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Government cheese arrived at our home in enormous uncut yellow blocks wrapped in white nondescript cardboard. But this is what gave us, you know, the got milk and the milk mustache and all those kind of iconic programs that we remember. The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. No? MALONE: But this is America. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That's government cheese. G. DEP: (Rapping) Can't buy trees with government cheese. Fortunately, the rock here is soft enough to scratch something out without a lot of effort. Yet part of this cheese mountain represents an enduring surplusa very literal representation of the dairy industrys mismatch with the realties of the market. MALONE: Yeah. MALONE: And I'm Kenny Malone. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. But that does not mean the government had fixed the problem. The USDA helped "cut the glut" then by purchasing $20 million worth of fresh cheese. MALONE: And so our country has a tradition of programs to help farmers. To get some of that cheese off the market, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $47.1 million buying up roughly 22. Callahan says it took up about a half an acre of space. MALONE: Are you pretty annoying to eat cheese with? How we got to this point is a long story, and it starts during a national dairy shortage in the 1970s. And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. Youll want to check out this cool hiking trail that has another cave youre welcome to explore. I'm Karen Duffin. The second lesson is you got to pay attention to the unintended consequences because they can come back and bite you and bite you hard. MALONE: Yes. Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. Back in 2018, The New York Times did a profile on Gene Peters, chief executive of Rosnet, a restaurant software company out of Parkville, Missouri. It was built by a German immigrant named John Georgian, who instead of relying on those trusty limestone caves weve come to know and love dug out his own brewery space beneath Weston. Word is the tunnel sustained water damage, so time will tell if it sees the light of day. But what Andy Novakovic knew is that it's one thing to provide stability, it is another to step into the market in a big way at maybe the wrong time because playing with price controls is playing with fire. MALONE: That did some good. And as the historic structure theyd purchased was being repaired, Andy Rieger and crew found an eight-foot high, 400-foot-long tunnel beneath it. ASCHEBROCK: There is a bung - what they call a bunghole up on the top. JUNOT DIAZ: Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. In a blog post by writer Libbie Bond, the Deans are described as among the first in America to visualize abandoned mines as commercial real estate.. Have you been inside? DUFFIN: But that does not work for milk because milk starts going bad the minute it comes out of the cow. And they're like, we need more cheese graders. The best hidden gems and little known destinations - straight to your inbox. The Campground recently unearthed pieces of the distillerys tile floor as they were renovating their own bar. Springfield Underground, an Erlen Group Company is a commercial industrial park with the advantage of underground storage. Cheese Caves Myth: Debunked. These limestone caverns arent the only channels running under the city. According to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the space was once also a limestone mine. Jimmy Carter was running for president. (Shouting) Government cheese. Layer by Layer: A Mexico City Culinary Adventure, Sacred Granaries, Kasbahs and Feasts in Morocco, Monster of the Month: The Hopkinsville Goblins, Writing the Food Memoir: A Workshop With Gina Rae La Cerva, Reading the Urban Landscape With Annie Novak, How to Grow a Dye Garden With Aaron Sanders Head, Making Scents: Experimental Perfumery With Saskia Wilson-Brown, Indigenous Desserts of Turtle Island With Mariah Gladstone, University of Massachusetts Entomology Collection, The Frozen Banana Stands of Balboa Island, The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earths History, How Communities Are Uncovering Untold Black Histories, The Medieval Thieves Who Used Cats, Apes, and Turtles as Accomplices, THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MAY 21, 2022, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURAS FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. So just wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling CALLAHAN: Floor to ceiling, and then as you kept filling it, you just worked your way right back out. MALONE: This is one of those slow-moving train wrecks that you can see coming from a mile away. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese. The walls themselves are limestone, of course. The federal government has been storing paperwork in these caves for nearly 25 years. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. YOU CAN, Argentina's El Impenetrable Opens Up New Options For Its People, How Laos Got Its First Buffalo Dairy Farm, How the Capones Strong-Armed Their Way Into the Dairy Business, The French Art of Cheese-Label Collecting, The Last Cheesemakers of the Eastern Himalayas, Show & Tell: Inside a House of Hot Sauce With Vic Clinco, The Secret to China's Bounciest Meatballs. Deep in converted limestone mines, caves kept perfectly at 36 degrees Fahrenheit store stockpiles of government-owned cheese comprising the country's 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese. Posted on June 8, 2022 ; in pete davidson first snl episode; by At the time, the distillery offered over a hundred products, which were distributed by mail order across the country. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. The Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. The government would buy as much milk as it took to move that price. In addition, the Federal Government will spend $40 million to $50 million this year to transport even more dairy . JIMMY CARTER: Now, although I am a farmer, I'm not in favor of guaranteeing farmers a profit. DUFFIN: Finding a market for this stuff is in fact a pretty fascinating puzzle because getting rid of government surplus anything is an economically tricky thing. Westons downtown district was established in 1837, so theres a lot of history here. (SOUNDBITE OF DROP ELECTRIC SONG, "WAKING UP TO THE FIRE"). MALONE: So instead, the cheddar cheese was processed - that helps it keep longer - and then it was repackaged in two and five-pound, like, bricks. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal thing ASCHEBROCK: Not - no, no, no. As the room and pillar mining method is used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, many companies are looking at ways to utilize the hundreds of millions of square feet created in this manner for everything from mushroom farming to crude oil stockpiling. Copyright 2018 NPR. The caves were largely abandoned after the city's building boom stopped, Hasan said. In 1949, the Agricultural Act first gave the Commodity Credit Corporation, a government-owned agency created to stabilize farm incomes, authority to purchase dairy products. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. And Andy had a ringside seat to it. Even after the demand for dairy declined in the wake of World War II, the program functioned reasonably well for years. allegiant flights from sioux falls to mesa az; missouri cheese caves wikipedia. Through the years, Kansas Citians have utilized a number of buried passageways for transportation, illegal (at the time) or otherwise. By: Anne D Springfield and Kansas City are not even near each other, and 435 is no where near Springfield, this article is quite confusing. MALONE: Andy is still in the dairy world. ASCHEBROCK: It was 10 times better than - I hate - you know, Velveeta is OK. DUFFIN: Or you can try to get your surplus goods to people who were not going to buy it anyway. Probably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean., Instead, they decided to jettison 30 million pounds of it into welfare programs and school lunches through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. DUFFIN: But the problem, Andy says, was that a lot of this was not easy-to-give-away cheese. DUFFIN: Just this week, we finally learned some of the details. DUFFIN: It was 1976. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. Ashley Day. Over the years, the industry has found all sorts of ways to get rid of its excess supplysome more insidious than others. MALONE: The government asked economists, including Andy Novakovic, to figure out how it could get out of the cheese buying business without devastating the farmers they were trying to help in the first place. But thats not all that was uncovered. No purchase necessary. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. In second-stage of career life, this former college instructor enjoys contributing to OIYS, blogging, reading, and spending time with her kids. It's deteriorating. That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. The main brewing cellar, now outfitted with seating areas, a bar and raised stage, reaches 55 feet underground. KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and powerful storytelling. That number, though, pales in. The Trump administration says today it will make an estimated $12 billion in government assistance available. Cave Tours Missouri, long known as the "Cave State," has almost 6,400 caves, and Missouri State Parks showcases four of the best for public tours. A slice of Kraft cheese is going to be less about. There are so many incredible abandoned businesses in Missouri. According to USDA statistics, the average American eats 34.1 pounds of cheese every year and is projected to eat 36.5 pounds by 2024. Then, in the 1970s, everything started to go haywire. MALONE: When we have a surplus of grain or soy or even powdered milk, we can send that stuff overseas as part of foreign aid. MALONE: This must be a common confusion in the industry. AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: The White House is coming to the aid of farmers hurt by its own hard-line trade policies. Its first FRC opened in 1997 beneath Lee's Summit, and another opened in 2003 under Lenexa. During the 1980s, the U.S. government managed to offload its cheese stash. If you havent spent a day wandering the streets of Weston, Missouri, youre missing out. Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic waystrengthening our bodies to fight the war.. Embark on a wonderful cave tour and learn all about its history. Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. We've got 60 million of these that the government owns with mold. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. We are not a government facility, but rather a multi-generational family business . MALONE: He and his colleagues are drowning in cheese. China props up pork prices by buying surplus for its frozen pork reserve. I get in my car in my garage at home and drive underground here, so its all temperature controlled. SubTropolis is a 55,000,000-square-foot (5,100,000 m 2), 1,100-acre (4.5 km 2) artificial cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, that is claimed to be the world's largest underground storage facility.Developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., it has trademarked the phrase World's Largest . Turns out, cave living is naturally energy efficient. All rights reserved. Cave cheese is any cheese that is ripened within a cave or cave-like environment, where consistently low temperatures and high levels of humidity are perfect for supporting the chemical reactions that take place in the cheese aging process. And welcome to PLANET MONEY. With the onset of wartime rationing and shortages leading into the Second World War, there were growing fears about the long-term stability of the United States food supply. USCIS opened its National Records Center in a cave in Lee's Summit, Missouri, in 1999. MALONE: Many listeners may remember "Saturday Night Live's" Matt Foley, as played by Chris Farley, the world's worst motivational speaker. Sign up for KCUR's Creative Adventure Email, Kansas City's new airport terminal carries on the legacy of a 10-year-old who fought for inclusivity, Want to explore Waldo? The government was demanding an unnatural amount of milk and so farmers were supplying an unnatural amount of milk. glimpse into the void but a modern-day viewing is near-impossible. MALONE: Dan Callahan worked here in the 1970s and says one day, the U.S. government rented a ton of cave space, and a ton of cheddar cheese started to show up. One of the efforts was to establish a program by which the government would guarantee a price on a handful of agricultural commodities to encourage production.. NOVAKOVIC: We took a small amount of money from every dairy farmer, collected on every pound of milk they sold, and we created the National Dairy Board. It also could have tried to send it overseas as foreign aid, like we do with other surplus commodities. as well as other partner offers and accept our, http://eapcontent.ap.org/jpg/2015/20150914/16/be46cf305fa20029820f6a70670013cf.jpg?contentid=be46cf305fa20029820f6a70670013cf/fmt=jpg/role=Preview/reldt=2015-09-14T16:35:59/media=Photo/recordid=a772a7d9f93f488487ec5a05e64f976a/itemid=a772a7d9f93f488487ec5a05e64f976a/objfilename=preview.jpg/authToken=eNotikEKwyAURE%2bkzNf4NQuhV4lWwUVj0Ei78PC10FnM48Gb6eNZG%2bsIO4OwRg4zFh%2fSxjFrCJMPJQC1C6eQBR8WbFemY56j%2b1jPu5Uw7tr6I4xeztTX9fJMTcb6mtfb%2f5UMZrk8b5LAkn4k8wXMhif%2b&token=1442512801_9D4E1758BD6D116C2F559647389B3542, NOW WATCH: Incredible video inside Hang Son Doong the largest cave in the world. MALONE: Dan says that the cheese took up about half an acre of space. At a time when American families are under increasing financial pressure, their Government cannot sit by and watch millions of pounds of food turn into waste, Reagan said in a written statement. Although there are around 1.4 billion pounds of excess cheese in the form of large wheels kept in cold storage limestone caves hundreds of feet below the ground outside of Springfield, Missouri just off Interstate 435, it is not all controlled by the government (only about 300 million pounds). Government cheese, as the orange blocks of commodity cheese came to be called, wasnt exactly popular with all of its recipients. Oh, boy - here we go. The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the world's largest site of its kind. The program is meant to "purchase Mozzarella, Process and Natural American Cheddar Cheese for the National School Lunch Program and other Federal food nutrition assistance programs." And in order to do this, they have to be willing to buy all of the cheese that anybody wants to sell them at this price. Since that requires capital, the dairy industry starts consolidating, says Andrea Wiley, author of Re-Imagining Milk. DUFFIN: Like, hey, people of America, wouldn't you like to drink more milk? And they go to their bosses. Offer subject to change without notice. . You'll receive your first newsletter soon! And there are 17 flavor defects that could happen in cheddar cheese. NOVAKOVIC: (Laughter) That was the unintended consequence that was fun. NOVAKOVIC: One is it's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. Other facilities like SubTropolis exist although not on the same scale, such as the abandoned mine in Butler, Pennsylvania used by Corbis and the US Federal Government for secure storage. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus milk and turning it into processed commodity cheesehad backfired, hard. Kraft Cheese Cave, Springfield. If you loved visiting this stunning spot, take a trip to Fisher Cave in Meramec State Park. Out of 25 buildings, a whopping 24 were saloons. Help yourself. The Cheese Grotto isn't just about cheese storageit also allows you to age cheese at home. San Francisco is one of three cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. Kenny Malone hails from Meadville, PA where the zipper was invented, where Clark Gables mother is buried and where, in 2007, a wrecking ball broke free from a construction site, rolled down North Main Street and somehow wound up inside the trunk of a Ford Taurus sitting at a red light. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. Although other facilities like SubTropolis exist, there are none on the same such scale. There were 40-pound blocks and 500-pound barrels. Posted on June 16, 2022 by June 16, 2022 by Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Kenny Malone has the epic tale of government cheese. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. honolulu police department records; spiritual meaning of the name ashley; mississippi election results 2021; charlie spring and nick nelson What is cave cheese? For example, the United States Postal Service uses the space for its collectible stamp operations, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency leases spaces within for their Region-7 Training and Logistics Center. An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. 2023 Atlas Obscura. That is, until last month. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. In fact, if you see my shape, you would know that I eat enough to keep the tank full. More Info Directions. A native Midwesterner with a love for family, friends, and learning new things. The Dairy Farmers of America, which has been using the facility, known as the Springfield Underground, for more than 30 years, currently has 7 million pounds of raw product.Some of this is normal inventory storage or cheese being aged. Starting around the 1950s, investors started finding ways to use the abandoned underground space. The USDA has a large presence in Kansas City, Missouri, and when it found itself with millions of pounds of surplus dairy and needed a safe, climate-controlled place to put it all, it started to search locally. ASCHEBROCK: Well, I think cheese eating is better than dating sometimes. DUFFIN: This is a basic supply-and-demand problem. Thanks for listening. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Emily Standlee is a freelance writer at KCUR and a national award-winning essayist. Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. The guaranteed milk price, which had been going up automatically every six months, was eventually frozen. One of Kansas City's best-loved parks is home to a secret cave No one knows why the cave in Roanoke Park was walled offor why, after decades, it opened last month. ASCHEBROCK: You. NOVAKOVIC: It's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. That was pretty good. Gastro Obscura covers the worlds most wondrous food and drink. The surplus dairy products now in storage have a market value of $3 billion. Slice a package of sausages or dice some ham, or both, you do you. Anyway, the government had its plan in place. NOVAKOVIC: To persuade farmers to produce less. Sign up for notifications from Insider! But cheese doesn't travel well, so the government landed on a third option. 41, no. MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. MALONE: One of the ways Carter proposed giving farmers an equal break was to raise the price of milk by about 6 cents per gallon, which was kind of a lot at the time. DUFFIN: The thing about price controls is that once you start them, they are really, really hard to unwind. The air is cool and the barroom massive almost cathedral-like. DUFFIN: Nevertheless, when Carter got elected, he goes all in. And in order to do. KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and powerful storytelling. MALONE: Who's got time for dating when you're traveling around eating cheese everywhere? MALONE: By this point, Jimmy Carter was out of office. 's homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News. Which makes for a thriving underground business community, as unnerving as a giant hole in the side of a bluff may be. SNOOP DOGG: You don't buy it. The way it melts for a hamburger - there is nothing better. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. The same year, the USDA bought up $20 million worth of cheese to cut the glut. MALONE: So it's 1977. Oh, yeah. The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70 F year-round, making it a great space for a lot of different types of businesses. Developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., it has trademarked the phrase World's Largest Underground Business Complex. The Federal Government stores tons of surplus cheese and other dairy products in the mines. Kansas City, MO 64112. In the 1940s, there was a real concern that we were going to have a hard time keeping up with providing the necessities of life, Novakovi says. But the government then actually has to figure out a way to step into this market and make it happen. San Francisco is 1 of 3 cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. And it took a few years, but a flood of cheese starts to come in. Missouri has more than 7,000 caves under its ground, though fewer than 20 are easily accessible to most people. CARTER: But I am in favor of giving farmers an equal break. There's a lot of history buried beneath Kansas City streets, from Prohibition-era passageways and underground caves to the oldest bar in Missouri. Roanoke Cave . does st martin parish have school tomorrow. ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue with storing the stuff. Heap the flour on your countertop and make a well in the center. Known as the Springfield Underground, this is a cheese cave of epic proportions covering a . This video is private Watch on There are several other cave warehouse locations in the U.S., including one in Bonner Springs, Kansas, Springfield, Missouri, and the the SubTropolis underground complex located in northeastern Kansas City, Missouri. And as of March 31, the U.S. still has 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in cold storageonly now its owned by private companies. Besides those already mentioned, other businesses include Cerner, NextPage, Hallmark Cards, Hantover, Clore Automotive, and Knapheide. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase Worlds Largest Underground Business Complex. It was developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc. Read on to learn more about the largest underground business complex in Missouri. So the government gave a bunch to schools, then to the Army. MALONE: One part of the solution then was to gently get that milk supply down. Back in the 1880s, after a year of toiling through the bluffs dividing Downtown from West Bottoms, rapid transit pioneer Robert Gillham and a team of workers managed to push the last underground bricks into place. Kraft Foods, the multinational conglomerate that makes countless grocery products in addition to cheese, is about none of that, however. (SOUNDBITE OF FREDERIC AUGER'S "SUNBURN"). SubTropolis is used by around 50 businesses and organizations, for a variety of purposes. As a Louisiana foodie, all I know about the topic is that if anyone got t heir hands on government cheese, it was a celebration, because it was so tasty.!! MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. NOVAKOVIC: As you can imagine, the cheese company that's in the business of selling cheese is going to say - hey, what's the deal here? To do so, however, required a serious upfront investment. It's got its flaws. Many companies are looking at ways to utilize the hundreds of millions of square feet created in this manner for everything from mushroom farming to crude oil stockpiling. MALONE: Today's episode was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Nick Fountain and Rhaina Cohen. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. And he tells me, these were never government-owned caves. So these days, if the government wants to help farmers, what you'll generally hear about are direct subsidies as opposed to buying cheese. Like, are you the most picky cheese-eater in your group of friends? In 1976, Jimmy Carter got on a stage and said something seemingly innocuous. Have you fallen in love with amateur spelunking? Born from tragedy, the remote national park is bringing tourism and other changes. So just wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling CALLAHAN: Floor-to-ceiling - and then as you kept filling it, you just worked your way right back out. MALONE: Again, our dairy economist Andy Novakovic. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. MALONE: The idea was that if you give this food to people who suffer from food insecurity, then maybe it is going to go to somebody who wasn't going to buy cheese anyway so you're not hurting the market as much.