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Family-run for more than a century, this pizzeria makes a unique mustard pie. 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. MALONE: So if you wanted to sell cheese to the government, Bob would show up with this, like, hollow rod called a cheese trier. Youll love exploring this amazing geological wonder. Caves are usually found underground. government cheese caves kansas city - daxasys.com Government cheese arrived at our home in enormous uncut yellow blocks wrapped in white nondescript cardboard. MALONE: And I'm Kenny Malone. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. But milk doesn't store well, so the government bought other dairy products. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the largest domestic reserve of cheese of all varieties, including cheddar, Swiss and American . But the government then actually has to figure out a way to step into this market and make it happen. Like, this is the original bridge to nowhere. Demand for dairy in the U.S. has plummeted 42 percent since 1975, but that hasnt stopped American farmers from producing more and more of it. There is currently about $85 million earmarked to buy dairy and distribute it to places like schools and food banks. Search Query Show Search Podcasts & Shows To get some of that cheese off the market, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $47.1 million buying up roughly 22. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. Like anything you grow up with and then lose subsequently access to, government cheese is parked in a prominent spot in the memories of its former consumers. Well, its called SubTropolis, is owned by Hunt Midwest yes, the same Hunt family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs and is wide enough to hold 42 Arrowhead Stadiums. Theres even a train track winding through the colossal complex, and many, many exit signs. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. At the time, the distillery offered over a hundred products, which were distributed by mail order across the country. You don't do that, huh? Government . Copyright 2018 NPR. On a given day, kids scramble over its playground, neighbors walk their dogs through its green acres, and teens meet for pick-up games on its soccer fields and volleyball courts. The government was buying 1 in every 4 pounds of the country's cheddar cheese. Missouri's cheese caves store more than 7 million pounds of dairy. Here Steven Rodriquez/Flickr Weve written about the 8th Street Tunnel before, and who can blame us? ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue with storing the stuff. You cansign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Moneypodcast. So the thing that the government was concerned about is what's called commercial displacement. The easier solution - maybe - the government could just start buying a ton of milk themselves. SubTropolis - Wikipedia We hope so. Visit a sweet shop selling one of the first candies ever made and sold in America. But this was not putting even a dent in the surplus. KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) A mother is in custody after her two children were found barefoot, dirty, and living in a wooden shipping crate in an underground cave part of a massive subterranean network carved out beneath Kansas City. These days, units are available for business leasing or to store items that would benefit from the particular climate control found underground. So getting people to do it was always a challenge. It's only about a 3-inch-in-diameter hole. Feast Your Eyes: Kraft's Massive Underground Cheese Cave Photo - GOOD Dug into the Bethany Falls limestone mine, SubTropolis is, in places, 160 feet (49m) beneath the surface. Government Cheese: Well-Intentioned Program Goes Off The Rails OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. To see the best of them, embark on this road trip to Missouris best abandoned places. 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. government cheese caves kansas city. You can do something to make demand greater, or you can do something to make supply less. In fact, if you see my shape, you would know that I eat enough to keep the tank full. 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,. There is a. This was generally the approach that we would use to support other kinds of farm industries. Its oddly fascinating! 's homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News. 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. Accuracy and availability may vary. Share your experiences in the comment section below. And while it might take up two stories above the ground, co-owner Heather Hamilton wonders if there are remnants of a tunnel leading out of the basement. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. As recently as August of 2020, the Department of Agriculture announced the Cheese Purchase Program. The government would buy as much milk as it took to move that price. If you havent spent a day wandering the streets of Weston, Missouri, youre missing out. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. MALONE: He and his colleagues are drowning in cheese. According to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the space was once also a limestone mine. Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. So to prevent this, the government said, look - if we're going to buy your cheese, first, you have to meet with Bob. San Francisco is 1 of 3 cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. Born and raised Kansan, Clarisa has lived in both tiny towns and cities during their time here in the Sunflower State. Through the years, Kansas Citians have utilized a number of buried passageways for transportation, illegal (at the time) or otherwise. Syed E. Hasan, a geosciences professor emeritus at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said the "very pure" limestone was ideal for cement production to shore up the city's rapid expansion at that time. government cheese caves kansas city - s208669.gridserver.com Metallic, sour, whey taint, weedy, onion, barny, lipase and sulfide. At one point, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. There are literally train tracks leading into it. 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. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. 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. In Kansas City, One Stubborn Cave Won't Give Up Its Secrets Known as the Springfield Underground, this is a cheese cave of epic proportions covering a . Although other facilities like SubTropolis exist, there are none on the same such scale. MALONE: Again, our dairy economist Andy Novakovic. NOVAKOVIC: So we have, you know, this immense surplus, and now you have the political problem. That number, though, pales in. The caves were largely abandoned after the city's building boom stopped, Hasan said. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Get more stories delivered right to your email. And he started floating this idea. PublishedSeptember 7, 2018 at 7:20 AM CDT. There are so many incredible abandoned businesses in Missouri. By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. The way it melts for a hamburger - there is nothing better. 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. (Shouting) Government cheese. It sounds amazing. MALONE: Today's episode was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Nick Fountain and Rhaina Cohen. MALONE: And so our country has a tradition of programs to help farmers. Stay up to date with what you want to know. 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. 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. Yes, the Government Really Does Stash Billions of Pounds of Cheese in Missouri Caves The USDA has kept cheese and other dairy products in cold-storage caves for decades. Cheese-makers buy more milk. It's deteriorating. The walls themselves are limestone, of course. In the 1990s and early 2000s, even as U.S. nutritionists expressed growing concern about saturated fats and rising obesity levels, a marketing firm created and partially funded by the USDA gave millions to fast-food companies such as Taco Bell and Dominos to push them to increase the amount of cheese on menu items by as much as eightfold. Cheese Caves. : r/tumblr - Reddit Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. MALONE: At one point, Donnie Wahlberg of the New Kids On The Block said, quote, "there's nothing like it. It certainly was on the edge of that. 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. ANDY NOVAKOVIC: Oh, yeah. The government tiptoed back into the cheese business in 2019 when the Trump administration said it was using the CCC program again to provide large subsidies to offset the effects of its trade. Comments on: Yes, the Government Really Does Stash Billions of Pounds That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. We don't do milk quotas - no Lever 1. 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. DUFFIN: It is a case study in what happens when price controls run full speed into the realities of the market. When maple syrup supplies run low, Canada taps into its strategic reserve. Thanks for listening. 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. What is government cheese? Why does the U.S. government have 1.4 NOVAKOVIC: It was pretty hard to predict that it would get as bad as it got. But here is why government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. You've got to be on they special mailing list. 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. The Best List of Caves in Kansas - World of Caves There you go. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. These are the 13 weirdest places you can possibly go in Missouri. In fact, he remembers the exact room it went into. [2], The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70F (18 and 21C) year-round. Then, in the 1970s, everything started to go haywire. ASCHEBROCK: And that's what you grade. The 43,000,000 square feet structure is owned by Americold and is primarily used for food production. MALONE: This must be a common confusion in the industry. This is, you know, important to me. DIRECTIONS: Dissolve the yeast in the hot water and let stand until foamy, about ten minutes. 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 they're like, we need more cheese graders. MALONE: So this leaves a couple of options. Yes, the Government Really Does Stash Billions of Pounds of Cheese in But thats not all that was uncovered. MALONE: Novakovic says the government could have destroyed the cheese. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. 1. About 3.2 acres of available space are added each year as active mining continues. Lets just call it tunnel vision. 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. DUFFIN: And if you're a cheese seller and you hear this - that someone is going to buy your cheese at this high price - you're like, well, I'm going to sell them my crappiest cheese at that price. But their purpose has shifted over the years. MALONE: (Laughter) And you just have a big knife. Using Kansas City's underground caves to age cheese could be boon to region's cheese makers It still didn't seem right but I went ahead and drove into the cave. Sign up for notifications from Insider! This is Dan Callahan. Through our sister company, Cold Zone, we are able to store refrigerated food, such as cheese for our tenants. What would the government do if you drove this into downtown Washington and said, here you go? ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better.