NOVAKOVIC: It was pretty hard to predict that it would get as bad as it got. Copyright 2018 NPR. Each year, several foot races are run in the cave system. as well as other partner offers and accept our, http://eapcontent.ap.org/jpg/2015/20150914/16/be46cf305fa20029820f6a70670013cf.jpg?contentid=be46cf305fa20029820f6a70670013cf/fmt=jpg/role=Preview/reldt=2015-09-14T16:35:59/media=Photo/recordid=a772a7d9f93f488487ec5a05e64f976a/itemid=a772a7d9f93f488487ec5a05e64f976a/objfilename=preview.jpg/authToken=eNotikEKwyAURE%2bkzNf4NQuhV4lWwUVj0Ei78PC10FnM48Gb6eNZG%2bsIO4OwRg4zFh%2fSxjFrCJMPJQC1C6eQBR8WbFemY56j%2b1jPu5Uw7tr6I4xeztTX9fJMTcb6mtfb%2f5UMZrk8b5LAkn4k8wXMhif%2b&token=1442512801_9D4E1758BD6D116C2F559647389B3542, NOW WATCH: Incredible video inside Hang Son Doong the largest cave in the world. Though its more a part of Midtown than Downtown, the space once known as Deans Downtown Underground is definitely down there. 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. We know there are a few places where youre allowed to explore public caves, but theyre sometimes hard to find or access. MALONE: Bob says the No. CHRIS FARLEY: (As Matt Foley) I'm here to tell you that you're going to end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river. Working underground is no big deal to me, Peters says in the interview. ASCHEBROCK: Nope. And you turn it, and you pull out a core of cheese. Thanks for listening. You could destroy the surplus, but that looks pretty bad. You may even encounter some paranormal activity while youre exploring. 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. It is huge. About 3.2 acres of available space are added each year as active mining continues. The Missouri River town is known for its charming main drag and castle-like college, Park University. 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. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. Weve written about the 8th Street Tunnel before, and who can blame us? 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. This one-of-a-kind display showcases a wide variety of hair art, historic hair pieces, and more. That doesn't look great. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. 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. Government cheese, as the orange blocks of commodity cheese came to be called, wasnt exactly popular with all of its recipients. DUFFIN: This is a basic supply-and-demand problem. Have you seen these caves before? MALONE: So if you wanted to sell cheese to the government, Bob would show up with this, like, hollow rod called a cheese trier. 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. JIMMY CARTER: Now, although I am a farmer, I'm not in favor of guaranteeing farmers a profit. It's got its flaws. You may wonder why the government has a massive cheese stockpile. Anyway, whats weird is that Peters talks about working beneath Park University in a limestone cave. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. JUNOT DIAZ: Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. One particularly large pile of it resides in the former limestone quarries underneath Springfield, Missouri, where Kraft Heinz keeps a considerable cache of cheese in these temperature-controlled facilities. DUFFIN: It is this moment that government cheese truly enters the American bloodstream. A native Midwesterner with a love for family, friends, and learning new things. MALONE: So a campaign promise - that's what we call those. There's something instinctive in us that makes us want to leave a mark on the world. But there is a chance that the government may be in the business of government cheese again. 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. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. 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. MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. The U.S. has too much cheese 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact. And it's the most government packaging you will ever see - just, like, brown cardboard, some black USDA stamps on it. Thank you! The walls themselves are limestone, of course. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Looking for more unusual places in Missouri? Add 16 oz of macaroni, or shells to the pressure cooker and enough water to cover the noodles completely. Start with this beginner's guide to the neighborhood, Kansas City's new airport terminal carries on the legacy of a 10-year-old who fought for inclusivity, Local public health officials fear a Kansas bill would undercut work to contain diseases, A federal lawsuit against Missouri's 'dysfunctional' SNAP call center has gotten bigger. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. Sign up for KCUR's Creative Adventure Email. They believe it was once part of the historic Heim Brewery, whose East Bottoms bottling plant theyd been renovating. The government was demanding an unnatural amount of milk and so farmers were supplying an unnatural amount of milk. 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. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? The bunker complex was a secure U.S. government storage facility from World War II until 2013. The Campground recently unearthed pieces of the distillerys tile floor as they were renovating their own bar. KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and powerful storytelling. And so they try to hire more cheese graders. DUFFIN: This is why there is also a community of people who are still obsessed with government cheese - Internet chat boards trying to find something comparable, restaurants claiming they have a recipe for it. Kansas City, MO 64112. Youll want to check out this cool hiking trail that has another cave youre welcome to explore. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. Cheese-makers buy more milk. What is cave cheese? Al and Ralph may have influenced food safety labeling and your pizzas cheese. Just dont forget your pillar number. (SOUNDBITE OF FREDERIC AUGER'S "SUNBURN"). You wont be bored on this one-of-a-kind road trip! Do you or does someone you know work at SubTropolis? MALONE: Novakovic says the government could have destroyed the cheese. It has a grid of 16 feet high, 40 foot wide tunnels separated by 25 foot square limestone pillars created by the room and pillar method of hard rock mining. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus milk and turning it into processed commodity cheesehad backfired, hard. MALONE: Karen's doing the dance. CALLAHAN: So you'd be - it's 17 feet, 16 feet. OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. Steven Rodriquez/Flickr DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. DUFFIN: You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook - also @planetmoney. But cheese doesn't travel well, so the government landed on a third option. Behold the power of cheese. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. I'm Karen Duffin. What are the most unusual places in Missouri? Dug into the Bethany Falls limestone mine, SubTropolis is, in places, 160 feet (49m) beneath the surface. The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. Lawmakers worried that any blow to the nations dairy farmers could lead to drastic shortages down the line. All rights reserved. Stay up to date with what you want to know. As recently as August of 2020, the Department of Agriculture announced the Cheese Purchase Program. The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70 F year-round, making it a great space for a lot of different types of businesses. Unlike corn or wheat, however, milk needed to be converted into more shelf-stable forms, specifically butter, dehydrated skim milk powder, and cheese. ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue of storing the stuff. Youll love exploring this amazing geological wonder. San Francisco is 1 of 3 cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. DUFFIN: More graders grading more cheese that the government then buys. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. By clicking Sign up, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider These days, units are available for business leasing or to store items that would benefit from the particular climate control found underground. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. A set of caves along Interstate 435 offered a convenient cold-storage option. Cheese-makers buy more milk. Our operators are standing by. Blackwell Motors showcases a variety of fiberglass animals, and people come from all around just to see them. This little-known cave area in Kansas is the perfect opportunity to explore something that many Kansan's might not have heard of before. Help yourself. MALONE: Andy is still in the dairy world. MALONE: Today's episode was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Nick Fountain and Rhaina Cohen. Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Moneypodcast. So they created a brand-new special program to give the cheese away through food banks. 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. 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. 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. DUFFIN: It's one thing for politicians to say, we want the price of milk to go up. And he started floating this idea. 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. Since that requires capital, the dairy industry starts consolidating, says Andrea Wiley, author of Re-Imagining Milk. The New York Times declared that the bill would give poor Americans a slice of the cheese surplus.. Pour the dissolved yeast into the well and add enough warm water to make a soft dough. Very, very expensive cheese. Want more adventures like this? NOVAKOVIC: We took a small amount of money from every dairy farmer, collected on every pound of milk they sold, and we created the National Dairy Board. You'll receive your first newsletter soon! And do you, like, smack your forehead? Follow us on social media to add even more wonder to your day. I can tell you what we had to reject it for - flat, bitter, yeasty, malty, old milk, fruity MALONE: That sounds lovely. That was pretty good. MALONE: Again, our dairy economist Andy Novakovic. JAY-Z: (Rapping) After that government cheese, we eatin' steak. SubTropolis, a 55 million-square-foot limestone cave which houses a range of businesses underground in Kansas City. These are the 13 weirdest places you can possibly go in Missouri. According to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the space was once also a limestone mine. 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. In 1976, Jimmy Carter got on a stage and said something seemingly innocuous. 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. 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.

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