Did you know the US has nearly 1.5 billion pounds of cheese stockpiled,
much of it in underground storage facilities, like the Springfield Underground in Missouri?
What would the US government possibly want with all this cheese? Sounds quite nefarious actually,
I bet the cheese is full of crack and the whole thing is part of a
CIA drug smuggling operation - but what's the official explanation?
As one might expect of a story relating to cheese, it starts with milk. During WWII,
much of the world was subject to wartime rationing and food shortages, which lead to growing concern
over the stability of our food supplies. In times of crisis, the markets can become volatile,
with demand and prices fluctuating wildly. This is a problem for things like dairy products - if
the government needs more warplanes it can quickly ramp up production by allocating
more resources to that industry, but if it needs more milk, well, there's kind of a limit on how
quickly you can respond to that. You can't just construct more cows, and you certainly aren't
going to pull any from out of your arse. You have to pull them from out of other
cow's arses, and that process takes a long time. For this reason, dairy can be more severely
battered by fluctuating prices. In the US, the government stepped in to respond to these
concerns, with the 1949 Agricultural Act. Under this act, the government could guarantee a price
on dairy products. So if a dairy farmer couldn't sell his produce on the market, he could sell it
to the government and avoid losing a lot of money. This successfully stabilized the dairy market,
but it meant the Department of Agriculture, the USDA, would have to take on large stocks of dairy.
This is a problem for milk, because it expires as soon as you take your eyes off it. The shelf
life is literally the time it takes for your eyes to move from the milk to something else.
So the milk had to be converted into other forms, like butter or dehydrated milk powder,
or cheese. The USDA would hold onto these stocks until it could sell them for a higher price.
Over the years however, the stocks gradually grew. This became a big problem in the 1970's,
when the US was experiencing skyrocketing inflation. To support the collapsing price
of milk, US President Jimmy Carter promised to aid dairy farmers. This lead to the USDA buying
absurd amounts of dairy products, and created the largest dairy surplus in US history. There
was 560 million pounds of cheese in storage. It was costing them around one million dollars a
day for this. The problem was so bad that a USDA official was quoted as saying the most practical
thing to do would be to dump it in the ocean. As dreadful as that sounds you may be surprised
to learn that didn't actually come to pass. This is one of those rare times where we got the good
outcome. You see, instead of dumping millions of pounds of food into the ocean, someone had the
idea to, just give it away. There were millions of people in need so why not just give them the
cheese? Seems like a more sensible option, which is why it's so surprising they went with that.
Of course not everyone was happy about this. Why? Well, to answer that let's play a little word
association. When I say "American society" what's the first word that comes to your mind? Yeah,
it wasn't empathy. Now in fairness, the bone of contention was that the USDA was supposed to be
supporting the dairy industry, and if they were just giving away dairy products, well,
wouldn't that negatively impact the industry? The answer is "not necessarily" - if you give a wheel
of cheese to a person who's going hungry, it's not like you took away a sale from the industry,
because that person was more than likely never going to buy a wheel of cheese. They'll eat it,
but "wheel of cheese" probably wasn't very high up on their shopping list.
In 1981, US President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Agriculture and Food Act. Any
state that asked for the cheese could receive 30 million pounds, to be given freely to those
in need by nonprofit organizations. And so it was that all across America, those on welfare,
food stamps and social security received the so-called "government cheese" for no
extra charge. Ronald Reagan gave poor communities this free food. Are we sure
there wasn't crack cocaine in this cheese? Many people were happy with the government
cheese, although others disliked the taste. Ungrateful bastards,
"oh you don't like the free cheese, how about the free nothing instead?" God, maybe I'm an American.
In the 90's the dairy market stabilized, and government cheese became a thing of the past.
What's interesting about this is the role the government played in this. Remember the
"Got Milk?" campaign - that was created by Dairy Management Inc. This nonprofit corporation also
partnered with fast-food chains, pushing them to add more cheese to their menus and helping them
with marketing. Examples of this partnership include Pizza Hut's Cheesy Bites pizza,
Wendy's dual Double Melt sandwich concept, and Burger King's Cheesy
Angus Bacon cheeseburger. This turned out to be very successful for these companies,
and lead to massive cheese sales growth. But Dairy Management Inc. wasn't some private
consultancy agency, it was created by the USDA in 1995. The same USDA that was at the center of
the government's anti-obesity push. Remember when Michele Obama was giving out about the
cheeseburgers and the pizzas? The government, and more specifically the USDA was warning about the
dangers of saturated fat, which cheese is high in, and urging a reduce in consumption for the
benefit of the public's health. Meanwhile this government-funded organisation was spending
millions to help fast food restaurants move more cheese - to great success.
That sounds a lot like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I guess
cheese just has that effect on the US Government - I mean it basically turned Ronald fucking Reagan
into a communist. Truly the power of cheese is a mighty one. Today, the USDA is storing about 1.5
billion pounds of cheese. Although it only owns about 300 million pounds of that and the rest
is owned by private companies. Government cheese is still used for food aid in more recent times.
So that's why the US government ended up with all these cheese wheels in underground caves.
Some of it does go to good causes. I imagine a lot of it just goes to waste as it expires
but that's just how government programs work - they're wasteful. But if you lost your house to
an earthquake or something, the government might come around and give you a bit of cheese - so
I guess all in all, the subterranean cheese stockpiles are for the greater good. I mean
it's not the worst thing they're stockpiling. So what do you think about the cheese caves? Yeah,
that's real interesting. Anyways, subscribe to my channel if you liked the video,
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