Betting on foreign buyers: Liberalizing the Swiss cheese trade
The makers of Swiss cheese, hitherto protected by export subsidies and import barriers, are now having to compete on the market. It took ten years of negotiation and persuasion. The idea is that cheese-makers should go up-market looking for discerning buyers perhaps as far afield as India or China. One enterprising cheese-maker, Walter Zaugg, even escaped regulation five years ago by inventing a new cheese, Flösserkäse, complete with its own fictitious history of cheese hidden in barrels and shipped to markets on log rafts. All this, thanks to Charlemagne in the September 29th Economist.
First, welcome to the terroir strategy. New modern techniques and marketing, invention of legendary histories stretching back into the past. How to sell products made where they are incredibly expensive to produce.
Second, apparently the EU too is thinking of liberalizing trade in agriculture. How that will work out, with the cost of land and labor what it is in Europe, will be worth watching.
