Spaniards face ham shortage as Chinese market gets taste for jamón ibérico

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 10:11 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #33

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

> But demand is now threatening to outstrip supply Why isn’t the price being adjusted?

It is. It's literally the continuation of that sentence: "But demand is now threatening to outstrip supply, leaving Spaniards facing steep price rises in their most prized Christmas delicacy." And in the third paragraph: "it is pushing up the price by as much as 10%" . And in the sixth: "It’s inevitable that the price in Spain is going to rise"

Post by baby » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 10:24 AM UTC

jfoutz wrote: post #9

danso wrote: post #5

Besides this ham, evidently Chinese demand has been blamed for the global shortage of avocados [0] and the lack of butter in France [1]. I've personally most noticed the effect when it comes to wide-release movies, in which the heroes manage to find some reason to end up for a brief scene in China, or to use Chinese brand products -- Civil War, Transformers, and Robocop come to mind. There's also the suspicion that A…

Only 20 foreign movies are allowed into China per year. Unless part of the movie takes place in China. Lots of movies have a special cut, just for that reason.

Post by rjbwork » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 10:26 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #57

angarg12 wrote: post #35

We spaniards are just absolutely terrible at marketing. Every time that I see how italians have managed to convince the world to consume their produces, I feel ashamed. And when we finally manage to get recognition, we can't meet the demand because we are not set up to deal with international demand. I hope this trend continues and we find new, healthier ways to expand our economy.

I suspect a lot of that success for Italy comes from exporting Italians - and then re-exporting Italian food via New York and Chicago, the homes of pizza. For whatever reason there don't seem to have been nearly so many Iberian-Spanish immigrants, possibly they went to South America instead. Which has also been quite successful at exporting Spanish-language food..

Post by namdnay » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 10:29 AM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #56

mc32 wrote: post #4

The salient part was that it takes five acres per swine. They only have two hinds each... And they can only raise them in two areas of Spain. Seems production is pretty constrained by resources (in this case land with oak trees). That combined with 48-mo curing makes it hard to scale up. And we used to complain about almond production consuming too many resources (water) per output...

It's only a matter of time before you start seeing ham cured in the same fashion but produced in other countries. US is now starting to have local production in Virginia and Texas (it takes between 2 and 3 years for a good leg of jamón to cure properly) and China is doing the same. Spain might try to protect the trademark of "jamón ibérico" the same way that France protects Champagne but in the end, you'll be able to…

Post by jjgreen » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 10:33 AM UTC

gadders wrote: post #59

Graham24 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and Stilton, and a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie and a Gregg's sausage roll.

One of those things is not like the others ;-)