MALONE: Bob Aschebrock was one of the government's cheese graders. An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. Want more adventures like this? Makes sense, considering the natural limestone ledge bordering the river. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. That is, until last month. It was a big enough number that it sounded like one of these campaign promises that you really didn't expect they would actually fulfill. It doesn't take long to see the three caves, but once you're here, you'll spend a long time looking and exploring. (Shouting) Government cheese. Its more than a hobby, its a passion.. ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. DUFFIN: After the break - how the government finally got out of this mess and why the government may be getting back into the cheese game. So the thing that the government was concerned about is what's called commercial displacement. Westons downtown district was established in 1837, so theres a lot of history here. No purchase necessary. 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 you turn it, and you pull out a core of cheese. Today, the National Archives has four underground facilities. MALONE: This is one of those slow-moving train wrecks that you can see coming from a mile away. MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. So the clever folks at USDA said, what if we went down the supply chain one step NOVAKOVIC: And looked at dairy products that are storable? Very, very expensive cheese. Sign up for KCUR's Creative Adventure Email. MALONE: OK. OK. We're not here to make fun of Velveeta. The year was 1981, and President Ronald Reagan had a cheese problem. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. When Hamilton and partner Sean Smith purchased the property in 2021, they also found a locked safe and penny tile beneath green carpeting. The reason why the dairy industry gets such preferential treatment is its status as this uncontested food in the diet, Wiley says. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? 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. Search Query Show Search Podcasts & Shows In 1949, the Agricultural Act first gave the Commodity Credit Corporation, a government-owned agency created to stabilize farm incomes, authority to purchase dairy products. NOVAKOVIC: So it's fundamental economics. ASCHEBROCK: You. Callahan says it took up about a half an acre of space. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus. 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. We've got 60 million of these that the government owns with mold. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. 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. MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. "Kansas City is a world leader in the use of underground space for human occupancy," he said. 4701 Wyandotte Street. Roanoke Cave . sign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. But cheese doesn't travel well, so the government landed on a third option. MALONE: The story of government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. But that does not mean the government had fixed the problem. He's been working here since the 1970s, since the cheese debacle. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. Nevertheless, dairy surpluses still very much exist. A teeny bit was allowed but not too much. This area is also a great place to go hiking, camping, and fishing. Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. Andy Novakovic is a dairy economist at Cornell University. MALONE: So to raise the price of milk, the government basically opened up the world's largest cheese shop - you know, and powdered milk and butter, too. Long situated in a warehouse-style facility far from the major business district of Kansas . By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. I am in an old, converted limestone mine. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. Have you been inside? MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. NOVAKOVIC: To persuade farmers to produce less. Government cheese arrived at our home in enormous uncut yellow blocks wrapped in white nondescript cardboard. 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. Here's a few you should know, A guide to discovering Kansas City's public art installations. And in order to do. Uncover the finest, most undercover experiences in Kansas City. MALONE: Today's episode was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Nick Fountain and Rhaina Cohen. The government eventually tired of being involved in this . 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. MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese? But there is a chance that the government may be in the business of government cheese again. DUFFIN: Like, hey, people of America, wouldn't you like to drink more milk? And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese. Through our sister company, Cold Zone, we are able to store refrigerated food, such as cheese for our tenants. I was hired as a cheese grader. Born from tragedy, the remote national park is bringing tourism and other changes. MALONE: You can see pictures of the cheese cave. Over the years, the industry has found all sorts of ways to get rid of its excess supplysome more insidious than others. During the 1980s, the U.S. government managed to offload its cheese stash. 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. Anyway, the government had its plan in place. 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. Leilas Hair Museum, located in Independence, is one of the most unusual places in Missouri. Beneath the bar, theres a hollow place in the wall that looks to have been covered up. Government agents were in uncharted territory. 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. But thats not all that was uncovered. I can tell you what we had to reject it for - flat, bitter, yeasty, malty, old milk, fruity MALONE: That sounds lovely. I mean, there was all kinds of tricks that you - that we had to be looking for. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. 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. ASCHEBROCK: Well, I think cheese eating is better than dating sometimes. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the largest domestic reserve of cheese of all varieties, including cheddar, Swiss and American . The new iteration of J. Rieger & Co. and what would become a tasting room, lounge, speakeasy and outdoor beer garden began taking shape in 2014. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. honolulu police department records; spiritual meaning of the name ashley; mississippi election results 2021; charlie spring and nick nelson 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. MALONE: Bob says the No. 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. NOVAKOVIC: So we have, you know, this immense surplus, and now you have the political problem. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase "World's Largest Underground Business Complex." Its at the same park! But one day, the government rented out a ton of cave space, and then cheddar cheese started to show up, massive blocks of the stuff, pallet after pallet. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. MALONE: (Laughter) And you just have a big knife. MALONE: And so our country has a tradition of programs to help farmers. DUFFIN: But maybe government cheese's most surreal moment came on a television show where Martha Stewart cooks stuff with Snoop Dog. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. MALONE: So instead, the cheddar cheese was processed - that helps it keep longer - and then it was repackaged in two and five-pound, like, bricks. Original reels of Hollywood blockbusters "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" are stored in the caves. And then on the other side, the government tried to replace some of their artificial demand for milk with new real demand for milk. Currently, more than 6,000,000 square feet (560,000 m2) is occupied and 8,000,000 square feet (740,000 m2) are available for future expansion. MALONE: The government cheese caves started to empty out. And they're like, we need more cheese graders. Missouri's caves can . Copyright 2018 NPR. Are there any fascinating abandoned buildings in Missouri? ANDY NOVAKOVIC: Oh, yeah. The walls themselves are limestone, of course. 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. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. How do we - how do we get this cat out of the tree? Love Missouri? 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. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Humanpodcast. 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. And Andy had a ringside seat to it. MALONE: Many listeners may remember "Saturday Night Live's" Matt Foley, as played by Chris Farley, the world's worst motivational speaker. This is Dan Callahan. Since that requires capital, the dairy industry starts consolidating, says Andrea Wiley, author of Re-Imagining Milk. 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. That number, though, pales in. NOVAKOVIC: Exactly. So getting people to do it was always a challenge. Developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., it has trademarked the phrase World's Largest Underground Business Complex. MALONE: That did some good. And as the historic structure theyd purchased was being repaired, Andy Rieger and crew found an eight-foot high, 400-foot-long tunnel beneath it. DUFFIN: By the early 1980s, the dairy support program was costing taxpayers around $2 billion a year. glimpse into the void but a modern-day viewing is near-impossible. Blackwell Motors showcases a variety of fiberglass animals, and people come from all around just to see them. Have you seen these caves before? Like SubTropolis, the strangely sterile space is separated by humungous numbered pillars. The massive. MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. 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. To see the best of them, embark on this road trip to Missouris best abandoned places. 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. About 3.2 acres of available space are added each year as active mining continues. DUFFIN: It is this moment that government cheese truly enters the American bloodstream. His creation, SubTropolis, is the largest of the underground facilities with nearly 6 million square feet of industrial space for lease. Have you seen these caves before? Embark on a wonderful cave tour and learn all about its history. A grader, where you do quality checks on it. Born and raised Kansan, Clarisa has lived in both tiny towns and cities during their time here in the Sunflower State. (SOUNDBITE OF FREDERIC AUGER'S "SUNBURN"). The Missouri Penitentiary in Jefferson City is rumored to be riddled with spirits. DUFFIN: (Laughter) That's right. 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. Yes, that is a lot of cheese. Its first FRC opened in 1997 beneath Lee's Summit, and another opened in 2003 under Lenexa. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That's government cheese. MALONE: There will be a cave in Kansas City, a van down by the river and a touching exchange between Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. 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. MALONE: Novakovic says the government could have destroyed the cheese. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. The easier solution - maybe - the government could just start buying a ton of milk themselves. CALLAHAN: So it'd be all the way to the ceiling. Ever wonder what its like to work underground? 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.. SubTropolis is a 55,000,000-square-foot (5,100,000 m 2), 1,100-acre (4.5 km 2) artificial cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, that is claimed to be the world's largest underground storage facility.Developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., it has trademarked the phrase World's Largest . See. 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. I mean, every warehouse in Wisconsin was full. And he tells me, these were never government-owned caves. [3] The National Archives and Records Administration also leases space for a Federal Records Center. Rather, the "caves" are part of a 3.2-million-square-foot warehouse under part of Springfield.. Just dont forget your pillar number. It was ready to start buying cheese. 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.. KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and powerful storytelling. DUFFIN: Bob's job was to make sure that all of the cheese met USDA grade A cheddar standards - the right moisture level, the proper shade of yellowish-orange, the correct flavor profile. There's something instinctive in us that makes us want to leave a mark on the world. Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. Yeah. Back in the 1880s, after a year of toiling through the bluffs dividing Downtown from West Bottoms, rapid transit pioneer Robert Gillham and a team of workers managed to push the last underground bricks into place. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. As recently as August of 2020, the Department of Agriculture announced the Cheese Purchase Program. By Emily Baron Cadloff Global Research, May 30, 2022 Modern Farmer 25 May 2022 Region: USA Theme: Global Economy 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. 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. 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. Weve looked and looked at ways to deal with this, but the distribution problems are incredible, a USDA official was quoted as saying. To do so, however, required a serious upfront investment. 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. The federal government has been storing paperwork in these caves for nearly 25 years. . DUFFIN: OK. The New York Times declared that the bill would give poor Americans a slice of the cheese surplus.. 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. Hogwarts, who? Its oddly fascinating! But here is why government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. MALONE: Right - very, very expensive cheese. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. History is a mystery. This one-of-a-kind display showcases a wide variety of hair art, historic hair pieces, and more. As the room and pillar mining method is used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, 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. Offer subject to change without notice. Probably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean., Instead, they decided to jettison 30 million pounds of it into welfare programs and school lunches through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. Well, we got some real crafty guys that started putting 40-pound blocks of special cheese right under the bunghole. Sprawling beneath 31st Street (and beyond) for more than two million square feet, the nations first subterranean business park was blasted into existence by prolific businessmen Lester Dean Sr. and Lester Dean Jr. We say blasted because in 1973, the duo expanded an existing mine on the property using what else? Like, are you the most picky cheese-eater in your group of friends? It's deteriorating. This story was first published in KCUR's Creative Adventure newsletter. I get in my car in my garage at home and drive underground here, so its all temperature controlled. DUFFIN: Just this week, we finally learned some of the details. 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. The caves were largely abandoned after the city's building boom stopped, Hasan said. NOVAKOVIC: You've got two levers you can pull on. MALONE: Now, to be fair, that's probably not enough to start filling caves again. MALONE: Until there was no more room for you to be in this room. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). Limestone mine in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City, MO, US, Learn how and when to remove this template message, United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Archives and Records Administration, "SubTropolis | Industrial Space for Lease in Kansas City", "Bloomberg.com 2015-02-04 Welcome to Subtropolis The Business Complex Buried Under Kansas City", "Archives.gov 2018-02-26 Kansas City, MO Federal Records Center", SubTropolis Technology Center home site (Hunt Midwest), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SubTropolis&oldid=1140599869, Buildings and structures in Kansas City, Missouri, Articles lacking in-text citations from January 2020, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia cave articles with unreferenced coordinates, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 20 February 2023, at 21:12. Government cheese, as the orange blocks of commodity cheese came to be called, wasnt exactly popular with all of its recipients. Heap the flour on your countertop and make a well in the center. DUFFIN: This is a basic supply-and-demand problem. That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. As we unloaded the caves full of this stuff, government cheese started to show up everywhere - food banks and schools, military mess halls. The Trump administration says today it will make an estimated $12 billion in government assistance available. 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. Our operators are standing by. The third cave is much smaller and contains a natural spring that often sends clean water running over the ground. In addition, the Federal Government will spend $40 million to $50 million this year to transport even more dairy . 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.