Comté and Its Rivers: A Cheese That Sustains the Jura and Damages It

Marlène describes herself as a farmer passionate about her cows, about nature, and about everything the animals teach her every day. She comes from a long line of women who raised cows for Comté. Since 2021, she has been in partnership with her husband Nicolas on a medium-sized dairy farm, typical of the region, which Nicolas took over from his parents. Her day begins around 6 a.m. She gets the milking parlor ready while Nicolas brings the cows down from the pasture, and then the two of them milk the herd's 65 animals. The oldest, Zatis, has just turned 13.

At 40, Marlène's shoulders are already "badly worn out." For about four years, she has worn an exoskeleton that helps her carry loads and "extend her arms." Her shoulders haven't hurt since. She describes milking as a time for concentration and for observing the animals, when little is said and the day ahead is thought through. The parlor is equipped with automatic cluster removal. In 2022, the couple built a new barn to improve their working conditions: a moving floor and automatic cleaning.

The accusations of pollution make her "really angry," she says. According to her, producers are constantly inspected, and anyone who doesn't follow the rules is excluded from the industry.

The documentary explains that these investments are possible because milk for Comté sells for 50% more than conventional milk. Marlène considers herself "extremely lucky" to produce this milk, because she doesn't have to worry that her product won't pay. Rigor is still essential. Each cow must have one calf a year in order to produce milk, and Marlène carries out ultrasounds whenever she can. An unproductive cow, she explains, "is money that costs us every day." Yet the couple says they don't want to expand and prefer to keep a family atmosphere.

To turn their raw milk into Comté, Marlène and Nicolas follow the PDO specifications. The milk from the two daily milkings is collected and taken to the fruitière, the producers' cooperative cheese dairy, located 4 km away. Nicolas is its president. The couple follows the making of the wheels there. The previous day's cheeses have just been salted. They will be cared for over ten days before going to the affineur.

The film places this farm in a broader context. For 2026, the industry is forecasting 72,000 tonnes of Comté, which could be a new record. In thirty years, production has more than doubled. Raising cows for Comté accounts for 80% of local agricultural activity. In the Jura Mountains, the cheese is described as a source of pride, a landscape, and a heritage shaped over centuries. Farms are passed down from generation to generation, and entire villages live off the milk processed in the fruitières.

The documentary sums up the heart of the problem this way: more production means more livestock, and therefore more urine and dung. Manure can serve as a natural fertilizer. In excessive quantities, it pollutes the soil and groundwater. The paradox, as the narration puts it, is that what has made it possible to develop the area and save an industry is also helping to weaken it.

On the banks of the Doubs, fishing is presented as a pastime on its way out. An angler who has been coming to the river for some forty years remembers a time when it was "carpeted with fish": trout moved in groups of fifty, grayling in groups of two hundred. Today, seeing a single trout or a school of three or four grayling would make him "really happy." To catch one or two fish, "you have to fight." Some days, you even wonder whether there are any fish left. The outing filmed ends without a catch.

Local anglers all point to the same culprit: Comté. One of them regrets this. In his view, people have come to disparage the cheese, when things should never have come to that.

Patrice is a fishing warden on the Doubs. He spent his childhood on riverbanks. Outraged at seeing poachers fishing out of season, he wanted to be able to step in and work for the rivers. His job consists first of all in checking that anglers follow the regulations. He also describes himself as a "sentinel": he observes problems, records them, and writes reports on them. Faced with pollution, the film explains, he has become a whistleblower.

He points out filamentous algae invading the riverbed and compares the situation to the green algae in Brittany. These algae grow when nitrate and phosphate levels rise. For him, in this area where farming is focused almost entirely on Comté, it is a "direct by-product" of Comté. When he stirs up the bottom, the water turns cloudy: the river looks "more like a sewer," he says, and the sight "makes him sick to his stomach." The algae clog and smother the habitat of small invertebrates. The food chain is broken, and the few fish that survive become ill.

On his phone, Patrice keeps what he calls a "fish graveyard." It shows dead trout with lesions on their heads, blood, and torn skin. He attributes these lesions to a fungus. According to him, the most severe disease outbreaks can now wipe out 70 to 80% of the fish population. He also states that, according to studies, 90% of the nutrients found in the river come from agriculture. He concludes that "something is wrong in agriculture" and that people can no longer "hide behind" this finding.

A few kilometers away, two brothers are trying to reduce the impact of their farm as much as possible. Anaël, 40, took over his father's farm in 2007. His younger brother Quentin, a former agronomy teacher, joined him in 2017. Their philosophy took shape a good ten years ago. They want cows that stay true to the image handed down to them through their upbringing. Their father liked to say that it is the cow that brings out the value of the land. Quentin marvels that it can turn cellulose into a product humans can digest, from grass that has captured CO2 and light to make fiber. "There's nothing more virtuous," he says.

Unlike most farms, they don't plow. The film explains that better-structured soils filter more effectively and limit pollution of deeper water. Their permanent meadows haven't been plowed in more than forty years, which gives them great floral diversity. According to the documentary, the more different flowers a meadow has, the richer and more fragrant the milk, and this varied flora also contributes to the cows' health. The brothers show a plant used for its benefits to the lungs, then salad burnet, "the woodcutter's herb," which they describe as a very powerful hemostatic. They speak of an "animal pharmacy," in quotation marks.

To enrich their soil without polluting, the brothers have been experimenting with biodynamic preparations for the past few years. The process involves packing cow dung into a horn, burying it for six months, and then dissolving its contents in water at a precise temperature before spreading the mixture over the fields. The stated goal is to stimulate plant rooting, soil structure, and the activity of microorganisms.

One of the brothers openly admits he isn't interested in the "why." Others have looked into that, he says, and what interests him is seeing "that there are effects and that it works." They present this practice as a choice made out of passion: a process "that we believe in," a mix of knowledge and fun that makes the job less monotonous than daily milking alone.

The brothers' most radical choice, according to the film, was to deliberately reduce the size of their herd to limit pollution. They say they want to do right by the environment and by future generations. They aren't working only for themselves, they explain, but for the common good, with the idea of leaving behind a model that is sustainable, transferable, and alive. They have opted for organic farming.

Their father, Denis, explains that he wasn't certified organic but was farming "organically without knowing it." When he took over the farm, three generations were working there together, including his great-uncle, and it was "sometimes a bit of a workout." Looking back, he regrets the days spent squabbling over nothing, a tension between generations that he considers common in farming families. He didn't want to repeat it. The sons feel they have found a good compromise: their father "has let go a bit" and lets them get on with it, without being sidelined. Denis says he is proud that they have kept hold of the "thread" that a farm represents, a "taut" thread, because it is fragile.

The brothers don't claim to have all the answers. They say they have doubts every day and sometimes fail. Some mornings, they have considered giving up. Then they think of their ancestors, who lived through wars and famines a hundred years ago and always kept going. They intend to do the same: keep looking for solutions.

Despite the criticism, Marlène and Nicolas remain confident. In the region, Comté accounts for 14,000 direct and indirect jobs. Their two children want to work in the industry. Loris will start at an agricultural high school next year. Faustine, who still has two years of middle school left, would then like to go to the ENIL, the dairy industry school, to become an affineur. She developed a taste for it visiting the aging cellars with her father. Marlène says she will support them whatever they choose, as long as they find fulfillment.

Nicolas, who is heavily involved in the cooperative, makes sure the industry's rules are followed. The documentary states that manure spreading, which is behind some of the pollution, is strictly regulated and that herd size has been capped at 50 cows per farmer. Most members of the cooperative consider these constraints sufficient. They say they are making every necessary effort to stay within the standards. The soil is their working tool, and destroying it would be "signing our own death warrant." They also stress their direct connection to the water: in the village, they drink spring water every day and therefore have no interest in polluting it. Beyond the production rules, they say, they protect this environment for themselves and their families, and always strive to move in the right direction.

The film then introduces a factor that makes the region particularly vulnerable, whatever efforts farmers make. Patrice takes Manon, a member of an environmental association, into an underground cave. There, they explain that the fragility of the environment stems from the karst terrain. Karst is limestone, a soluble rock that dissolves over thousands of years and carves out tunnels underground.

Surface water flows straight through these tunnels to reach the aquifers. If it is loaded with nitrates or phosphates, the pollution reaches the springs without being filtered. The layer of topsoil is very thin: 30 to 40 cm, compared with tens of meters in other regions, according to them. Manon offers a more nuanced view of where the pollution comes from. She prefers to speak of human activity in general, since agricultural pollution mixes with urban and household pollution to form a "cocktail" found at the springs. Her conclusion remains the same: to reduce pollution, at some point the amounts coming in will have to decrease.

She refuses to demonize farmers. No farmer pollutes the river for fun, she says, and their situation is complicated. But the industry needs to understand that, despite its efforts, it remains part of a system "that pollutes, and pollutes too much."

In addition to his job as a fishing warden, Patrice now works part-time with Manon at this association. He acknowledges a tension: as a fishing warden, he should embody the law and not be an activist. But working on a dying river makes him furious. Refusing to sit on his hands and trying to change things means becoming an activist, and he says he accepts that.

At a spring, where the water should be free of pollutants, they run tests. Patrice compares the sample treated with reagent against a neutral sample on a color scale. He estimates nitrates at around fifteen milligrams per liter, compared with a natural background level of about 3 mg/L, or five times higher than normal. Phosphate reaches 0.7, a value deemed "seriously high." With this "nitrate-phosphate combo," the two components of eutrophication, they predict an explosion of green algae in the following weeks. Patrice uses this data to call on local authorities and elected officials to act.

Manon expects to be accused of "agribashing." However, she declines to take a position on solutions, which in her view goes beyond their role. That role is to point out that there is a problem and that farming has an impact on the rivers, which is "already a big deal." The documentary notes that their voices are, for now, barely heard, given how much is at stake economically for the region.

For the past few years, Anaël and Quentin have revived a tradition that seemed forgotten: transhumance. Every spring, they lead their herd up to summer pastures at an altitude of 1,200 m. The film shows the climb with all its ups and downs: the nervousness before setting off, cows in the middle of the road among the cars, the herd splitting up when the whole point is to keep it together, and the difficult coordination between the front and the back. The documentary makes clear that this move isn't folklore. It allows pastures to be rotated and limits soil depletion.

Once at the top, surrounded by family and friends, the brothers declare: "For us, this is what Comté is." The climb represents the culmination of their philosophy. One of them regrets that ecology and human activity are often set against each other, which in his view reflects a lack of understanding of the benefits of certain human activities, though not all of them. These biodiversity-rich meadows and this typical landscape exist thanks to farming. Without it, there wouldn't even be a forest, since the forest is also maintained, but wasteland. Ecology, he concludes, can be the result of "sensible" human activities.

The documentary ends without taking sides. According to its narration, most Comté producers seem to have grasped the scale of the challenges ahead of them. Each, at their own level, will have to strike a balance between economic success and preserving the ecosystem. Whether the industry's current rules are enough remains an open question. The cooperative's farmers believe they are. Patrice and Manon, with measurements to back them up, believe the system still pollutes too much.