These countries produce the most cheese in the world per capita

Many people still wear the title ‘cheese head’ with a certain amount of pride, right? We love cheese so much in the Netherlands, and so much incredibly good cheese is made here, that it may seem as though we should be more or less the world champions when it comes to cheese production and consumption. Yes, yes, you may be thinking: a small frog-in-the-pond country, but if ‘we’ win pretty much everything in hockey, speed skating and cycling, surely we must do so in cheese too?

Unfortunately, let’s burst that bubble right away: that’s not the case. We are not the world’s biggest cheese-producing country, and we’re not even in the top three. So which countries do make up the top three in cheese production?

Hard cheese facts

To be able to say that, it’s only fair to look at how much cheese is made per head of the population, or per capita. This data was collected and mapped out by Chef’s Pencil, with extensive explanations. And when the figures are categorized in slightly different ways, they produce surprising results.

And the winner is (or seems to be)

If we look purely at which countries are the biggest producers of cheese, the top three consist of the United States of America, followed by Germany, and then France. Italy is in fourth place, because of course they also have to produce a whole lot of cheeses such as Parmesan and Grana Padano for all those pasta dishes. The Netherlands is in sixth place in this ranking; fifth place goes to Russia.

That’s a different kind of cheese biscuit

But if we look at how much cheese is produced in a country per head of the population (per capita), the list looks quite different. The top three are suddenly, perhaps rather surprisingly: 1. Denmark, 2. New Zealand, and 3. Ireland! And the Netherlands comes in fourth place. In a European top three, we take the bronze, by the way, with only Denmark and Ireland producing more cheese.

Curious about all the detailed rankings that Chef’s Pencil mapped out using the data they collected? Here you can read their full article. We suggest enjoying it with some delicious Dutch cheese cubes to help you concentrate properly.

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