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Norwegian butter crisis (2011)
- varsketiz 11y agoColbert did a nice report on it - http://videosift.com/video/Colbert-on-the-Norwegian-Butter-Shortage http://videosift.com/video/Colbert-on-the-Norwegian-Butter-S...
- mynameishere 11y agoI haven't watched that in a long time. Was the laugh track always so obvious? Sentence. Ha ha guffaw ha ha! Sentence. Ha ha guffaw ha ha! Sentence. Ha ha guffaw ha ha! Sentence. Ha ha guffaw ha ha! It's like trying to watch the Mary Tyler Moore show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihLJrcS8lsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihLJrcS8lsg
- simongray 11y agoIt's filmed with an audience (which Colbert regularly speaks directly to). I don't think it's a laugh track.
- digi_owl 11y agoI swear they have a "laugh" sign behind the camera that said "audience" has been trained to follow.
- tickit 11y agoThat's just a typical US TV audience, the crowd freaks out at the slightest thing. The people who make the shows are probably grateful for the padding, but it's grating for viewers who aren't used to it.
- digi_owl 11y agoDunno if it is only US. I swear i have noticed this with British shows as well.
- romeoonisim 11y agoFunny report actually ...
- venomsnake 11y agoCows, grazing ... do they export some of it? The milk from grain fed animals is bland.
- thrownaway122 11y agoIt is not uncommon in Europe for cows to feed mainly on grass. We don't have the corn lobby (we have other ones instead).
- wobbleblob 11y agoI don't know about the 'mainly' part. North of the Alps, the grass only grows in the summer, south of the Alps, it only grows in spring and fall. If their cows fed only or mainly on grass, dairy pastures could only support small herds, and dairy would be a very expensive luxury item.
- mikaelgyth 11y agoThey usually harvest and conserve grass for use in the seasons when it doesn't grow.
- Dewie3 11y agohttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Hay_bales_and_mountainside.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Hay_bales...
- digi_owl 11y agoAs one overly creative tourist guide supposedly put it, marshmallows for trolls.
- arstoienarston 11y agoWe usually call them tractor eggs.
- iwwr 11y agoWhen a government has to chose between a strong political constituency or the people having access to food, be it a rich or poor society, the choice is hard.
- Arnt 11y agoI was in Norway twice during the crisis and my preferred brand was available in the first shop I went to, both times. But my preferred brand is expensive organic butter ("rørossmør", FWIW). Maybe I just happened to visit the shop on the right two days. Or maybe the crisis wasn't severe enough to make people buy the more expensive alternative.
- digi_owl 11y agoOr some just didn't bother to insist on using butter. First i heard of this "crisis" was when i walked past the TV...
- blinry 11y agoFor many more "weird" articles, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles
- yitchelle 11y agoDamm you, there goes my productivity level for the next few days.
- leni536 11y agoMy favorite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- xtrumanx 11y agoI'm not into computer graphics but the Utah teapot article [0] reminded me why I carry the kettle back into the kitchen by the handle while spinning it around to get a look at it at different angles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot
- RobertKerans 11y agoWell this has probably halved my productivity for the day, my attempts to hide laughter are getting me some funny looks as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulent_diplomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_with_fraudulen... I like very much
- xtrumanx 11y agoI feel there should a warning attached to that link. If you're the type of person who loses several hours on Wikipedia/TvTropes, you should probably not visit that link if you've got something to do in the next couple of hours (or days).
- digital-rubber 11y agoOdd.. since the EU has a 'butter mountain', as there was a too large supply of butter.
- angineering 11y agoIt was actually really bad, as most Christmas cakes require a lot of butter. It felt quite ridiculous that the shops were suddenly rationing butter to a pack per customer in December. You would have thought it was war times. Some friends abroad even gave me butter for Christmas, which was supposed to be a joke but was actually really useful haha.
- jimlei 11y agoYeah I remember this, we just made our own butter. Shared a butter recipe on my facebook wall - instant hero.
- deciplex 11y agoJapan is currently in the middle of one of these due to a hot summer last year. It is not as bad as the Norwegian one, however it is not the only one in recent memory, either - there was a butter shortage in Japan in (IIRC) 2008 as well.
- w00kie 11y agoFrankly, it feels like we've had butter shortage for the past 5 years. It's ridiculous...
- ekianjo 11y agoGlad you mentioned it - I had a comment about that as well before reading yours. And the butter is crazy expensive in Japan on top of that (just like fruits vegetables and everything else produced locally, I guess...).
- hultner 11y agoAs a swede I remember this, some entrepreneurial swedes smuggled truckloads of butter over the border and sold through craigslist-esque resale markets for massive profits (we're talking 10-50x the Swedish price). According to Norwegian customs it's illegal to import diary products into Norway, thus rendering the butter smuggling illegal but highly profitable. Swedish newspapers wrote a lot of articles about this bizarre situation and selling butter to Norwegians became a rather common joke in Sweden during this time and the following year.
- unwind 11y agoIn some world views, going around legislation ("smuggling") for financial profit makes you a criminal, not an entrepreneurial, person.
- hultner 11y agoWho says that you can't be an entrepreneurial criminal? I wouldn't see them as contradicting terms.
- unwind 11y agoNobody, it's just that especially around here "entrepreneurial" carries positive connotations as far as I know, and I just wanted to point out that all kinds of profit-making perhaps aren't equally awesome.
- meric 11y agoIf people are to associate entrepreneurial qualities as positive no matter the underlying activity then that is their prerogative. I don't think the author of that comment should change his choice of words. I suppose the word 'enterprising' might suit your tastes better while still conveying the intelligence of the perpetrators.
- trhway 11y agowhat is wrong with smuggling? Especially with the kind of smuggling mentioned here? In that situation it was a very victimless crime and one can see how it was even beneficial to the public.
- hkon 11y agoThe most funny thing about this butter crisis, is that the producer actually fucked up a batch of 60 tons of butter in August. Sure they were quick to blame external factors, when the truth was that they fucked up. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bt.no%2Fnyheter%2Finnenriks%2FTine-starter-leveranser-av-feilprodusert-smor-2636321.html https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=h...
- philh 11y ago> The dairy industry estimated a deficit of 500 to 1000 tonnes Sounds like 60 tonnes wouldn't have made much difference.
- Angostura 11y agoTakes me back to the heady days of the 1970s UK sugar crisis http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jul/09/archive-rationing-sugar-shortage-looms http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jul/09/archive-r... It's when a lot of people stopped having sugar in their tea. Probably improved UK health and dental health no end.
- lifeformed 11y agoDid the price of cream also skyrocket? Would it have been cheaper to make your own butter?
- MrBuddyCasino 11y agoInteresting question, don't know why this was downvoted. Making butter is really easy using a stirrer.
- icebraining 11y agoSince it was a milk shortage, I think it's reasonable to assume that cream was also rarer, though I suppose it might not have been subject to the same import restrictions.
- jimlei 11y agoNot as I recall, we made our own butter during the "crisis". At least kt was possible to get (full?) cream
- maggit 11y agoCream was more available than butter. I guess most people would rather drive to Sweden than whip cream. However, cream was also in high demand for Christmas, so I suspect that it couldn't offset much of the demand for butter anyway.
- ghshephard 11y agoGrowing up in British Columbia in the 90s, it was a pretty common thing in college to cross the border at Blaine (there was a Grocery Store right on the other side of the border, and was one of the few American places that took Canadian currency without blinking), and we always brought back lots of milk and butter. BC, of course, had fairly strict dairy quotas. So, in a province with abundant farmland, Milk/Butter/Cheese were expensive enough that was worth a trip across the border to stock up.
- Aloha 11y agoThe Chevron at truck crossing in Blaine still sells butter, huge amounts of it. As an American, it floored me the first time I saw it.
- ekianjo 11y agoThey should talk about the 2014-2015 butter crisis in Japan, where the butter completely ran out from the shelves because of stupid local JA (Japan Agriculture Mafia) restrictions imposed on imports and even inland, across-region exchanges of butter. Pure market control madness at work, resulting in people being unable to get their hands on butter for several months.
- kuriho 11y agoI have been to Japan twice during this time and, as a tourist, didn't really notice any of this. Is this why seemingly all the butter in Japans restaurants is imported from Australia?
- wodenokoto 11y agoThe current butter crises is not as bad as the previous ones. While my local grocery store regularly has a sign saying "butter sold out nationwide" the 7-11 down the street seems to have some and the bakery next door is using a lot of butter in their products.
- PMan74 11y agoAt the same time the EU (Norway stayed out of that party) was distributing its surplus butter mountains to the poor.
- globuous 11y agoI believe Jean-Baptiste Douemeng, a French communist, made millions exporting subsidized surpluses, including butter, to communist countries in the 40s-50s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Doumeng http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Doumeng
- mellavora 11y agoSo was he an "enterprising communist", "entrepreneurial communist", or "criminal communist"?
- ruiramos 11y agoTommy did a nice report on this, from the trenches - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0GzU56YMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0GzU56YMA
- andreash 11y agoSome people blamed it on the "Lavkarbo"-diet (low card, high fat) that was trending in Norway at the time. https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=lavkarbo https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=lavkarbo
- tracker1 11y agoThey should just switch to Crisco, and other trans-fats like the U.S. ... I'm joking really, as an American the concept of a butter shortage is interesting considering most of this market uses heavily refined, flavored, perfumed vegetable oils. I switched to only using animal or cold-pressed fats a couple years ago... It's helped some aspects of my health a lot... though I still crave starchy carbs...
- digi_owl 11y agoYou're thinking about margarine? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine Yeah, most "made do" with that. It was just a combo of diet fad, holiday "traditions", and media looking for anything "controversial" to talk about...
- ahvetm 11y agoDear Norway. We stand ready to hook you up intravenously. You just say the word. Sincerely, Denmark. The Lurpak country.
- kalleboo 11y agoExcept Denmark refused to export since it wasn't worth setting up the trade routes just for a single season of export. Source: this comic http://satwcomic.com/too-little-butter http://satwcomic.com/too-little-butter
- kwhitefoot 11y agoI wouldn't eat Lurpak butter if you paid me. I agree that more competition would be good but not at the expense of destroying the Norwegian policy on agricultural self sufficiency. Anyway Lurpak is from Arla which occupies the pretty much same sort of position in Denmark as Tine in Norway. The crisis was not really a great disaster and at the time there really were not a lot of people calling for deregulation. And as for the complaints about food being expensive, well to some extent this is a national sport just like Brits complaining about the weather, that is, not to be taken seriously. I'm English and have lived here in Norway for 30 years, almost half my life now so I well acquainted with both. If food were too expensive it would be impossible to sell. Even the cheap supermarkets here carry half a dozen brands of extra virgin olive oil for example; and the variety of bread available here in even the smallest supermarket outstrips most British hypermarkets, etc.
- digi_owl 11y ago> The crisis was not really a great disaster and at the time there really were not a lot of people calling for deregulation. Yep, it just fit the opposition party line of EU good, independence bad. And the press jumped on it as a "look how shitty our nation is" story. Never mind that the previous months had seen the very same press lauding a high fat diet... In the end it was pretty much a media created tempest in a teapot.
- tormeh 11y ago
- digi_owl 11y agoA stark reminder of how zombified the nation has gotten when a diet fad and a holiday ritual is able to cause such a ruckus...
- Dewie3 11y agoThis was the same year that Utøya happened. You can't be in super-serious mode all the time. Based on this thread, you take the labelling of this shortage much more seriously than anyone ever took the shortage itself.
- digi_owl 11y agoBecause contextual jokes translates poorly online. Lets not hand Fox News headlines on a platter...
- tallanvor 11y agoOne of the things I hate most about living in Norway are the food prices and selection. The government allows two main cooperatives: Tine - milk and dairy products, and Nortua - meat products, to monopolize the market, and maintain high tariffs that prevent foreign foods from offering price competition. This allows farmers to maintain small, inefficient farms that produce rather substandard products (Norwegian beef is about as tasteless as you can find). For dairy, a smaller company Q started about 15 years ago and is probably helping to keep milk prices down a bit since Tine actually has some competition now, but not nearly enough to bring prices down to what you would find across the border in Sweden, for example. Unfortunately the grocery store situation doesn't help much either. The largest company - NorgesGruppen - controls almost 40% of the grocery stores. The bulk of the remainder are owned by two others. There is very little price competition, and the selection is still very limited, although it is starting to get a bit better (I've been living here almost 7 years now). If you live close enough to Sweden, and have your own car (or have friends who go frequently), you can save a ton of money on food and alcohol by heading across the border and doing your shopping there. Unfortunately, it's about 1.5 hour drive from Oslo, so I don't have an opportunity to go very often. It's a funny thing, Norwegian politicians tried to pass going over the border off as a "low class" act, and there's even a derogatory term "harrytur" to describe it, but it's still something that everyone does, regardless of income, simply because the price difference is so great.
- joss82 11y agoBeef is tasteless there because it's probably made out of the older milk cows. I'm sorry.
- MindTwister 11y agoThings must be bad if you go to Sweden to buy cheap alcohol... When visiting friends in Sweden they always ask us to bring beer (from Denmark).
- maelk 11y agoAnd if you live in Denmark, near the border to Germany, you pretty much only buy beer from German shops, right across the border because its way cheaper
- finnjohnsen2 11y agoI'm pretty sure the phrase "butter crisis" was invented by the tabloids. I would use "shortage", from how I experienced it -- but that doesn't produce nearly as good "first world problems" satires I suppose.
- digi_owl 11y agoIt may be some 30 years old, but it still describes Norwegian media perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwegca0MhfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwegca0MhfQ
- tormeh 11y ago>As a result of the butter crisis, Norwegian retailers lost an estimated NOK 43m. That's practically a rounding error. That's 21 suburban houses.
- fiatjaf 11y agoI'm searching for a video of The Daily Show about this butter crisis. Who knows where is it?
- bayesianhorse 11y agoEven though Norway is not part of the EU, it is quite dependent on it for all sorts of reasons. This is an example where the Norwegian government tried to stop that through high import tariffs on butter, and it backfired. Because of its small population and northern location, it essentially has to import much of its agricultural products from the EU, and thereby accept most of the EU regulations and academic degrees without having the slightest say in the matter.
- vamonopalmonte 11y agoI remember all the blowjobs I used to get, so people could drink my jizz instead of butter.