A shortage of Dijon mustard in France | Hacker News Reader

A shortage of Dijon mustard in France

economist.com

154 pointssamizdis200 comments

Without paywall here: https://archive.ph/5Qccg

They don't mention it, but one of the reasons the mustard seeds are not available in the Dijon region is because EU has been heavily subsidizing bio-energy crops like rapeseed for the last decades (which coincidentally also looks a lot like mustardseed)

Good or bad, I don't know.

Government paying people to burn food supplies.

There's a reason for that... They already produce or import enough food, so with growing plants for biodiesel:

1) you get some small amount of oil out of it.

2) if shit hits the fan, you have local farmers, with all the equipment and knowledge/training, who can immediately switch to food production if needed. The alternative would be to train new farmers, buy new equipment, etc., which would take a long, long time (especially if the government is organizing it), and there's that saying about two missed meals and a revolution, and french leaders really really don't want another revolution.

This general principle applies to a lot of seemingly-irrational government action: it's effectively buying insurance.

We all understand that, in an ideal world, most forms of (consumer-focused) insurance are a blackhole that you dump money into and never actually get any money back, because insurance only pays out if things go awry.

Subsidising strategic industries like farming falls under that exact same rubric. Ideally you don't ever want to cash in on that investment, but it's important that it's there. The CHIPS Act in the US is an example of this idea exactly. In a world where China is getting more aggressive around Taiwan, US-based foundries are an (expensive) insurance policy.

3) you contribute to loss of biodiversity through increased land use for intensive farming (monoculture, high chemical use)

4) co2 balance of those 'biofuels' is way worse than fuels refined from extracted fossil fuels

5) additional supply of these fuels lowers fuel prices thereby slowing shift to renewable energy sources (i.e. renewable electricity)

6) simply paying farmers for fallow fields is a much simpler solution to the problem

I agree with the first points, but if you pay farmers not to farm, you'll get farmers who don't farm, you'll get farmers with more fields that they can use (because they'll have fields for 100% of what they can produce + extra ones for governments money), and you'll get speculative investors investing in empty fields to collect money.

So, when shit hits the fan, you have farmers who can't increase production, because they don't have the resources, and you get speculative investors who jump ship, plus a lot of empty fields and hungry citizens, revolution, guillotines, etc.

If those areas are now producing crops, you have a guarantee, that the farmer can actually handle those fields, that the equipment is in working order, you know how much they can produce, and all it takes is just to switch the corn for eg. ethanol to corn fit for humans to eat.

4 & 5 are simply nonsense.

3 does not really apply in France. There are extensive swathes of country which are hugely monocultured already with food crops. At the same time small farming, economically uncompetitive types of farming, and other forms of land stewardship are extensively supported by the state in various ways. The question of monoculture is much more complicated than to think that growing rape for biodiesel is going to remove biodiversity.

> co2 balance of those 'biofuels' is way worse than fuels refined from extracted fossil fuels

By what metric? You get out much more energy than you put in. And when we're talking about keeping farms active, that land wasn't going to be doing something significantly better wrt carbon if the subsidy didn't exist.

I think you give to much credit to the EU.

The main reasoning is something like this:

Climate change bad, green bio fuels good, subsidize as much as possible. We're subsidizing farmers like crazy anyway so maybe we can turn that fund into align with our other goals a bit. Oh wow we didn't realize there would be side effects.

You just rephrased what GP said, in a more snarky manner.

The point is that countries have to keep their farms in working condition, whatever we make farmers do. And yes, biofuels are a way to achieve that, the alternative would be to farm too much mustard, which is not ideal either.

And yes, as a side effect, a bad harvest in Canada and and a war in Ukraine can cause a temporary shortage of a non-essential food item. It sucks, but worse things happened in the last 2-3 years, including shortages, and it wasn't about farming. And I say that as someone who is directly affected by the mustard shortage.

No, he was arguing they actually have a longterm view understanding the impact of their policy and having the illusion that they would be able to make the correct policy changes to influence farmers of switching back when needed.

And there is lot of reason the be snarky about the EU, I mean the fact they keep moving every few months for hundreds of millions of dollars is extremely disrespectful to the European people. Let alone their disregard of national democracies.

> who can immediately switch to food production if needed.

I think farming is not as fungible as you think.

> which would take a long, long time (especially if the government is organizing it),

The government seems pretty adept at forcing people to learn some basic skills pretty fast and forcing others to make heavy equipment when wars occur.

So now the price will go up, and it'll be worthwhile growing mustard seeds again.

Hmmm.. that’s not how supply vs demand works though

How so? Supply goes down while demand is the same --> Price goes up --> Profit margin for the farmer increases --> Profits of mustard > profits of rapeseed --> Farmer produces mustard instead of rapeseed. This is exactly the consequence of supply and demand.

The only noteworthy fact is that we got in this situation because it was not a completely free market but a regulated market due to subsidies for rapeseed, artificially increasing their profit margin.

Because demand isn’t the same. Changing the price affects the demand.

This is exactly how a price shift in the supply demand curve works in basic macroeconomics.

If you price shift a good upwards and the demand remains static, yield per good increases and then supply should increase as suppliers willing to supply at the new price is greater than supplier willing to supply at the old price.

> demand remains static,

How can this be an assumption? Of course demand will respond to price.

Demand is a slope, not a point. Price increases left shift demand, prices decreases right shift demand. This is because more people are willing to buy a good at a cheaper price than a more expensive one.

In this context demand is the total desire of the market to consume that good at all, represented by a slope that has an inverse relationship with the price axis.

Which is cool and all, but the side effect of this all is less people would be able to eat mustard. Prices going up is often inevitable but hardly a win.

It'd be interesting to have an accounting of what end-of-the-day benefits people got for giving up their mustard.

The solution to the side effect of poor people having to consume less due to higher prices is always redistributing wealth so poorer people have more money to spend. Preventing price movements simply hampers the ability for market participants to allocate resources properly to meet the desires of the populace.

Give poor people more money > prices go up > poor people can't afford stuff > give poor people more money > prices go up > ...

In theory yes, and I think we probably see this effect with things like home-buyer credits, low interest rates, etc all contributing to pushing up the cost of houses.

But has it been studied that this is actually how this plays out with a low-level consumer good like mustard?

You've just described college tuition!

No. College tuition is lend people unlimited amount of taxpayer’s money with no underwriting -> colleges increase prices as much as possible without getting too much political blowback in the immediate term. And then taxpayers eat the loss via loan forgiveness or decreased purchasing power of the USD as interest rates and repayment terms are continuously relaxed.

Sounds the same to me.

Would you rather be given money or lent money?

It would be a pretty big difference to me.

Lending money today instead of giving money lets leaders and voters today to punt sacrifices to tomorrow’s taxpayers, and of course inflates college tuition prices so the borrowers have reduced purchasing power, as well as future users of the currency.

That is the whole reason lending for college tuition became a thing. Some genius figured out how to cut taxes today while still being able to say they are helping expand access to higher education to poor people and college students.

You missed the step where you take money from richer people, and then give that money to poorer people.

Across all goods/services, that means richer people would be able to consume less, and poorer people would be able to consume more. Whether or not people sacrifice eating Dijon mustard is up to them.

The goal is not to guarantee Dijon mustard for everyone, the goal is to mitigate how poor poorer people are.

The other way to bring down Dijon mustard prices is for the government to increase supply of Dijon mustard, or remove whatever is restricting supply of Dijon mustard.

Well, that's part of the solution. The other part of the solution is on the supply side: finding ways to reduce prices through improved productivity, trade, removing unnecessary regulations, fostering competitive markets, etc.

I feel like mustard should be such a small portion of a person's budget that the price could double without affecting his ability to purchase it.

Then the price will more than double. If there was 100 tonnes of mustard consumed last year and there is 90 tonnes available this year, then the price rises until people stop buying about 10t of mustard.

Temporarily, yeah; but long-term, it's correct that this will incentivize more mustard growing.

Why is there an incentive to grow more mustard? Subsidies have shifted the supply curve for mustard. The opportunity costs of growing mustard have increased due to subsidies for other crops. Now less mustard is grown and a new equilibrium price is set. The old amount of mustard will never be grown due to the shift in the supply curve from subsidies of other crops.

The "more" was relative to 90 tonnes.

You're correct that the new equilibrium would be below 100.

In this context, if land is being redeployed to grow bio-energy crops then there will be less mustard consumed. There is not an infinite amount of farmland, farmers and capital available to grow things - if resources are being directed away from food to biofuels then there will be less food.

The market will find an equilibrium, but it will involve people giving up mustard because the cost is too high. They have to - there is less mustard. Someone will have to give up consuming mustard and in the medium term it is going to be prices that are the mechanism. That is what prices going up generally mean - the market is shaking some people out so they stop using a product. In the short term I see they have a sign saying "only 1 mustard" or something like that.

It’s mustard, and there are still other kinds. I’m personally not worried about it.

I think we’ll have a lot more of these sacrifices coming up in the next thirty years that will hurt a lot more. Coffee is the one that I’m most worried about.

The other kinds of mustard are not really substitutable. It's as if Coca Cola disappeared from store shelves in the US, and someone said it's fine because there's still Fanta and Sprite.

I'm not really sure your analogy helps; in either case, there are people who would agree that it matters, and people who would be baffled that anyone could get wrought up over it.

Replace Coke and Sprite with Trump and Biden. Now we’re talking

What makes the example unhelpful? Coca Cola and associated brands are probably one of, if not the most internationally prolific brands of consumer product in the world. I don’t even drink much soda now and even I remember what they tasted like years ago, or at least the fact that they taste wildly different.

It’s a good food with good properties. As a stand-alone product it probably wouldn’t matter but this is in the context of food prices already going up across the board and healthy food generally being closer to the premium end of the price scale.

Ah, no. You probably should talk to a real farmer about current crop prices vs. futures prices, the capital & other costs of trying to switch from growing Crop A to Crop B, lead times, inelastic demand, and how many farmers have been wiped out (bankruptcy & liquidation) due to a series of "it sounded good at the time" decisions.

They mean it in an average sense, not advice to particular farmers.

It will make sense for some to switch, and some will.

If the price increase weren’t due to a subsidy, that would be true. Instead, a subsidy creates a sustained shortage.

Unless something else (not price action) increases the demand for mustard, its price will not move back to equilibrium. This concept is in Econ 101 (albeit one of the less intuitive concepts taught)

Well first off they didn't say the price will move back, they said the shortage will end. Now that it costs more, more supply can be obtained.

But also it's likely that when the equilibrium point moved, farmers (or other parts of the supply chain) overshot it. That puts us in a price spike, so even if the new normal is higher than the old normal, if you check during a spike you should expect the price to go down.

I'm the OP and yes you explained what I meant to say very well.

All foodstuff prices are going up now anyway. And tbh, mustard is like 0.1% of my food budget so if it goes up a bit or even triples in price I won't think twice about it.

I just meant that this will force a new equilibrium, subsidy or not, people will keep growing mustard.

And of course tackling climate change is also a big priority, and renewable fuels are a good option for things that can't be electric (e.g. planes).

In Burgundy (where Dijon is) at least, growing grapes for wine is probably way more profitable than mustard seeds

it is bad. and french people never wanted that. but it seems to be for the greater good. also most of the commercial mustard brands buys seeds from china and brand it as french. hence why there is a shortage. commercial greed of companies that want to bank on the french branding while buying the product in cheaper labor cost regions.

Pretty sure it's Canadian actually.

Even the article mentions it.

Edit: if this wasn't 100% crystal clear, judging by some replies - I mean "even the article mentions it [Canada being a source of mustard seeds]"

I don't even care much about mustard or live in France (though I am French) and I knew it just from reading French news months ago.

But I've heard so much disinformation in the last weeks when I was back at home with my family, many aging people (not especially lacking education, and of various social status but just "normal" people) who seem to get most of their information from random posts on Facebook, that I've lost any remaining trust in democracy (or at least direct democracy as many people advocate today) as a viable system for the coming years.

Democracy needs a well-informed population making informed decisions, but what I see is the total opposite. If these people (who make up the majority of the population in our aging society) were to take decisions themselves, we would likely ally with Russia to finish the war against the "maybe-not-as-bad-but-still-very-bad" Ukrainians to restore mustard production and make gas flow again since there is no exceptional drought or any climate change at all, since summer last year was not so warm. Or some other nonsense.

Sorry for the rant, but my reflections were actually triggered by the comments I heard back then regarding the mustard shortage. I had never realised how misinformed people were.

My impression as well. I am not too hopeful for the future.

Direct democracy would allow to discuss and debate ideas for their own sake rather than choosing one of a very few camps. A person could be pro-guns and pro-vaccination without needing to identify with a party, their people, etc... Disinformation will still exist (see brexit!),it might even be worse, but people will be able to point to it without being called a plant for the other side.

The problem with current systems, representative democracy, especially with non-proportional voting systems, is that getting elected becomes the only goal, and supporting extreme views is one of the strategy, which has been pushing parties, from all sides, towards extremes. There is a self-feeding vicious circle as soon as one party supports extreme views, it reinforces the opposite party support for the party over ideas, and that now affects the first party etc...

Being informed is like driving, every single person thinks they are better informed than the average! If you don't believe in democracy, can you please tell us what system is better?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_a...

Experiences with "sortition" has shown that a group of "average people" tend to make better decisions for the group then a few supposedly "elite".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

> If you don't believe in democracy, can you please tell us what system is better?

None that I know of, that is the real tragedy.

On the illusion of superiority, I'm well aware of that but do not forget that it does not mean that some people are not actually better or worse (at information, driving, cooking or anything) than the others.

Some abilities can actually be evaluated, for example there is such a thing as truth, so even though one person can be bad at evaluating themselves, it is absolutely possible to recognise misinformation in others.

> it is absolutely possible to recognise misinformation in others.

And this needs to be part of the education, part of the direct democracy.

Keep in mind that in many situations there isn't a single truth, compromises need to be made, different implementations of a system that should work in theory needs to be tested etc... The belief in a single great system has lead to many bad societies.

I think that the main benefit of sortition is that you end up with a set of people without any need to get re-elected, and that it's this that lends them the ability to make better decisions because their careers don't depend on it.

Here in Ireland, we've had a number of Citizens' Assembly meetings going back just shy of a decade (if you include the 2012 Constitutional Convention, which was effectively the first one in all but name) that have been tremendously productive and have lead to a lot of positive change that would never have happened if it were left purely to professional politicians. You might find it worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_(Ireland)

> If you don't believe in democracy, can you please tell us what system is better?

Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean there's a better alternative. It simply means there may not be an alternative to believe in.

I guess you one of the well-informed french that would probably have called on chirac being a crazy man for not siding with usa when they went to bring "democracy" to irak against a bad dictator that had weapons that did not exist. because between above narrative and russian one that went there to "denazify" and fight a dictature of nazis there's not a big difference. every information is one-sided and no one can control it. it is easy to make fun of people that believe things on facebook. much harder to understand that you at your level are also one of them

While I don't want to justify the invasion (or rather the motivation behind it and it’s actual execution), Sadam’s regime was OBJECTIVELY worse than the Ukrainian government. They are not even on the same level, the Ukrainian government may be thoroughly corrupt but they did not murder hundreds of thousands of their own people (using both conventional and chemical weapons).

The real crime was propping up Sadam in the 80’s when US did not see him as a threat and living him alive in 1991 (which just prove that US had zero actual concerns about the wellbeing and freedom of the people of Iraq in 2003)

Team America: World Police

It doesn't matter though. Both invasions were based on very similar lies. Just because in Iraq the lies were 10% true and in Ukraine 3% true doesn't make any difference.

The invasion itself was a far far worse crime that supporting Saddam materially.

> living him alive in 1991

what?

1991 was the same decision to make as 2003, except they chose restraint. When they flipped in 2003, almost everyone universally agrees, including you

> the US war in Iraq was unjustified

it was a bad decision, thus 1991 was the right move.

> except they chose restraint

No they chose to instigate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Iraqi_uprisings and then left the rebels out to dry. Thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis were killed by Sadam's forces.

The equivalent of 1991 (obviously on a very different scale) would be the Allies stopping at the border of Germany in 1944 (after liberating France) and allowing Hitler to stay in power (while simultaneously claiming that it’s the job of the German people to remove him).

> I guess you one of the well-informed french that would probably have called on chirac being a crazy man for not siding with usa when they went to bring "democracy" to irak against a bad dictator that had weapons that did not exist

This was actually probably Chirac’s (and Villepin’s) finest hour.

It is also a non sequitur. Invading Iraq was (as was predicted back then) a catastrophe. We are still paying for it, even France, and will in the foreseeable future.

Invading and annexing a peaceful, if corrupt, neighbouring country, however, is much worse. Genocide in Iraq was well documented and at least the point could be made. There is nothing remotely similar in Ukraine, even ignoring both bits of disinformation (WMDs in Iraq and Nazis in Ukraine).

I think the point GP was trying to make is, the 'good old days' when there was no misinformation was when it was still possible to manufacture consent without your rivals interfering. The current wave of competing worldviews is... one could say difficult to assimilate... but if people evolve better bullshit filters as a result, we'll probably be better off than when we were being fed smaller amounts of bullshit from only one entity at a time.

Which doesn't help your family and their weak bullshit filters, of course, and my condolances for their situation - if I knew how to speed up developing such a filter, I'd share it.

Edit: Didn't realise GP wasn't addressing you, my comment on your family was meant for someone else - how easy it is to be confused by online discussion even without bad intentions.

>>I guess you one of the well-informed french that would probably have called on chirac being a crazy man for not siding with usa when they went to bring "democracy" to irak against a bad dictator that had weapons that did not exist.

I'm not french, I have no idea who "chirac" is, and in general I think you maybe replied to the wrong comment?

sorry my reply got wrongly placed I was talking to seszett

Since you were intending to reply to me, I'll try to answer you here.

I'm really not sure I actually understood what you meant, though. In my opinion, the US war in Iraq was unjustified and the Russian war in Ukraine is unjustified as well, and indeed between the US narrative back then and the Russian one today, there is no big difference.

But the main take I get from our conversation is that you were the one that was initially misinformed (thinking French mustard mainly comes from China), didn't read or believe the linked article by a "respectable" established news outlet (that clearly says the mustard in question comes from Canada), then spread your wrong information (in your comment) and now you're trying to say that I'm as misinformed as anyone when you are factually, indisputably, the one person who is misinformed in this particular discussion.

I do believe I am more effective at checking the accuracy of the the information I read or hear about than other people. I do not think that everyone is equally as misinformed, far from it.

> between the US narrative back then and the Russian one today, there is no big difference.

The US war in Iraq can be unjustified, while the US' intention against an actually terrible Saddam regime being benevolent, while Russia's is actually selfish territorial control and Donbas resources. Equating the Saddam regime to Zelenskyy's Ukraine is egregious.

I made a mistake between mustard and pickles that are indeed made in china and you directly jumped to me looking at facebook post and being misinformed. but my point is the same. making abroad and branding it as dijon is a fraud.

And just to let you know. go back in time a bit. any one that was against iraq was someone "misinformed" that was not following mainstream opinion. so at that time you would have indeed said that chirac was spreading wrong information :) people like you - the ones that are always on the good side / the right side of history are more dangerous than people that inform themselves on facebook

Not anymore? The article does not mention china at all. Maybe it was corrected in the meanwhile. As I'm reading it, Canada is named as the majority source for seeds.

your parent means that even the article mentions Canada [so there's no need to just be 'pretty sure']

> but it seems to be for the greater good.

Exporting blame abroad is for the greater good?

im blaming the companies not the abroad. you brand ur product as french and you use ur raw material from some foreign country while calling it from the region in france it originates. that is a scam. and that is the reason why we have a shortage because producing abroad makes CEO and shareholders richer and made france stop producing enough. canada for mustard seeds china for pickles (sorry for the mistake) it is same.

Makes sense. So if somehow the companies were somehow forced to brand their products accurately, the problem would have a chance of getting solved thanks to customers.

we do have in france a system called AOP that controls the origin. but it does not force people to brand "DIJON" mustard as coming from dijon.

For instance champagne can only come from the champagne region.

I also seem to understand that growing mustard seeds requires lots of pesticides that are considered harmful to environment or farmers in the EU. Easier to buy it from countries with different regulations.

yeah and pesticide rules on non-edible crops used for bio-fuels are often much more relaxed. It's also why it might not always be a good idea to live next to a flower farm.

canola is in the mustard family

Vacationing in France as I write (but still reading HN). It was a surreal moment when our French family called before our departure asking if we could pack a jar or two for them!

I guess I won’t fully understand until a peanut butter shortage hits the States. We nonetheless took their request seriously :)

I remember the butter crisis in Norway a few years ago. Just before Christmas, and everyone wanted to bake their families' traditional cookies. But no butter. Quite a horror show! My mom was in Denmark at the time, and bought like 20 packets back to Norway to distribute among friends haha.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_butter_crisis

I dunno how famous this was within Norway, but the Norwegian butter crisis is mainly known within my circle of friends because of a video called "A Butter message to the USA!" by a Norwegian comedian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0GzU56YMA

The different pronunciations of "refridgerator" and the threat to break into your house and eat all your butter in front of you and your family had me in tears the first time I saw it :D

The Danish were all over that, saying Norwegians now spreading the butterless plague to Denmark as well by hoarding all the butter supplies

Just latching on to a top comment for exposure.

About a month ago, Business Insider put out a cool little video on french dijon mustard and why it's so expensive / hard to get. Fun little watch.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nVOhHo0puE

If I may ask, which non-French dijon mustard did you bring them? As a dijon-lover myself, I just wonder what the closest match, or an acceptable substitute, to French dijon would be (I'm in the U.S.).

Grey Poupon (French Dijon) was readily available at our local grocery store in DC. I assume the incentives to divert the supplies from the US to France aren’t quite there yet.

Dijon mustard is an essential sauce ingredient for many dishes

Last weekend the only mustard we find when visiting family in France was German brands.

So yeah, last years shortfalls in mustard yields in Canada, the current draught in Europe preventing France to increase local rpoduction and the war Ukraine preventing imports from either Russia or Ukraine hurts. Luckily we still have some stock, even mustard looses some taste over time even if kept in cold and dry storage and was never opened...

It's funny, I can totally see how a French person would never buy German brands. Interestingly though, the "Löwensenf" brand from Germany apparently produces mustard made like in Dijon, so it would be a good substitute in principle...

Knowing both, proper Dijon (incl. "industrial" ones) and Löwensenf mustard I'd say Löwensenf is at best a poor alternative. Not that itbis bad mustard, it is just something completely different.

Well I checked and they do have an actual Dijon mustard as well :D

I'll have to look for that! But then we are picky when it comes to mustard, Maille for example is usually rather easy to find in Germany but completely unacceptable on the dinner table! What can I say...

I tend not to buy German brands. Not because they are bad or anything, but because their mustard was quite different (usually sweeter, less sharp, or less sour) every time I tried. They could be used as an ersatz in a pinch, but I’d rather have the stuff I am used to and which won’t mess with my usual recipes.

I know that there are some German mustards that are very close to Dijon, but on balance the risk is much lower going with a French brand.

you need "Extra scharf" extra hot to get Dijon Mustard taste. Löwensenf Extra Scharf is just fine for that.

I’ll try that one next time, thanks :)

> usually sweeter, less sharp, or less sour

Is Dijon used for anything but cooking? I can't see myself having a non-sweet mustard on a sausage etc. But use dijon in cooking or sallads.

Sure, it depends on the sausage so. As a Bavarian with French inlaws I have obviously some complex rules around which mustard is acceptable with which kind of sausage. Dijon is great woth French fries and steaks so. Which is one reason why mustard is scrce in France, the French simply consume more of it.

I've also seen Bulgarian brand mustard.

>Usually French manufacturers import from Canada some 80% of the 35,000 tonnes of seeds they need. Last year, however, a drought struck the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where most of the crop is grown. The Canadian harvest was about half of that in a normal year.

Is anyone even reading the article?

This is HN, nobody reads the article.

yes. right after your quote the article continues with no compensation for the bad canadian harvest from ukraine or russian harvests, because of the war, which is what GP said.

That hurts. My life would be substantially less rich without Dijon. I love mustard. Mustard is truly the king of condiments.

You can try growing your own mustard. I hear it's not that hard.

But it's only Dijon mustard if it's from the Dijon region, otherwise it's just a sparkling yellow condiment. ;)

you should be able to replicate whatever special soil you need with hidroponics

I think they are making fun of the European Union's law on protected designation of origin. You can make something that tastes like champagne but you can't call it champagne unless it is from the Champagne region of France. You have to call it sparkling wine or something else. It's the same for parmesan cheese and many other products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi...

Indeed, I was. If the mustard is sparkling, I don't recommend eating it.

So I'm just a casual pleb who enjoys mustard on various sandwiches and such.

I've only tried a small number of Dijon-labelled mustards, but they've all been radically different. I'd say the only thing they had in common was being mustards and the texture.

That said, mustard is indeed a must for a lot of things.

They should all have white wine as part of their formulation.

Mustard and white wine, gotcha. That still leaves quite the space for the variation in taste that I've experienced.

My Dijon quest got started since I really like the flavor profile of the Maille Dijon mustard with certain kinds of deli meat, but I find it too strong so I can't use as much as I'd like. So I was hoping for something with a similar flavor profile but with less heat.

I've yet to find a replacement, but I have found a few others that I really enjoy for other sandwiches so.

I can recommend mustard powder if you haven't used it, and try mixing up your own mustard to a strength you appreciate, with or without any vinegar, or other combinations (honey etc).

As someone that grew up with French culture and Dijon mustard, as soon as I first tasted the mild American version it became my favourite condiment.

French, and worse, English mustard are far too violent, and it's not as pleasant a pain as a strong chili pepper.

We're on opposite ends of the spectrum. I love English mustard. Even the idea of that nose burning, eye watering sensation makes me drool. No sandwich is complete without it.

I love how you've phrased it, sounds like no sandwich is complete without nose burning and eye watering. Pain is the best condiment :-)

May I introduce you to Nathan's Spicey Brown Mustard and Kosciusko Spicey Brown Mustard? I think of it as the American answer to Dijon.

There's also moutard de Bourgogn which is a bit spicier than DOC Dijon if you can't find the latter (most regions have their own blend and they are all similar).

I live in France and we ran out of Mustard when the shortage came out. We don't eat that much, but it has been quite annoying. Especially with the barbecue season.

I suspect close relatives to hoard and run a "black market" mustard network. They got at least 3 sort of mustard last time we went to see them for dinner. I'm definitely jealous!

20 years from now - French response to Bourne's Identity series, but about a deep state mustard-hoarding conspiracy.

France should learn from Canada and its strategic maple syrup reserve.

> France has been gripped by the mystery of the Dijon mustard shortage.

At least for me, I knew it was coming from supply issues with Canada's mustard seeds (however I was thinking it was caused by last year's fires, not a drought)

There is a shortage of Huy Fong Foods Sriracha too https://www.npr.org/2022/06/17/1105477224/sriracha-shortage-...

I can see “non essential” food products like these will be effected more and more in the future

The mustard seed shortage due to the war in Ukraine also affects at least some of the German brands. Bautz’ner Mittelscharfer Senf - a staple in eastern Germany - is really hard to get.

And the Dijon mustard shortage led to a mustard shortage. Until a couple of weeks ago I could not find any mustard in any supermarket here (near Paris). It was a bit surreal the first time I was told.

No shortage at all here in Switzerland, 60 km away from France. I don't get it.

Ironically and paradoxically, Dijon mustard can be found in neighboring countries, because non-French people don't eat as much of the stuff. In France the minute any inventory shows up anywhere it's immediately depleted, whereas in other countries it can remain on shelves for weeks.

Changing the allotment between France and other countries for exporting firms takes time, and so it does happen that more mustard is sent to countries that don't much care for it, while the French are deprived of it.

But at what price? ;)

Maybe it's more lucrative for French companies to sell it for 2x to the Swiss instead of locally.

If you read the article, you’d know that the mustard doesn’t come from France. It comes from Canada.

No, the seeds are mostly grown in Canada but the product is manufactured in France.

Dusseldorf mustard is better anyhow.

I came here to post this. Dijon is so uninteresting.

next you'll be saying emacs is better than vim

Supposedly a blight afflicting grapevines, leading to a collapse in wine (and therefore brandy) production contributed to the popularity of Scotch whisky outside Scotland. I wonder if the decline in Dijon mustard will turn the French on to English mustard :)

Or wasabi

god forbid!

Excuse me, sir, do you have any Grey Poupon? The answer to this timeless question, experts say, is increasingly "no".

It all started in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, in the spring of 1634, when, as luck (or Providence) would have it, ...

Interestingly, Grey Poupon, while being marketed as french mustard, does not sell in France

I'm in Britan and I'm not sure I've ever bought a hot dog here, let alone have it slathered in mustard. Every BBQ I've been to it's regular sausages and ketchup, maybe some un-opened mustard near by.

English mustard is food of the gods. Tracklements (few miles from where I'm typing now) Strong English Mustard especially so. Might be a regional thing (or a class/culture thing?), but mustard goes in lots of stuff where I am in the south.

Good old-fashioned yellow English mustard is the go-to condiment for cold cuts of beef and ham, for pork pies and scotch eggs, for grilled steak and gammon, and it beats ketchup hollow when it comes to the bacon sarnie. Clean, crisp, and hot without being uncomfortably so.

> hot without being uncomfortably so.

?? English mustard is almost noxious

Obviously, this is in the taste buds of the beholder. I (English) find English mustard has a nice kick, but it's definitely not strong. It's nowhere near as strong as chilli sauce, for example.

I do also like the flavour of American mustard, you just have to use very different quantities. I would recommend something like 5-10x the amount of US mustard to UK mustard. A jar of Colmans mustard should last you a year or so.

The tiny jars of Colman's I can get lasts me like a month!

But you can't compare English mustard to hot (chili) sauces - they're not the same type of spiciness at all. English mustard packs a great kick like you'll get from good horseradish sauces or wasabi, which isn't surprising since they're all in the same family. You get the feeling of the sinuses clearing, but there's no heat/burning sensation that sticks around in your mouth. Both of these are great additions to the right foods.

> It's nowhere near as strong as chilli sauce, for example.

I dunno about that, I can slather stuff in a strong chilli sauce and can happily eat up to Madras curries (vindaloo with some discomfort) but English mustard _kills_ me.

You need to take into account how strong it is before you add great dollops of it to your food. It's great stuff when used wisely.

I have a dab on things, it's like silly hot sauce, just a dab is needed. This 'slathering' in the article would end up in the emergency room.

"it beats ketchup hollow when it comes to the bacon sarnie"

Sorry - that's just wrong, probably should be illegal. ;-)

Brown sauce (HP if you are posh) that's the only thing to have on a bacon sarnie.

I think maybe GP was reacting to this line from the article: "Much of it is the Dijon variety, a condiment that comes with a nose-tingling kick, not the milder and sweeter sauce slathered on hot dogs in Britain or America."

It's a bit of a strange statement to me also. Hot dog stands aren't much of a thing here, and Dijon or English mustard are much more common than French's Yellow Mustard or whatever.

But yeah, English mustard or Dijon goes into a lot of stuff in my kitchen.

Oh yes for sure, I just meant I don't have it slather on sausages. I think my face would fold in on itself if I had more than a dash of English mustard. I like it on the side of susage and mash, or toad in the hole, but certainly not lots in a bun.

You slather American mustard onto a hot dog; it's sweet and sour and may or may not contain any actual mustard flour. English mustard is a whole different beast with a sharp, hot flavour. French ("Dijon" in the USA) mustard is different again, and focuses on the mustardy flavour. German mustard is in between English and French styles and ideal for a good pork sausage.

Now, when there's a shortage of yer Dijon ketchup, that's when you're going to see Americans up in arms, with apologies to the BNL.

I’d love to try an American mustard with no mustard in it. Would you mind sharing any brand which fits this description?

Or, did you mean American yellow mustard isn’t usually spicy? That doesn’t mean there isn’t mustard in it.

It's a common trend to make claims like this, particularly about food.

For instance, my brother loves to tell you how there's no "real chicken" in a McChicken sandwich.

I take exception to having English mustard lumped in with U.S. mustard.

English mustard is in no way "milder and sweeter" than Dijon mustard - quite the opposite. I'd like to see the author eat a U.S. hot-dog (they're not particularly common in Britain) slathered in English mustard without their eyes watering.

There always has been since farmers refuse to grow mustard seed due to government red tape. Dijon only has a small amount locally grown and almost none in France. As mentioned the majority of mustard seed for Dijon comes from Canada. Any Dijon from France grown in France is called Burgundy so really Dijon is pretty much the tourist version.

sources.

This article. Everything OP said is in this article.

Meanwhile, here in Canada I worry about Sriracha shortages https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/sriracha-hot-sauce-shortage-...

"Dijon" mustard isn't really a thing. It's not a protected designation, it's generic; 80% of Dijon Mustard is made from Canadian seeds, and no Dijon mustard is produced in Dijon.

It's true that origin is not protected but it is a thing and essentially refers to the production method/recipe/style. So it means "Dijon style" mustard.

I wonder how many geographic food labels will be able to survive climate change (not sure whether that is the specific issue here but in general...).

It's part of the issue. And I believe it's going to be pretty bad.

For example in France, we already see some wines and champagnes change taste. After such a hot summer the next batch of a few domains, gathered in fall, will probably contain many disappointments. Other regions which used to not have great conditions might become much more interesting to grow raisin. Maybe some clever (or lucky) guy will buy the next good fields while some of the existing domains will go bankrupt.

This is just an example of course.

I honestly wonder if buying land 100xkm north of current high value areas and waiting 20 years is a viable investment strategy. Some smart billionaire with a bunch of geographers is likely going to make a killing...

At the very least it would be a smart hedge. I mean not necessarily going north but at least have some land that don't face the sun all day like being on the "wrong" side of a mountain for example. Some of them are a fraction of the price of the next town that has sun all day. If we keep getting rises in energy prices it will be much more valuable to have diversification than to have one massive penthouse.

In a limited world, all supplies are limited. So, aiming at everyone (~ 7B ppl) can have everything can easily hit such a simple limit.

Unless average tastes rapidly swing, that shouldn't be an issue. People only need so much in the way of spices and condiments, and there's plenty of space to grow them in.

I grew mustard for the first time this year simply because I love it. Was a very fun experience, going to do even better next year.

The real mustard disaster is just how hard it has become to get good Russian/Ukrainian mustard, Dijon simply doesn’t cut it.

What particular mustard do you have in mind? The Russian/Ukrainian mustards I've tried couldn't hold a candle to Dijon. Too tame.

Too tame? That’s odd, generally Russians make a far more intense style of Mustard than Dijon.

Zakuson is a quite good Russian style mustard, widely available because it’s made in Canada.

No such mustard where I live. Tomorrow I'm going to a BBQ though, so I'm going to buy a whole set of mustards and let the best one win. I'll remember to get some Russian ones.

Taking the gatekeeping to the next level, I see.

Huh. I can buy a pound of mustard seeds on Amazon and make my own spicy brown. This changes everything.

Funny thing. We still have Dijon but lack with regional mustard like Bautzner.

Can you vertically farm mustard? It sounds perfect for it.

I guess you could say they don't have any Grey Poupon.

Pardon me.

I ordered some to offer as a fun gift to my family on my holidays next week. Hopefully it's not bad (never tried it so I don't know the taste, plus it took a couple month to arrive I hope it didn't go bad somehow).

Are there no brown mustard seeds grown in France?

New laws on pesticide make it difficult to do, so a lot of farms have repurposed to other plants.

I was yesterday at my shopping center (a Super U) and for some reason I had a look at the oil and mustard as I read about this earlier in the week.

Plenty of oils and plenty of mustards.

I was in Bordeaux last week and they were out of Dijon mustard. It's the best for dressing and many classic sauces

Cora in the north east only had Löwensenf and Alnatura from Germany. It depends on overall stock and indiviual supply chains between supermarket chains and regions.

The article is specifically discussing a shortage in Dijon Mustard in France.

Given the Super U reference, gp is presumably in France.

Yes, in France and I checked for Dijon mustard. I must keep the name of my Super U secret or we will have an invasion :)

I don't often check that part of the shop, but in the monoprix (near Paris) where I usually get my groceries, there hasn't been any Dijon mustard for a few months

Time to jump to horseradish.

(aka Wasabi)

Real wasabi isn't horseradish. But a lot of "wasabi" flavouring you get in the west is horseradish with green colouring.

Wasabi and horseradish are different plants. They taste similar enough though that horseradish with green food-colouring is often used as wasabi, and that real wasabi is often diluted with horseradish — even in Japan.

Real wasabi is more expensive partly because it is more difficult to cultivate (in stream beds vs. soil) and partly because growers keep supply low to hike up the price.

It's ludicrously expensive too. A little bit of whole wasabi lasts me a long time as wasabi paste is sort of "foamed up" and I find the volume increases. It would be so worth it if I could cultivate even a single plant myself.

If you can't tell the difference, consider yourself lucky. I probably spend a few hundred dollars a year on wasabi and use it quite rarely.

Unfortunately, we're still pretty far from horseradish season. At least in Europe, it's a winter crop. But yeah, I've been waiting for horseradish for a few months already.

Or horseradish mustard, pretty good stuff.

Does game theory has any clue about how a non centrally planned system can avoid creating SPOFs ?

Asking for friend living in a globalized economy that is going to traverse turbulences for a few decades.

Government intervention in the form of subsidies/taxes/regulations looks like it's the only realistic way.

This is the news I come to HN for

There are eight varieties of Dijon mustard available to me for 2-hour delivery by Amazon Fresh right now in Miami. Five of them are made in France. Fake news?

> There is a shortage of Dijon mustard *in France*

Because they’re exporting it all to Miami? This story makes no sense.

I'm not sure what's confusing about regional shortages.

it's not unusual for exports to take priority over the local market since the former is often more lucrative;

also, there probably aren't as many people in Miami buying Dijon mustard as in France ...

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