According to Statista, this amount is in line with the EU average, as in 2021 the cheese consumption per capita in the European Union was 20.44 kilograms per year.
Over the past ten years, the amount of cheese and cottage cheese produced in Latvia has slowly increased, said Šolks.
"In, 2021, we produced 56.2 thousand tonnes of these products, but we consume only 41 thousand tonnes, which means that each Latvian resident consumes on average 22 kilograms of cheese and cottage cheese per year," said Šolks.
It remains a mystery how much of those 22 kilograms is consumed over the Midsummer festival, when the traditional Jāņi cheese is in abundance on every table.
The consumption of locally produced cheese and cottage cheese also grows each year, said Šolks. Around 17 thousand tonnes of these products were imported into Latvia in 2021, and the trend is slowly but steadily declining.
