customers are very price sensitive,” Mr. Mosler said.
By contrast, Mr Mosler said, a stronger franc made imports cheaper and increased imports were good for Swiss consumers. People want more choice at lower prices and “that’s good for Switzerland,” he said.
But Swiss farmers who produce cheap cheeses may be affected by the changing trade balance.
According to Professor Robert Finger of ETH Zurich University, milk prices have risen in Switzerland over the past few years, including milk used in cheese. He acknowledged that it is still “not too bad”, but that the number of farms in Switzerland continues to decline, as in the rest of Europe. Finger said this is not strongly related to higher imports, but is largely driven by other economic and social developments.
The United States has seen a similar trend, losing about half of its dairy farmers between 1997 and 2017, partly due to food system consolidation, the disappearance of many small family farms and lower milk prices around the world, said Hannah Tremblay, policy and advocacy manager for the agriculture nonprofit FarmAid.
Mr Koller, SwissMilk’s director, said it was important to continue producing Swiss cheese for Swiss consumers. One of the goals of his organization is to encourage people to buy local products that adhere to Switzerland’s high quality and environmental standards.
But, tastes aside, standards and standards in European Union countries are often no different from those in Switzerland, he said. “It just doesn’t make sense to close the cheese borders,” Mr. Mosler said.
