Not all cheese is created equal. Any American who has been around long enough to taste a piece of "government cheese" can tell you that. Although the phrase sounds surreal and is often used as a derogatory shorthand for any form of welfare, the original concept of state cheese lives on today in aa lot ofliteral way. Unbeknownst to many, the United States currently stores approximately 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in cooling caves hundreds of feet underground, primarily in Missouri. That's a lot of cheese. What is it doing there and how does it get there? The history of government cheese is almost a century old, and it all starts with… well, a little too much spilled milk…
The 20th century was a roller coaster ride for all things dairy. At the height of the Great Depression, the agricultural sector was hit hardest. Dairy farmers, who had seen their incomes fall by two-thirds, resorted to destroying their own milk, ceremonially dumping gallons of it on the streets in a desperate attempt to raise prices by reducing supply. The New Deal was then introduced to help Americans from all walks of life, especially in rural America – and one of its products was the Commodity Credit Corporation, or CCC, a state-owned company with the power to purchase expensive agricultural products. scale, to help farmers and keep food prices stable. In the 1940s, everyone was much better off drinking milk, as homes across the country embraced the modern convenience of the household refrigerator and brought chilled pasteurized milk to the masses. Yet government efforts to support rural America continued long after the Great Depression, with surplus dairy products—butter, cheese, and low-fat dry milk—being purchased on the open market at subsidized prices through the Commodity Credit Corporation.
In the early 1970s, there was a domestic shortage of dairy products, causing prices to rise. The energy crisis sent food prices soaring – and President Jimmy Carter started looking for a way to bring them down. Among other measures, Carter gave a huge subsidy of $2 billion (in 1970s money!) to the dairy industry, and suddenly it became very profitable to produce milk. By the time the 1980s arrived, farmers had produced far too much of it, which was then turned into far too much cheese.Governmentost.
The CCC was ready to buy whatever the farmers wanted to sell. And what should an Austrian government do? Give it away, packaged in easily spaced five-pound blocks. Some of the government's cheese was distributed to food banks, while some was used for school lunches (if you ever had a cheeseburger at an American public school in the late 1970s or early 1980s, you probably got a slice). More were delivered to needy seniors as part of food parcels, and continue to do so.
But all this cheap goodness couldn't last. The Reagan years brought a conservative trend in American life—and a campaign to roll back farm subsidies and get people to stop eating government cheese, both figuratively and literally. The public turned sharply against the government's cheese when "Secretary of Agriculture John R. Block showed up at a White House event with a five-pound block of green, moldy cheese and showed it to the press." 60 million of which the government owner,” he saidsaid. “It's moldy, it's deteriorating... we can't find a market for it, we can't sell it, and we're trying to give some of it away.”
Instead, instead of having their product directly subsidized by the government, dairy farmers became the beneficiaries of a federally supported advertising campaign, similar to that for Florida orange juice and other citrus products.
Where were these brand new government ads for non-government cheese? Well, America's dairy farmers, the recipients of the advertising subsidies, had one more question for the nation. That question was famous: Do you have milk?
In an iconic advertising campaign in the 1990s, celebrities wore milk mustaches, expecting viewers to believe that America's favorite actors, athletes, musicians and more drank milk instead of reaching for soda, coffee or perhaps an alcoholic beverage. A young Michael Bay (famous action film director and producer of hits likeThe transformer,ArmageddonInBad boys) directed one of the first commercials in 1993:
The campaign was surprisingly a success. As with the "state cheese" served in public schools, much of the "Got Milk" campaign was aimed at school-age children, perpetuating the idea that milk, with its high calcium content and '90s-friendly, lean varieties, an ideal substance to promote healthy growth in children. To this day, milk must be offered with every meal if a school district in the United States wants to receive reimbursem*nt from the federal government.
The California Milk Processor Board (the same organization that launched "Got Milk?") also launched a campaign around a fake rock star called "The Battle for Milkquarious," a 22-minute rock opera marketed as "the most amazing rock opera ,' once made about milk." Coincidentally, that particular campaign was considerably less successful.
Unfortunately, all good things, even photos of friends' sculpted milk mustaches, must come to an end. America had less appetite for milk, which gave way to a new trend in American dairy consumption: the Cheese Craze. Once again saddled with surpluses of whole milk and milk fat," in a series of confidential deals approved by secretaries of agriculture in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus to include cheese-filled Products" (New York Times). In contrast to the era of government cheese, this was a trend towards what you might call privatized cheese enthusiasm. There was an old new game in town for American dairy, and it was creamy, melty, and coming to a restaurant near you. Think Domino's cheese-filled pizza crusts and Taco Bell's Triple cheese quesadillas. The USDA paid for a $12 million marketing campaign for Domino's to develop a new line of pizzas with 40% more cheese. In total, the USDA has spent $47.1 million to remove some of the extra cheese from the market and has purchased about 22 million pounds of it since 2016, a USDA spokesperson said. Domino's and other pizza franchises also struck deals with public school districts, and "Pizza Fridays" became a thing: another national cheese cultural phenomenon. Is it any surprise that Americans now eat three times more cheese than they did in the 1970s?
Today, Springfield Underground remains what it should have been fifty years ago: a state storage facility for dairy products, especially cheese. Springfield, like much of the rest of Missouri, is home to a number of natural caves and caverns. The caves in Springfield are cool, dry and dark – almost like a refrigerator. Springfield Underground is home to 3.2 million square feet of warehouse space, much of which is leased to commercial food companies, including Kraft, known for its macaroni dinners. In the Springfield Underground are rows and rows and rows of cheese – some of it private, much of it – too much of it – government-owned, but above all, it is American cheese, in every sense of the word.
Word ofEllery Weil
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