NOVAKOVIC: So it's fundamental economics. 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. MALONE: Within five years, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. San Francisco is 1 of 3 cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. MALONE: The idea was that if you give this food to people who suffer from food insecurity, then maybe it is going to go to somebody who wasn't going to buy cheese anyway so you're not hurting the market as much. It was this spectacle of millions of pounds of expensive cheese being processed and given away that created a popular cultural icon and an example of bad government spending. And you turn it, and you pull out a core of cheese. The government would buy as much milk as it took to move that price. 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. MALONE: Until there was no more room for you to be in this room. Theres evidence the second story was a ballroom, complete with a stage, dumbwaiter and box office window. We are @planetmoney. MALONE: This footage is amazing - just massive crowds of people being handed bricks of cheese. Kraft Foods, the multinational conglomerate that makes countless grocery products in addition to cheese, is about none of that, however. The best hidden gems and little known destinations - straight to your inbox. (SOUNDBITE OF DROP ELECTRIC SONG, "WAKING UP TO THE FIRE"). You can do something to make demand greater, or you can do something to make supply less. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. You may wonder why the government has a massive cheese stockpile. So how in the world did the U.S. end up with a mountain of slowly molding cheese? MALONE: Who's got time for dating when you're traveling around eating cheese everywhere? Born and raised Kansan, Clarisa has lived in both tiny towns and cities during their time here in the Sunflower State. We hope so. He is now a dairy economist at Cornell University. So they created a brand-new special program to give the cheese away through food banks. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? NOVAKOVIC: Butter was one, nonfat dry milk and cheese - and in particular, cheddar-type cheese. Each year, several foot races are run in the cave system. Cave Tours Missouri, long known as the "Cave State," has almost 6,400 caves, and Missouri State Parks showcases four of the best for public tours. Government . 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. Many tenants at . 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. Stay up to date with what you want to know. You took away my customers. "Kansas City is a world leader in the use of underground space for human occupancy," he said. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. These limestone caverns arent the only channels running under the city. You don't do that, huh? MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese? 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. I mean, there was all kinds of tricks that you - that we had to be looking for. And do you, like, smack your forehead? Food Caves in Missouri SubTropolis, Kansas City. SNOOP DOGG: (Rapping) And we ghetto like a [expletive] hot buttered toast in the mornin' with some government cheese. KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and powerful storytelling. Thank you! ANDY NOVAKOVIC: Oh, yeah. Missouri has more than 7,000 caves under its ground, though fewer than 20 are easily accessible to most people. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. There are literally train tracks leading into it. Lets just call it tunnel vision. SubTropolis is used by around 50 businesses and organizations, for a variety of purposes. That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. SUBSCRIBE for Every Delicious Theory! Get more stories delivered right to your email. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. Dug into the Bethany Falls limestone mine, SubTropolis is, in places, 160 feet (49m) beneath the surface. There's something instinctive in us that makes us want to leave a mark on the world. And there are 17 flavor defects that could happen in cheddar cheese. It was ready to start buying cheese. You cansign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. Share your experiences in the comment section below. Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. 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. What would the government do if you drove this into downtown Washington and said, here you go? The Trump administration says today it will make an estimated $12 billion in government assistance available. NOVAKOVIC: As you can imagine, the cheese company that's in the business of selling cheese is going to say - hey, what's the deal here? It is an enormous artificial cave situated above the Missouri River. It doesn't take long to see the three caves, but once you're here, you'll spend a long time looking and exploring. MALONE: The story of government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. Roanoke Cave . MALONE: You can see pictures of the cheese cave. The guaranteed milk price, which had been going up automatically every six months, was eventually frozen. Strong Distilling, the only known legal distillery operating in a cave, and catch a "Cave Concert" while you're there. Melt Two tbps of butter into a skillet, then add the onion, garlic and mushrooms. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. Expand All. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. A miner from Colorado named Charles Griffee excavated these caves in the 1880s, but the land was later bought by the Faris family. 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. Blackwell Motors showcases a variety of fiberglass animals, and people come from all around just to see them. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. The National Archives' Central Plains regional archives is moving into the heart of Kansas City's cultural and historic area. 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. Karen's doing the dance. 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. And he says the government could not just release a flood of surplus cheese onto the market because it would crush cheese producers. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. is cottonseed oil safe for nut allergy And in order to do. Through our sister company, Cold Zone, we are able to store refrigerated food, such as cheese for our tenants. MALONE: That did some good. The surplus dairy products now in storage have a market value of $3 billion. It is more than a food that. ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. Original reels of Hollywood blockbusters "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind" are stored in the caves. You don't do that, huh? Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. It's also mostly water, so you've got to haul it around in those, like, gas tankers. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. And it took a few years, but a flood of cheese starts to come in. I am in an old, converted limestone mine. MALONE: Karen's doing the dance. SNOOP DOGG: You don't buy it. Accuracy and availability may vary. That number, though, pales in. There's a lot of history buried beneath Kansas City streets, from Prohibition-era passageways and underground caves to the oldest bar in Missouri. Heap the flour on your countertop and make a well in the center. About 3.2 acres of available space are added each year as active mining continues. The Giant Animal Cluster, located in Bonne Terre is another wacky attraction in Missouri. We use to plug through that bunghole to get our sample. Youll love exploring this amazing geological wonder. MALONE: Dan says that the cheese took up about half an acre of space. (Shouting) Government cheese. MALONE: And then within five years, the government was spending billions of dollars filling caves with cheese that they could not get rid of fast enough. 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. Thank you! SubTroplis is definitely one of the most incredible underground places in Missouri. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. MALONE: So a campaign promise - that's what we call those. Ashley Day. NOVAKOVIC: You've got two levers you can pull on. Currently 5,000,000 square feet is occupied and 10,000,000 square feet are "improved.". 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. Go to the shop Go to the shop. And Andy had a ringside seat to it. A set of caves along Interstate 435 offered a convenient cold-storage option. Basically the dairy industry is looking to expand its market and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is looking to expand the agricultural economy and they become very intertwined., It helped that the burgeoning field of nutrition science promoted dairy products as essential for both adults and children. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. And they're like, we need more cheese graders. To the cheese cave. That doesn't look great. Secretive Experiences Sample spirits made by S.D. The government eventually tired of being involved in this . Throw two tbps of butter into a pressure cooker and melt them. PublishedSeptember 7, 2018 at 7:20 AM CDT. An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. If youve been in the cheeky, sophisticated Campground bar, youve set foot where the original J. Rieger & Co. building stood. Visitors to the underworld will even find a whiskey distillery within the mined area, which stretches for more than 1 million square feet. MALONE: This must be a common confusion in the industry. 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. SNOOP DOGG: Martha's never had a bite of government cheese in her life. NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. And before that, he was a reporter for his friend T.C. Looking for more unusual places in Missouri? So getting people to do it was always a challenge. They feature an abundance of ores, as well as hostile mobs that spawn in the darkness. "If they haven't been used, no one knows what state of deterioration they are in," Hasan said. This little-known cave area in Kansas is the perfect opportunity to explore something that many Kansans might not have heard of before. DUFFIN: OK. A native Midwesterner with a love for family, friends, and learning new things. Over the course of the decade, inflation in the U.S. skyrocketed from 5.5 percent up to 14 percent. DUFFIN: (Laughter) That's right. The 55,000 sq ft underground storage facility is the world's largest underground business complex. 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. [1] The complex contains almost 10.5 miles (16.9km) of illuminated, paved roads and several miles of railroad track. Cheese-makers buy more milk. And the Ronald Reagan team was stuck dealing with these caves full of cheese. The federal government has been storing paperwork in these caves for nearly 25 years. If you loved visiting this stunning spot, take a trip to Fisher Cave in Meramec State Park. Caves . DUFFIN: So much cheese that Bob starts having to spend more and more time on the road because he has to actually go to the cheese to grade it. A cave (also known as a cavern) is a common terrain feature that generates in the Overworld and the Nether. It was created by digging into the Bethany Falls limestone mine and is, in places, 160 feet beneath the surface. The easier solution - maybe - the government could just start buying a ton of milk themselves. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. ", (SOUNDBITE OF NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK SONG, "YOU GOT IT (THE RIGHT STUFF)"). Here's a few you should know, A guide to discovering Kansas City's public art installations. DUFFIN: But that does not work for milk because milk starts going bad the minute it comes out of the cow. Working underground is no big deal to me, Peters says in the interview. 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? The government has tended to stay away from buying cheese as a solution. 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. DUFFIN: Yes, this is a real job. The Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. 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. It is huge. MALONE: Bob says the No. And he says getting rid of caves full of grade-A government cheese was an economically tricky issue. The government would buy up, say, massive amounts of corn or wheat and then just throw it into a silo until we needed it for some reason. 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. I'm Karen Duffin. Are there any fascinating abandoned buildings in Missouri? sign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. Myths surround the cave, as they do with many of Missouri's caverns. The U.S. has too much cheese 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact. Government agents were in uncharted territory. Let us know. Unlike corn or wheat, however, milk needed to be converted into more shelf-stable forms, specifically butter, dehydrated skim milk powder, and cheese. warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. A slice of Kraft cheese is going to be less about. And the United States Postal Service's Philatelic Sales Divison, the national distribution center for . Well, sort of. I am currently about 35 feet underground in an old converted limestone mine that is the size of 120 football fields. And you can drive your car right into it. 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. We literally paid them money to stop producing milk. And he started floating this idea. In 2016, dairy farmers resorted to simply dumping 43 million gallons of milk down the drain. 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. Anyway, the government had its plan in place. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. All our area around here - everybody had cheese. Its existence serves as a reminder of Kansas Citys knack for innovative transportation especially as new railways for the streetcar go down all along Main Street. Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. give poor Americans a slice of the cheese surplus., exactly popular with all of its recipients. A teeny bit was allowed but not too much. Then, in the 1970s, everything started to go haywire. 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. JIMMY CARTER: Now, although I am a farmer, I'm not in favor of guaranteeing farmers a profit. Some of the cave openings are so big that a big truck can get through them, while others are so tight that it would be challenging even for an earthworm to sneak through. Sign up for our newsletter and enter to win the second edition of our book. Very, very expensive cheese. Today, the government still buys and stores cheese for food assistance programs; however, only about 300 . That is, until last month. How do we - how do we get this cat out of the tree? Turns out, cave living is naturally energy efficient. Nevertheless, dairy surpluses still very much exist. These are the 13 weirdest places you can possibly go in Missouri. MALONE: So this leaves a couple of options. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. And then on the other side, the government tried to replace some of their artificial demand for milk with new real demand for milk. government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. 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. ASCHEBROCK: You. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That's government cheese. NOVAKOVIC: It's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. 41, no. DUFFIN: The thing about price controls is that once you start them, they are really, really hard to unwind. DUFFIN: More graders grading more cheese that the government then buys. This was generally the approach that we would use to support other kinds of farm industries. 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. A large portion is also owned by companies, who . MALONE: Bob Aschebrock was one of the government's cheese graders. Visit a sweet shop selling one of the first candies ever made and sold in America. Each week, KCUR's Adventure! JUNOT DIAZ: Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. India and Bhutan's yak herders face steep challenges. The young people do - they say, well, I can't go out with a girl or I can't go out with a guy because I'm on the road all the time. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). With temperatures maintained at 25F and 35F, staff have nicknamed the space the "Ice Cube." China props up pork prices by buying surplus for its frozen pork reserve. DUFFIN: It's one thing for politicians to say, we want the price of milk to go up. At one point, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. But every instinct I had said, oh, this - I'm not so sure this is going to work out so well. 2023 Atlas Obscura. The tunnel was complete, though steep, so a new one was built to weave through it at a lower grade. Youll want to check out this cool hiking trail that has another cave youre welcome to explore. The Missouri River town is known for its charming main drag and castle-like college, Park University. Missouri's caves can . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Springfield Underground, an Erlen Group Company is a commercial industrial park with the advantage of underground storage. NOVAKOVIC: So we have, you know, this immense surplus, and now you have the political problem. And to be fair, it was processed cheese kind of like a brick of Velveeta. NOVAKOVIC: So you can imagine, you know, you don't just kind of roll down one of these barrels down Seventh Avenue in New York City and say, anybody want some cheese? Youve heard about the subterranean chamber beneath the land near Worlds of Fun, right? Caves are usually found underground. ASCHEBROCK: I traveled 39 states, and I was gone as long as 10 weeks at a time doing that. As strange as this predicament might seem, the U.S. is far from the only country to artificially stabilize agricultural prices by stockpiling food products. 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. Why Did the U.S. Government Amass More Than a Billion Pounds of Cheese? 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? 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. 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. Uncover the finest, most undercover experiences in Kansas City. In 2003 the Archives opened an underground FRC facility in Lenexa, Kansas. [2], The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70F (18 and 21C) year-round. And it's the most government packaging you will ever see - just, like, brown cardboard, some black USDA stamps on it. Government buys more cheese. Either one should get you a higher price. MALONE: You were hired as someone to show up with a metal ASCHEBROCK: Where you do quality checks on it. NOVAKOVIC: It was pretty hard to predict that it would get as bad as it got. 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. DUFFIN: The USDA figured out that if they paid about 39 bucks for a 40-pound block of cheese, then it would have this ripple effect. And they go to their bosses. 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. Steven Rodriquez/Flickr Posted on June 16, 2022 by June 16, 2022 by We don't do milk quotas - no Lever 1. This is Dan Callahan. I was hired as a cheese grader. Lever 2, more demand - you could try to convince the public that they want to drink more milk. While the popular cheese has changed a lot since then, from access limited to royalty in 1625 to the confinement of "government cheddar" during World War II, the caves are constant . Embark on a wonderful cave tour and learn all about its history. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. Gastro Obscura covers the worlds most wondrous food and drink. Kansas City Chiefs Home: The official source of the latest Chiefs news, videos, photos, tickets, rosters, and gameday information Remember Government cheese? In fact, he remembers the exact room it went into. 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. MALONE: One part of the solution then was to gently get that milk supply down. 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. 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. It has a grid of 16ft (4.9m) high, 40ft (12m) wide tunnels separated by 25ft (7.6m) square limestone pillars created by the room and pillar method of hard rock mining. How we got to this point is a long story, and it starts during a national dairy shortage in the 1970s. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. 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. Fortunately, the rock here is soft enough to scratch something out without a lot of effort. The brick structure 9th & State calls home is one of a few left standing since those raucous Paris of the Plains days. The bar stools are original and survived some of the flooding. MALONE: Yeah. The Atchison Storage Facility, commonly known as the Atchison Caves is a 2.7 million square foot underground storage facility in a former pillar limestone mine 50 to 150 feet (15 to 46 m) below the ground in the Missouri River bluffs at Atchison, Kansas. OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. Hogwarts, who? 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. He spent 30 years testing and tasting cheese for the United States government. This one-of-a-kind display showcases a wide variety of hair art, historic hair pieces, and more.