Why The US Government Has Kept Over 1 Billion Pounds Of Cheese In Missouri Caves For Decades
This stash of cheese is hundreds of feet below ground and has very specific purposes
Except for perhaps the lactose intolerant, cheese is a food that has been traditionally enjoyed by a significant number of people for around 4,000 years. It’s such an important staple of the American diet, along with its heavy impact on the dairy industry, that the United States Government has long kept a massive surplus of cheese on hand. In fact, there is currently around 1.4 billion pounds of fromage being stored in caves in Missouri.
The origins of our great cheese holdings goes back to the 1949 Dairy Product Price Support Program implemented by the USDA. It supported dairy farmers in times when the price of milk dropped by buying up copious amounts at a stable price when the national cost dropped to certain levels. This prevented the milk market from ever having the bottom completely drop out. Once the milk price stabilized, the government would start to sell off its surplus.
The surplus was ultimately largely converted to cheese to help a problem with the Price Support program where the measures that were being taken effectively helped unnaturally contain the price of milk within a certain…
