Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. 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. NOVAKOVIC: But 99.9 percent wouldn't have the foggiest clue how to get started. Lever 2, more demand - you could try to convince the public that they want to drink more milk. Do you or does someone you know work at SubTropolis? Either one should get you a higher price. 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. SubTropolis is used by around 50 businesses and organizations, for a variety of purposes. NOVAKOVIC: So we have, you know, this immense surplus, and now you have the political problem. And you turn it, and you pull out a core of cheese. The Campground recently unearthed pieces of the distillerys tile floor as they were renovating their own bar. The air is cool and the barroom massive almost cathedral-like. You'll receive your first newsletter soon! You don't do that, huh? Hunt's extensive business dealings in Clay County contributed to the Chiefs having their NFL Training Camp at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri until 1991. In addition to serving as a records center, Lenexa has two archival cold storage rooms. There was an incredible press conference where Agriculture Secretary John Block went before reporters and held up a giant hunk of cheese like it was a national emergency. This little-known cave area in Kansas is the perfect opportunity to explore something that many Kansans might not have heard of before. ASCHEBROCK: You. AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: The White House is coming to the aid of farmers hurt by its own hard-line trade policies. Sign up for notifications from Insider! And before that, he was a reporter for his friend T.C. MALONE: (Laughter) And you just have a big knife. DUFFIN: It was 1976. 2023 Atlas Obscura. That was pretty good. Yeah. Over in West Bottoms (again), 9th & State operates out of an old Pabst Brewery building on a street once known as the Wettest Block in the World. MALONE: The theory was that if you give cheese away to people who can't afford it, then you're not stealing business from real cheese sellers. [3] The National Archives and Records Administration also leases space for a Federal Records Center. Yet part of this cheese mountain represents an enduring surplusa very literal representation of the dairy industrys mismatch with the realties of the market. Springfield's "cheese caves" aren't natural caves like Fantastic Caverns or Crystal Cave. The Heim family owned property all over Kansas City at the turn of the century, including breweries called Rochester and Imperial, as well as the one in East Bottoms. They believe it was once part of the historic Heim Brewery, whose East Bottoms bottling plant theyd been renovating. Share your experiences in the comment section below. ", (SOUNDBITE OF NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK SONG, "YOU GOT IT (THE RIGHT STUFF)"). Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Working underground is no big deal to me, Peters says in the interview. 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.. There is a. An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. 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. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. DUFFIN: Finding a market for this stuff is in fact a pretty fascinating puzzle because getting rid of government surplus anything is an economically tricky thing. Al and Ralph may have influenced food safety labeling and your pizzas cheese. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. The two larger caves were used by the Faris family as a spring house, generator room and, a schoolhouse as well. 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, Hasan said. The net result of that was overcompensating in using this program to help out farmers, to the point where we wound up creating the most massive dairy surplus in U.S. history.. ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue with storing the stuff. Each week, KCUR's Adventure! Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Humanpodcast. MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. Out of 25 buildings, a whopping 24 were saloons. 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. MALONE: Until there was no more room for you to be in this room? Stay up to date with what you want to know. Deep under Springfield, Missouri, lies a cheese cave of industrial proportions, a 2-million-square-foot refrigerated warehouse called Springfield Underground.Since 2008, Kraft Foods has rented . Sign up for our newsletter and enter to win the second edition of our book. MALONE: When we have a surplus of grain or soy or even powdered milk, we can send that stuff overseas as part of foreign aid. Have you seen these caves before? You took away my customers. MALONE: Yeah. Even after the demand for dairy declined in the wake of World War II, the program functioned reasonably well for years. Myths surround the cave, as they do with many of Missouri's caverns. History is a mystery. The best hidden gems and little known destinations - straight to your inbox. The cheese was processed and made into 2 and 5 pound bricks and given away as food aid to the poor of America. You could destroy the surplus, but that looks pretty bad. In addition, the Federal Government will spend $40 million to $50 million this year to transport even more dairy . DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. Have you fallen in love with amateur spelunking? ASCHEBROCK: Will eat any cheese. 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. In 2003 the Archives opened an underground FRC facility in Lenexa, Kansas. DUFFIN: Hello. It can fit a train car. It was created by digging into the Bethany Falls limestone mine and is, in places, 160 feet beneath the surface. We're highlighting some of the wonders inside. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal ASCHEBROCK: Where you do quality checks on it. warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. He is now a dairy economist at Cornell University. [2], The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70F (18 and 21C) year-round. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. In the 2000s, you could still take an official tour and potentially find a way in for a D.I.Y. Born from tragedy, the remote national park is bringing tourism and other changes. It's going up because the government MALONE: And do you - you hear of it. It was - some of it almost taste like natural cheddar. MALONE: At one point, Donnie Wahlberg of the New Kids On The Block said, quote, "there's nothing like it. We can't find a market for it. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase "World's Largest Underground Business Complex." KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: The year was 1977. You wont be bored on this one-of-a-kind road trip! That was pretty good. Government . A large portion is also owned by companies, who . Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus. Last year, the U.S. produced nearly 12 billion pounds of cheese -- an all-time high, according to the USDA. You just have to follow us on Instagram. THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MAY 21, 2022, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURAS FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. While the popular cheese has changed a lot since then, from access limited to royalty in 1625 to the confinement of "government cheddar" during World War II, the caves are constant . MALONE: This is one of those slow-moving train wrecks that you can see coming from a mile away. Accuracy and availability may vary. MALONE: The story of government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. Today, the National Archives has four underground facilities. At one point, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. Rather, the "caves" are part of a 3.2-million-square-foot warehouse under part of Springfield.. 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. Have you ever explored a cave in Kansas before? MALONE: I'm Kenny Malone. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. As a busy mother of one crazy kid, two cats, and two geckos, they write whenever there is spare time. MALONE: Andy is still in the dairy world. MALONE: Karen's doing the dance. Thank you! By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. The surplus dairy products now in storage have a market value of $3 billion. To get some of that cheese off the market, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $47.1 million buying up roughly 22. Cheese-makers buy more milk. I'm Karen Duffin. NOVAKOVIC: So it's fundamental economics. Just dont forget your pillar number. We walk inside. Who knows? The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the worlds largest site of its kind. DUFFIN: But the problem, Andy says, was that a lot of this was not easy-to-give-away cheese. NOVAKOVIC: (Laughter) Well, that was the unintended consequence that was fun, but the bite came in terms of how much it cost for that opportunity. DUFFIN: OK. By Emily Baron Cadloff Global Research, May 30, 2022 Modern Farmer 25 May 2022 Region: USA Theme: Global Economy Along with Congress, Carter wanted to raise the price of milk 6 cents per gallon and keep raising it with inflation. But the bite came in terms of how much it cost for that opportunity. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. The federal government has been storing paperwork in these caves for nearly 25 years. During the 1980s, the U.S. government managed to offload its cheese stash. Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. Known for its hiking trails (with Missouri River views), wineries and the McCormick distillery, Weston is also home to OMalleys, the oldest bar in Missouri. What is cave cheese? As we unloaded the caves full of this stuff, government cheese started to show up everywhere - food banks and schools, military mess halls. Lamar Hunt, the late founder of the Kansas City Chiefs, is perhaps the most well-known of the cave developers. ASCHEBROCK: And you insert it in through the block or the barrel or whatever. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. But remember; the raw ingredients were grade A cheddar cheese, some of it personally certified by Bob Aschebrock. DUFFIN: The thing about price controls is that once you start them, they are really, really hard to unwind. U.S. skyrocketed from 5.5 percent up to 14 percent, Im giving dairy farmers an equal break., boost cheese sales by more than 30 million pounds, 43 million gallons of milk down the drain, $20 million worth of cheese to cut the glut, 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in cold storage, currently has 7 million pounds of raw product, Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. Government cheese is processed cheese provided to welfare beneficiaries Food Stamp recipients and the elderly receiving Social Security in the United States as well as to food banks. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. Central Plains Regional Archives Moves to Historic Downtown Location Spring 2009, vol. In 1887, J. Rieger & Co. distillers of top-notch whiskey, vodka and gin put down roots in the Livestock Exchange district of West Bottoms. And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese. 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.. This is, you know, important to me. This was generally the approach that we would use to support other kinds of farm industries. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. G. DEP: (Rapping) Can't buy trees with government cheese. India and Bhutan's yak herders face steep challenges. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). The brick structure 9th & State calls home is one of a few left standing since those raucous Paris of the Plains days. Roanoke Cave . JUNOT DIAZ: Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. Unlike corn or wheat, however, milk needed to be converted into more shelf-stable forms, specifically butter, dehydrated skim milk powder, and cheese. 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. Cave cheese is any cheese that is ripened within a cave or cave-like environment, where consistently low temperatures and high levels of humidity are perfect for supporting the chemical reactions that take place in the cheese aging process. MALONE: One part of the solution then was to gently get that milk supply down. DUFFIN: This is a basic supply-and-demand problem. If you loved visiting this stunning spot, take a trip to Fisher Cave in Meramec State Park. 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. And it's the most government packaging you will ever see - just, like, brown cardboard, some black USDA stamps on it. Youll love exploring this amazing geological wonder. The third cave is much smaller and contains a natural spring that often sends clean water running over the ground. 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. So these days, if the government wants to help farmers, what you'll generally hear about are direct subsidies as opposed to buying cheese. Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. And welcome to PLANET MONEY. Family-run for more than a century, this pizzeria makes a unique mustard pie. Oh, boy - here we go. And to be fair, it was processed cheese kind of like a brick of Velveeta. At the time, the distillery offered over a hundred products, which were distributed by mail order across the country. 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. And they're like, we need more cheese graders. But every instinct I had said, oh, this - I'm not so sure this is going to work out so well. And the United States Postal Service's Philatelic Sales Divison, the national distribution center for . A native Midwesterner with a love for family, friends, and learning new things. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Currently, more than 7,300,000 square feet (680,000m2) is occupied and 6,700,000 square feet (620,000m2) are available for future expansion. We literally paid them money to stop producing milk. The cheese came in handy for Ronald Reagan's "government cheese" program, which released 30 million pounds of the lactose-laden dairy product (paywall) to any state that applied. 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. Why Did the U.S. Government Amass More Than a Billion Pounds of Cheese? On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. To do so, however, required a serious upfront investment. MALONE: Again, our dairy economist Andy Novakovic. MALONE: By this point, Jimmy Carter was out of office. However, when Prohibition was enacted in 1919 via the 18th Amendment, the alcohol purveyor shut its doors. DUFFIN: And when news gets out that the government is filling a cave with cheese, the press goes nuts because this is exactly what people think of when they think of a government program gone awry.