In the New English Review, Theodore Dalrymple explains why Europeans have been experiencing higher shelf prices and shortages for Dijon mustard recently, over and above the ordinary supply chain disruptions of the pandemic years we’ve all had to get used to:
Among myriad smaller consequences of that war is an acute mustard shortage in France. Mustard has all but disappeared from supermarket shelves, having first increased in price dramatically. This has surprised everyone who lazily assumed that Dijon mustard came from Dijon. Why should a war waged in Ukraine lead to the disappearance of mustard throughout France? After all, the famous brands, familiar to everyone, proudly announce on their labels that they are Dijon mustard. Can there be anything more French than Dijon mustard?
Perhaps the mustard is elaborated in Dijon, but the mustard seed, it turns out to everyone’s surprise, is imported from Canada and Ukraine. Apparently, Canada has seen a disastrous harvest of mustard seed, while there is no need to explain the shortage in Ukraine. Dijon mustard is about as local to Dijon as a modern soccer team is local to the city in which it has its stadium.
What is striking about this mustard crisis, unimportant except to those trying to make a proper vinaigrette or lapin à la moutarde, is its revelation of a perennial aspect of social psychology: namely, a resort to conspiracy theory. For some say that there is not really any mustard shortage at all — that mustard has disappeared from supermarket shelves because the supermarket chains are hoarding it, that they have a plentiful supply in their warehouses and will release it little by little, thereby profiteering by the resultant high prices. The war in Ukraine is only a pretext.
This is an old, indeed medieval, trope in times of shortage. There may well have been times, of course, when people really did hoard for the purposes of profiteering, but people rarely hoard something that is in abundant supply.
Yet many people require no evidence or proof to believe in the hoarding story. Does it not, after all, stand to reason? Do not merchants try to maximize their profits, and is hoarding not an easy way to do so? Practically all the mustard in France is sold in supermarkets — themselves a cartel that could easily agree to remove the product from the shelves. Surely no further evidence is needed.
