And they go to their bosses. It dates back to a time when farmers were having a tough time in the 1920s and 30s and a growing feeling that the government should help., In the early 1900s, the growing availability of refrigerated transport allowed dairy farmers to sell their product on an unprecedented scale. When the Trump administration decided to pay subsidies to farmers hurt by trade, it reminded NPR's Planet Money podcast team about the time another president tried to help farmers. ASCHEBROCK: Will eat any cheese. Well, we got some real crafty guys that started putting 40-pound blocks of special cheese right under the bunghole. DUFFIN: With a few other programs and some time, things eventually got under control, and the government put the milk support program on a kind of permanent suspension. ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA AND SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). Pour the dissolved yeast into the well and add enough warm water to make a soft dough. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. The government would buy as much milk as it took to move that price. Thank you! In 2003 the Archives opened an underground FRC facility in Lenexa, Kansas. Government agents were in uncharted territory. CARTER: But I am in favor of giving farmers an equal break. The Country Club Plaza. One particularly large pile of it resides in the former limestone quarries underneath Springfield, Missouri, where Kraft Heinz keeps a considerable cache of cheese in these temperature-controlled facilities. 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. Fortunately, the rock here is soft enough to scratch something out without a lot of effort. And Congress is like wait - no, we also love the farmers. [4]. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? NOVAKOVIC: So we have, you know, this immense surplus, and now you have the political problem. 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. Central Plains Regional Archives Moves to Historic Downtown Location Spring 2009, vol. Long situated in a warehouse-style facility far from the major business district of Kansas . To get some of that cheese off the market, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $47.1 million buying up roughly 22. 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. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. Andy Novakovic spent his summers as a kid working on his grandparents' dairy farm in Wisconsin. MALONE: Government cheese became a symbol of a crappy government handout. NOVAKOVIC: So you can imagine, you know, you don't just kind of roll down one of these barrels down Seventh Avenue in New York City and say, anybody want some cheese? The year was 1981, and President Ronald Reagan had a cheese problem. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. (Shouting) Government cheese. NOVAKOVIC: You've got two levers you can pull on. And you can drive your car right into it. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. It is more than a food that. Today on the show, the story of what happened when the president of the United States decided he was going to help America's farmers by buying milk, lots of milk. Have you fallen in love with amateur spelunking? We also suggest picking up a digital hygrometer to measure cheese humidity, whether you're simply storing cheese in your Grotto or having fun with home cheesemaking. No, it isn't money but actually cheese, 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact, stored in a cave in Missouri. The reason why the dairy industry gets such preferential treatment is its status as this uncontested food in the diet, Wiley says. MALONE: The story of government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. A slice of Kraft cheese is going to be less about. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal ASCHEBROCK: Where you do quality checks on it. KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and powerful storytelling. And Andy had a ringside seat to it. 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. You'll receive your first newsletter soon! Lamar Hunt, the late founder of the Kansas City Chiefs, is perhaps the most well-known of the cave developers. Why Did the U.S. Government Amass More Than a Billion Pounds of Cheese? DUFFIN: And this is what people will remember as government cheese because when a government starts to give away hundreds of millions of pounds of cheese, people notice. Andy Novakovic is a dairy economist at Cornell University. You don't do that, huh? It also could have tried to send it overseas as foreign aid, like we do with other surplus commodities. MALONE: I'm Kenny Malone. Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic waystrengthening our bodies to fight the war.. Have you been inside? MALONE: Novakovic says the government could have destroyed the cheese. MALONE: OK. OK. We're not here to make fun of Velveeta. MALONE: And you can taste all of those things in a piece of cheese? Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. NOVAKOVIC: It was pretty hard to predict that it would get as bad as it got. MALONE: The Trump administration announced that in order to help farmers being hurt by Trump's tariffs, the government may be making some food purchases again. Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. To learn more about the best caves in Missouri, read our article here. DUFFIN: OK. ASCHEBROCK: And you insert it in through the block or the barrel or whatever. Want more adventures like this? 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. They believe it was once part of the historic Heim Brewery, whose East Bottoms bottling plant theyd been renovating. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. Just dont forget your pillar number. You can do something to make demand greater, or you can do something to make supply less. Youve heard about the subterranean chamber beneath the land near Worlds of Fun, right? 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.. Government cheese arrived at our home in enormous uncut yellow blocks wrapped in white nondescript cardboard. Heap the flour on your countertop and make a well in the center. However, as the room and pillar mining method continues to be used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, growth of such facilities is quite possible. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. And he tells me, these were never government-owned caves. 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? HOME; INTERIORS; EXTERIORS; OFFICE & PORTRAITS; PUBLICITY/EVENTS; CONSTRUCTION; INFO UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. Some of the cave openings are so big that a big truck can get through them, while others are so tight that it would be challenging even for an earthworm to sneak through. Well, sort of. SubTropolis, a 55 million-square-foot limestone cave which houses a range of businesses underground in Kansas City. Along with Congress, Carter wanted to raise the price of milk 6 cents per gallon and keep raising it with inflation. I was hired as a cheese grader. Do you or does someone you know work at SubTropolis? Like so many things in American public policy, this traces to the New Deal, but actually goes even a little bit before that, says Andrew Novakovi, a professor of Agricultural Economics at Cornell University. San Francisco is 1 of 3 cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese. Add 16 oz of macaroni, or shells to the pressure cooker and enough water to cover the noodles completely. So to prevent this, the government said, look - if we're going to buy your cheese, first, you have to meet with Bob. You could destroy the surplus, but that looks pretty bad. A teeny bit was allowed but not too much. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. How do we - how do we get this cat out of the tree? NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. DUFFIN: More graders grading more cheese that the government then buys. Throw two tbps of butter into a pressure cooker and melt them. But here is why government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. Anyway, the government had its plan in place. And welcome to PLANET MONEY. That was pretty good. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. Farmers also used it to improve soil. All rights reserved. MALONE: Dan says that the cheese took up about half an acre of space. glimpse into the void but a modern-day viewing is near-impossible. So the thing that the government was concerned about is what's called commercial displacement. You need a hacksaw. The third cave is much smaller and contains a natural spring that often sends clean water running over the ground. The cheesy story all started in 1949, when the Agricultural Act of 1949 gave the Commodity Credit Corporation, a government-owned corporation dedicated to stabilizing farm incomes, the authority. Its existence serves as a reminder of Kansas Citys knack for innovative transportation especially as new railways for the streetcar go down all along Main Street. Jimmy Carter was running for president. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. The underground industrial park known as SubTroplis opened for business in 1964 in an excavated mine below Kansas City, Mo., attracting tenants with the lure of lower energy costs and cheap rents . And thus, you won't be flooding anyone's market. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. MALONE: Yeah. According to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the space was once also a limestone mine. And he says the government could not just release a flood of surplus cheese onto the market because it would crush cheese producers. 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. All rights reserved. The massive. Youll want to check out this cool hiking trail that has another cave youre welcome to explore. Lever 2, more demand - you could try to convince the public that they want to drink more milk. Share your experiences in the comment section below. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That's government cheese. Ever wonder what its like to work underground? A cave (also known as a cavern) is a common terrain feature that generates in the Overworld and the Nether. THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MAY 21, 2022, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURAS FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. But that does not mean the government had fixed the problem. 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. The tunnel was complete, though steep, so a new one was built to weave through it at a lower grade. MALONE: Until there was no more room for you to be in this room. Original reels of Hollywood blockbusters "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" are stored in the caves. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. Slice a package of sausages or dice some ham, or both, you do you. And though the world may not imagine Kansas City as big in the underground scene our ever-expanding streetcar system still operates where the sun shines the limestone around these parts was shaped by glaciers and rivers and makes for good mining. The Missouri Penitentiary in Jefferson City is rumored to be riddled with spirits. It was ready to start buying cheese. But I am in favor of giving farmers an equal break. Copyright 2018 NPR. Have you ever explored a cave in Kansas before? MALONE: Many listeners may remember "Saturday Night Live's" Matt Foley, as played by Chris Farley, the world's worst motivational speaker. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase "World's Largest Underground Business Complex." DUFFIN: So much cheese that Bob starts having to spend more and more time on the road because he has to actually go to the cheese to grade it. Have you seen these caves before? Help yourself. If you havent spent a day wandering the streets of Weston, Missouri, youre missing out. Kansas City even has special ordinances that govern the use of underground space, including how the roofs must be supported, and about 3,000 to 4,000 people work full-time in the cave system,. The U.S. has too much cheese 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact. CHRIS FARLEY: (As Matt Foley) I'm here to tell you that you're going to end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river. We are not a government facility, but rather a multi-generational family business . MALONE: He and his colleagues are drowning in cheese. No, it doesnt have to do with the disastrous flooding experienced there in 1903 and 1951. Word is the tunnel sustained water damage, so time will tell if it sees the light of day. With temperatures maintained at 25F and 35F, staff have nicknamed the space the "Ice Cube." 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. Beneath the bar, theres a hollow place in the wall that looks to have been covered up. MALONE: Right. 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.. That is, until last month. In the 2000s, you could still take an official tour and potentially find a way in for a D.I.Y. 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. Winner will be selected at random on 04/01/2023. JIMMY CARTER: Now, although I am a farmer, I'm not in favor of guaranteeing farmers a profit. I mean, it was really, really good product. Government . The government eventually tired of being involved in this . In 1887, J. Rieger & Co. distillers of top-notch whiskey, vodka and gin put down roots in the Livestock Exchange district of West Bottoms. Starting around the 1950s, investors started finding ways to use the abandoned underground space. DUFFIN: Just this week, we finally learned some of the details. Gastro Obscura covers the worlds most wondrous food and drink. 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. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. MALONE: Who's got time for dating when you're traveling around eating cheese everywhere? So they created a brand-new special program to give the cheese away through food banks. Follow us on social media to add even more wonder to your day. Though its more a part of Midtown than Downtown, the space once known as Deans Downtown Underground is definitely down there. Steven Rodriquez/Flickr Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. No purchase necessary. A NASA employee needing an area to test sensitive navigational instruments was among the first official cave occupants. He is now a dairy economist at Cornell University. Kraft Cheese Cave, Springfield. DUFFIN: So the basic question was, what kinds of milk products can the government buy and store? I am currently about 35 feet underground in an old converted limestone mine that is the size of 120 football fields. Ashley Day. is cottonseed oil safe for nut allergy I started in 1967 with the USDA, and I was hired as a cheese grader. A miner from Colorado named Charles Griffee excavated these caves in the 1880s, but the land was later bought by the Faris family. It's going up because the government MALONE: And do you - you hear of it. MALONE: And I'm Kenny Malone. These days, units are available for business leasing or to store items that would benefit from the particular climate control found underground. Basically the dairy industry is looking to expand its market and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is looking to expand the agricultural economy and they become very intertwined., It helped that the burgeoning field of nutrition science promoted dairy products as essential for both adults and children. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. Kenny Malone has the epic tale of government cheese. DUFFIN: Yes, this is a real job. Since 1916, when James Lewis Kraft patented American cheese, the U.S. had the technology to create a cheese product that could last for years. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Humanpodcast. The 55,000 sq ft underground storage facility is the world's largest underground business complex. And then on the other side, the government tried to replace some of their artificial demand for milk with new real demand for milk. MALONE: Again, economist Andy Novakovic. And it took a few years, but a flood of cheese starts to come in. 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. You don't want that? NOVAKOVIC: So the way this program works, literally, is the federal government puts out a piece of paper that says, we will buy as much cheese, butter or nonfat dry milk as you want to sell to us at these prices. SubTroplis is definitely one of the most incredible underground places in Missouri. Food Caves in Missouri SubTropolis, Kansas City. With the economy spiraling, President Jimmy Carter promised to raise the collapsing price of milk, saying, Im giving dairy farmers an equal break., In the late 1970s, when energy prices went crazy and there was this unbelievable period of inflation, things got a little out of control, Novakovi says. Onandaga Cave is one of the most gorgeous underground places in Missouri. This restaurant serves wood-fired fare served in a natural cave with a live spring. Jimmy Carter's campaign promise to help farmers in 1976 not only gave us government cheese but also milk mustaches. Leilas Hair Museum, located in Independence, is one of the most unusual places in Missouri. DUFFIN: But maybe government cheese's most surreal moment came on a television show where Martha Stewart cooks stuff with Snoop Dog. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. 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. Besides those already mentioned, other businesses include Cerner, NextPage, Hallmark Cards, Hantover, Clore Automotive, and Knapheide.