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The actual explanation is rather more boring: almost all butter in France is sold to supermarkets, who negotiate prices once a year. If world market prices are
by jpatokal 9y ago
The actual explanation is rather more boring: almost all butter in France is sold to supermarkets, who negotiate prices once a year. If world market prices are higher, dairy products sell elsewhere instead and French supermarkets run dry.
https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21730877-forget-about-making-croissants-margarine-french-are-fretting-over-sudden-butter https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21730877-forget-about-...
- lumberjack 9y agoSo it is not just the government that can cause shortages by mishandling the supply chain. I always thought, it is quite ironic how centralised the food supply has become, with a few supermarket chains dictating everything, as if they were some communist government trying to micromanage everything.
- yardie 9y agoHow do you lock in a price and not lock in the supply. You can make anybody agree to any price but if they don’t deliver the goods you haven’t negotiated anything. During the ‘06-07 fuel price spike some airlines locked in a price and were able to keep decent fares. Others didn’t and added all sorts of surcharges. I couldn’t imagine them hedging fuel prices and not getting it delivered.
- mywittyname 9y agoI suspect they would also be locked into buying said supply. Plus, this arrangement probably worked out really well for supermarkets in the past, this might be the first issue with supply that they've faced.