Emily Chan
Did you know that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) stores millions of pounds of cheese in caves just outside of Springfield, Missouri? Such a statement only raises more questions, for instance, why the government would hoard so much cheese and where it came from.
It all started with the Dairy Product Price Support Program that the USDA launched in 1949. Later, it became known as the Milk Price Support Program. The USDA would buy excess dairy products from farmers whenever the price of dairy products dropped too low.
The agency bought millions of pounds of cheese, butter, and dry milk to prevent producers from losing a lot of money. As a result, the dairy market would stabilize, and prices for products would rise. The USDA started selling their stash in bulk once the prices reached 125 percent of the support price.
In the 1970s, inflation sent the economy into a spiral. The dairy program was used to help out farmers, but it unwittingly created the biggest dairy surplus in the history of the United States.
By the 1980s, the USDA was forced to switch gears, as many people were not happy about this arrangement. Instead of waiting for market prices to climb to 125 percent of the support price, the agency decided to leave the secretary of agriculture in charge of choosing when to start selling the dairy products it accumulated.
The cheese, butter, and milk started piling up, so the USDA had to figure out what to do with them before they spoiled. In 1981, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the federal government ended up with 560 million pounds of cheese. The majority of it was stored in large underground facilities.
According to the Washington Post, the interest and storage costs for the dairy were around $1 million per day. Ultimately, the USDA decided to put 30 million pounds of cheese into welfare programs and school lunches through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program.
But the stockpile of cheese was growing so fast that the 30 million pounds hardly made a difference. By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities held 1.2 billion pounds of cheese.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, millions of dollars were given to fast-food companies to increase the amount of cheesy items on their menus, despite the fact that nutritionists were concerned about rising obesity levels and saturated fats.
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