By Reed Richards
Seven hundred thousand pounds—more than 7 aircraft carriers combined—is an unfathomable amount of weight, but that is how much cheese is stored in converted limestone mines in Kansas City Missouri, being kept at a cool 36 degrees Fahrenheit for maximum longevity. Why are there almost 1.4 billion pounds of American cheese stored deep below the ground? Well, it all starts at the 1970 dairy shortage.
In response to dairy inflation rising by 30%, the government poured money into the dairy industry, spending 2 billion dollars a year subsidizing the dairy industry. In response to this sudden boost in income, dairy farmers began to overproduce dairy in monstrous amounts, knowing that even if they wasted it they would still be paid for their product by the government. Because of this, in the early 1980’s the government owned around 500 million pounds of cheese. But why not milk, you ask? Well, it’s because cheese has a longer shelf life, of course!
Even with this extended shelf life for the millions of dairy products, the cheese was still molding and rotting. Secretary of Agriculture John R Block made a speech with a molding 5 pound block of cheese and said, “We’ve got 60 million of these that the government owns… It’s moldy, it’s deteriorating… We can’t find a market for it, we can’t sell it, and we’re looking to give some of it away.” Thus, government cheese became a thing.
To get rid of the 500 million pounds of cheese, the government began giving it away to food banks and community centers. This government cheese thing became a totem of American culture and is even referenced in a few of Jay-Z (F.U.T.W) and Kendrick Lamar (Money Trees) songs.
Forwarding in time to 2019, we see the government still storing huge amounts of cheese. The amount of cheese reached more than 1.4 billion pounds of cheese this time. Though demand for the cheesy goodness had gone up by around 13% since 2010, an estimated 43 million gallons of milk were being poured into fields, animal feed and lagoons. The problem with this outside of the blatant waste of huge amounts of resources is that a whopping 36% of the American population is lactose intolerant.
It’s a cruel irony that we have 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in limestone mines and 36% of the population can’t eat it.
Due to the surplus of milk and cheese circulating in America, Dairy Management Inc. created the famous “Got milk?” campaign. Along with this, Taco Bell started producing a cheesy crust and double steak quesadillas. Milk was also added to the federal school lunch program. Even Dominos was bailed out after going under by the USFG to keep the Americans eating cheese.
People argue that the money sent to maintain the Cheese Caves would be better spent elsewhere, but the fact that there are caves that exist solely for the storing of billions of pounds of cheese is really funny and of vital knowledge in our daily lives.
beniciapaw.com 