DUFFIN: By the early 1980s, the dairy support program was costing taxpayers around $2 billion a year. Anyway, the government had its plan in place. And what percentage of economists would you say are able to milk a cow by hand? It was built by a German immigrant named John Georgian, who instead of relying on those trusty limestone caves weve come to know and love dug out his own brewery space beneath Weston. MALONE: Again, economist Andy Novakovic. A native Midwesterner with a love for family, friends, and learning new things. When Hamilton and partner Sean Smith purchased the property in 2021, they also found a locked safe and penny tile beneath green carpeting. 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. Jimmy Carter has announced his plan to help farmers. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. I mean, we had cheese in every cold storage in the United States, including the caves in Kansas that were full of that stuff. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. This story was first published in KCUR's Creative Adventure newsletter. How we got to this point is a long story, and it starts during a national dairy shortage in the 1970s. DUFFIN: This is a basic supply-and-demand problem. 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. It was ready to start buying cheese. The Trump administration says today it will make an estimated $12 billion in government assistance available. DUFFIN: But the problem, Andy says, was that a lot of this was not easy-to-give-away cheese. USCIS opened its National Records Center in a cave in Lee's Summit, Missouri, in 1999. Many tenants at . I mean, there was all kinds of tricks that you - that we had to be looking for. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus. 1. There is a. And they go to their bosses. Which makes for a thriving underground business community, as unnerving as a giant hole in the side of a bluff may be. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. Metallic, sour, whey taint, weedy, onion, barny, lipase and sulfide. DUFFIN: Hello. The Giant Animal Cluster, located in Bonne Terre is another wacky attraction in Missouri. But there is a chance that the government may be in the business of government cheese again. Government buys more cheese. Help yourself. 7 Awe-Inspiring Drone Views That Will Show Off Kansas Like Never Before, Theres An Incredible Meteor Shower Happening This Summer And Kansas Has A Front Row Seat, The Underrated Natural Wonder Every Kansan Should See At Least Once, The Breathtaking Overlook In Kansas That Lets You See For Miles And Miles, 8 Roads With The Best Windshield Views In All Of Kansas, Theres A Geological Wonder That Youd Never Expect To Find In Kansas, The Beautiful Spot In Kansas Where You Can See Into Three Other States At Once, 9 Amazing Natural Wonders Hiding In Plain Sight In Kansas No Hiking Required, this cool hiking trail that has another cave. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. 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. What is cave cheese? NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. Either one should get you a higher price. The former limestone mines house about 400 businesses, many of which specialize in storage or warehousing because they are protected from extreme weather and can boast stable, year-round temperatures and humidity. 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. MALONE: Again, our dairy economist Andy Novakovic. 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. Steven Rodriquez/Flickr Even the beverage distributors, they had cheese in the storage. Kansas City Chiefs Home: The official source of the latest Chiefs news, videos, photos, tickets, rosters, and gameday information Remember Government cheese? Kansas City, MO 64112. They believe it was once part of the historic Heim Brewery, whose East Bottoms bottling plant theyd been renovating. It also could have tried to send it overseas as foreign aid, like we do with other surplus commodities. A NASA employee needing an area to test sensitive navigational instruments was among the first official cave occupants. DUFFIN: OK. His creation, SubTropolis, is the largest of the underground facilities with nearly 6 million square feet of industrial space for lease. 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. MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. And in order to do this, they have to be willing to buy all of the cheese that anybody wants to sell them at this price. India and Bhutan's yak herders face steep challenges. The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the worlds largest site of its kind. Let us know. SubTropolis is a ginormous man-made cave in the bluffs above the Missouri River in Kansas City. Nevertheless, dairy surpluses still very much exist. That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. At a time when American families are under increasing financial pressure, their Government cannot sit by and watch millions of pounds of food turn into waste, Reagan said in a written statement. While the government-owned cheese hoards of the 1970s and 80s are largely a thing of the past, the U.S. has still never really figured out what to do with its excess dairy. 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. It's got its flaws. OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. MALONE: And you can taste all of those things in a piece of cheese? ASCHEBROCK: It was 10 times better than - I hate - you know, Velveeta is OK. A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. SubTroplis is definitely one of the most incredible underground places in Missouri. 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. ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. The block earned its name due to the number of saloons found between the Kansas-Missouri state line and Genessee Street at the turn of the century. 41, no. MALONE: But this is America. A miner from Colorado named Charles Griffee excavated these caves in the 1880s, but the land was later bought by the Faris family. Love Kansas? And though OMalleys looks normal from the outside, the inside tells another story. 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 . Back in 2018, The New York Times did a profile on Gene Peters, chief executive of Rosnet, a restaurant software company out of Parkville, Missouri. Melt Two tbps of butter into a skillet, then add the onion, garlic and mushrooms. These days, units are available for business leasing or to store items that would benefit from the particular climate control found underground. . NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. So the thing that the government was concerned about is what's called commercial displacement. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. Though its more a part of Midtown than Downtown, the space once known as Deans Downtown Underground is definitely down there. 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. The 43,000,000 square feet structure is owned by Americold and is primarily used for food production. 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. A teeny bit was allowed but not too much. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Over the years, the industry has found all sorts of ways to get rid of its excess supplysome more insidious than others. Stay up to date with what you want to know. However, as the room and pillar mining method continues to be used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, growth of such facilities is quite possible. MALONE: This is a cave full of cheese in Kansas City. 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.. Lawmakers worried that any blow to the nations dairy farmers could lead to drastic shortages down the line. I am currently about 35 feet underground in an old converted limestone mine that is the size of 120 football fields. 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. Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. In fact, it has trademarked the phrase "World's Largest Underground Business Complex." MALONE: So if you wanted to sell cheese to the government, Bob would show up with this, like, hollow rod called a cheese trier. ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue of storing the stuff. MALONE: And so our country has a tradition of programs to help farmers. CALLAHAN: So it'd be all the way to the ceiling. When maple syrup supplies run low, Canada taps into its strategic reserve. Besides those already mentioned, other businesses include Cerner, NextPage, Hallmark Cards, Hantover, Clore Automotive, and Knapheide. 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. MALONE: One of the ways Carter proposed giving farmers an equal break was to raise the price of milk by about 6 cents per gallon, which was kind of a lot at the time. 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. It's only about a 3-inch-in-diameter hole. And they're like, we need more cheese graders. Currently 5,000,000 square feet is occupied and 10,000,000 square feet are "improved.". MALONE: Within five years, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. Born and raised Kansan, Clarisa has lived in both tiny towns and cities during their time here in the Sunflower State. ASCHEBROCK: There is a bung - what they call a bunghole up on the top. Government cheese, as the orange blocks of commodity cheese came to be called, wasnt exactly popular with all of its recipients. 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. 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. And before that, he was a reporter for his friend T.C. 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: (Laughter) That was the unintended consequence that was fun. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. 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. (Shouting) Government cheese. 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. 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. That doesn't look great. But as Kansas Citians began to rely more on buses and their own vehicles in the 1940s and 1950s, the 8th Street tunnel ceased operations. In response to this dairy shortage and 30% inflation . 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. Like, this is the original bridge to nowhere. Out of 25 buildings, a whopping 24 were saloons. Original reels of Hollywood blockbusters "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" are stored in the caves. 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 Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. MALONE: Many listeners may remember "Saturday Night Live's" Matt Foley, as played by Chris Farley, the world's worst motivational speaker. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. President Jimmy Carter wanted to help the dairy farmers. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. Buoyed by items like Wendys dual Double Melt sandwich concept and Taco Bells steak quesadilla, the organization helped boost cheese sales by more than 30 million pounds. HOME; INTERIORS; EXTERIORS; OFFICE & PORTRAITS; PUBLICITY/EVENTS; CONSTRUCTION; INFO Caves are usually found underground. Park University in the Kansas City suburb of Parkville has dozens of classrooms and offices in the caves and rents out other underground space to businesses. They are open spaces of various sizes and shapes that often intersect with each another or with different generated structures, creating vast cave systems. As we unloaded the caves full of this stuff, government cheese started to show up everywhere - food banks and schools, military mess halls. "If they haven't been used, no one knows what state of deterioration they are in," Hasan said. 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. Andy Novakovic is a dairy economist at Cornell University. Do you or does someone you know work at SubTropolis? There is currently about $85 million earmarked to buy dairy and distribute it to places like schools and food banks. The United States Postal Service and the United States Environmental Protection Agency lease spaces within SubTropolis, the United States Postal Service for its collectible stamp operations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their Region-7 Training and Logistics Center. It was created by digging into the Bethany Falls limestone mine and is, in places, 160 feet beneath the surface. We use to plug through that bunghole to get our sample. At Kanopolis park, near the lake of the same name, there's a short trail from a parking area that leads you through the brush into a clearing. Hogwarts, who? MALONE: (Laughter) And you just have a big knife. In 2003 the Archives opened an underground FRC facility in Lenexa, Kansas. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the largest domestic reserve of cheese of all varieties, including cheddar, Swiss and American . MALONE: The government cheese caves started to empty out. allegiant flights from sioux falls to mesa az; missouri cheese caves wikipedia. If youve been in the cheeky, sophisticated Campground bar, youve set foot where the original J. Rieger & Co. building stood. And to be fair, it was processed cheese kind of like a brick of Velveeta. MALONE: He and his colleagues are drowning in cheese. And he says getting rid of caves full of grade-A government cheese was an economically tricky issue. Last year, the U.S. produced nearly 12 billion pounds of cheese -- an all-time high, according to the USDA. Oh, boy - here we go. Yes, that is a lot of cheese. I am in an old, converted limestone mine. DUFFIN: Our supervising producer is Alex Goldmark, and our editor is Bryant Urstadt. The Campground recently unearthed pieces of the distillerys tile floor as they were renovating their own bar. Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. The year was 1981, and President Ronald Reagan had a cheese problem. NOVAKOVIC: So it's fundamental economics. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus milk and turning it into processed commodity cheesehad backfired, hard. MALONE: Yeah. Over the course of the decade, inflation in the U.S. skyrocketed from 5.5 percent up to 14 percent. The same year, the USDA bought up $20 million worth of cheese to cut the glut. Thank you! And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese. 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. Then, in the 1970s, everything started to go haywire. I get in my car in my garage at home and drive underground here, so its all temperature controlled. Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock was one of the government's cheese graders. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. MALONE: Dan Callahan worked here in the 1970s and says one day, the U.S. government rented a ton of cave space, and a ton of cheddar cheese started to show up. And though the world may not imagine Kansas City as big in the underground scene our ever-expanding streetcar system still operates where the sun shines the limestone around these parts was shaped by glaciers and rivers and makes for good mining. The tunnel was complete, though steep, so a new one was built to weave through it at a lower grade. So to prevent this, the government said, look - if we're going to buy your cheese, first, you have to meet with Bob. 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. And there are 17 flavor defects that could happen in cheddar cheese. Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic waystrengthening our bodies to fight the war.. honolulu police department records; spiritual meaning of the name ashley; mississippi election results 2021; charlie spring and nick nelson 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? It's deteriorating. MALONE: Are you pretty annoying to eat cheese with? NOVAKOVIC: Exactly. We can't find a market for it. "Kansas City is a world leader in the use of underground space for human occupancy," he said. It is more than a food that. And the European Union has a long, scandalous history of accumulating butter mountains, wine lakes, and milk lakesthe latter of which consisted of vast quantities of skim milk powder housed in warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. 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. 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.