>Of all places, Venezuela has been on a cheese revolution since the beginning of this century, producing in 2020 3x the amount it did in 2000. We were thrilled to see that the country with usually the most troubling news in the region is actually LatAm's 2nd largest cheese producer and surpassed Switzerland (the cheese homeland) in production for the first time in 2009.

TBF my guess would be this is partially if not primarily because of the price caps the (economically illiterate) government put on milk (and other goods) during hyperinflation...if your a milk producer and you can't sell it for a profit then you're better of turning it into cheese instead, which you then can increase in price to go along with inflation...the government likely indirectly caused this in a not-good way. Also cheese keeps better than milk and can be exported easier...shocking. Venezuela's socialist government has completely mismanaged their economy through dumb policies with bad back-end consequences.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-venezuela-crisis-turns-bootleg-cheese-into-a-big-business-2020-3

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-food/missteps-as-venezuelas-hugo-chavez-backs-farming-idUSN2734134020080429

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excerpt: "The government bought one of the country’s largest milk companies last month to stem a common practice by farmers of selling milk for cheese, which is subject to fewer price controls than milk, or shipping it to neighboring Colombia."