Kansas City's Underground Caves - Business Insider Kraft Cheese Cave, Springfield. 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. Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Moneypodcast. 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. He spent 30 years testing and tasting cheese for the United States government. Westons downtown district was established in 1837, so theres a lot of history here. ASCHEBROCK: Now, I'm not sure if you know - if you've ever seen a 500-pound steel barrel of cheese. 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. 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. kansas | Cheese Cave 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. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. Warehouses Bulge With Surplus Cheese, Butter and Dried Milk As with any commodity, the demand for dairy fluctuates, yet the nature of dairy production makes it challenging to quickly ramp up or down production in response. The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the worlds largest site of its kind. One of Kansas City's best-loved parks is home to a secret cave No one knows why the cave in Roanoke Park was walled offor why, after decades, it opened last month. Want to explore Waldo? The Rieger family went into banking and the West Bottoms distillery was paved over. ASCHEBROCK: It was 10 times better than - I hate - you know, Velveeta is OK. But here is why government cheese has become a kind of parable of how government intervention in markets can have this, like, butterfly effect. 4701 Wyandotte Street. "If they haven't been used, no one knows what state of deterioration they are in," Hasan said. MALONE: So it's 1977. MALONE: He and his colleagues are drowning in cheese. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. When maple syrup supplies run low, Canada taps into its strategic reserve. DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. As we unloaded the caves full of this stuff, government cheese started to show up everywhere - food banks and schools, military mess halls. Either one should get you a higher price. To see the best of them, embark on this road trip to Missouris best abandoned places. Comments on: Yes, the Government Really Does Stash Billions of Pounds We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the worlds hidden wonders. The cheese was processed and made into 2 and 5 pound bricks and given away as food aid to the poor of America. DUFFIN: It is a case study in what happens when price controls run full speed into the realities of the market. 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. SNOOP DOGG: Martha's never had a bite of government cheese in her life. Expand All. Go to the shop Go to the shop. Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. To do so, however, required a serious upfront investment. government cheese caves kansas city - shantisrl.com DUFFIN: Just this week, we finally learned some of the details. Andy Novakovic spent his summers as a kid working on his grandparents' dairy farm in Wisconsin. You don't do that, huh? [2], The mine naturally maintains temperatures between 65 and 70F (18 and 21C) year-round. 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. Missouri's caves can . 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. The caves were largely abandoned after the city's building boom stopped, Hasan said. DUFFIN: Our supervising producer is Alex Goldmark, and our editor is Bryant Urstadt. It's also mostly water, so you've got to haul it around in those, like, gas tankers. Through our sister company, Cold Zone, we are able to store refrigerated food, such as cheese for our tenants. Get more stories delivered right to your email. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. Euthanized cows and caves full of cheese: the government policies So these days, if the government wants to help farmers, what you'll generally hear about are direct subsidies as opposed to buying cheese. government cheese caves kansas city The government would buy as much milk as it took to move that 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. There's something instinctive in us that makes us want to leave a mark on the world. Oh, yeah. NOVAKOVIC: To persuade farmers to produce less. Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. https://bit.ly/2CdCooV Theorists, did you know the government is hiding caves full of cheese from us? But milk doesn't store well, so the government bought other dairy products. Feast Your Eyes: Kraft's Massive Underground Cheese Cave Photo - GOOD And in order to do. It was ready to start buying cheese. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. Kenny Malone has the epic tale of government cheese. What is cave cheese? And you turn it, and you pull out a core of cheese. 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. There were 40-pound blocks and 500-pound barrels. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE"). 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. Cheddar, England, Is Home to the World's Original Cheddar Cheese Caves government cheese caves kansas citysr latch using nor gate truth table. 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. Stay up to date with what you want to know. Trucker gives video tour of 43 million square foot 'cave - CDLLife DAN CALLAHAN: No, I've never thought about it. Word is the tunnel sustained water damage, so time will tell if it sees the light of day. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. Pretty quickly the small opening expanded into a paved, two-lane road running through a cavern with ceilings high enough to accommodate a tractor-trailer. He's been working here since the 1970s, since the cheese debacle. 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. Kenny Malone hails from Meadville, PA where the zipper was invented, where Clark Gables mother is buried and where, in 2007, a wrecking ball broke free from a construction site, rolled down North Main Street and somehow wound up inside the trunk of a Ford Taurus sitting at a red light. It also could have tried to send it overseas as foreign aid, like we do with other surplus commodities. But this is what gave us, you know, the got milk and the milk mustache and all those kind of iconic programs that we remember. There is an argument that our country has to be able to produce its own food because if our farmers go out of business and we become reliant on other countries for food, then that is a kind of national security risk. Each week, KCUR's Adventure! If the girl's MALONE: Government cheese also shows up in tons of songs. Have you seen these caves before? In 1976, Jimmy Carter got on a stage and said something seemingly innocuous. Springfield Underground, an Erlen Group Company is a commercial industrial park with the advantage of underground storage. All rights reserved. Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). 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. 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. A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. The air is cool and the barroom massive almost cathedral-like. There are so many incredible abandoned businesses in Missouri. According to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the space was once also a limestone mine. This is Dan Callahan. Fortunately, the rock here is soft enough to scratch something out without a lot of effort. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. 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. 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. Cave Tours | Missouri State Parks MALONE: So if you wanted to sell cheese to the government, Bob would show up with this, like, hollow rod called a cheese trier. I mean ASCHEBROCK: We had cheese in every cold storage in the United States, including the caves in Kansas that were full of that stuff. That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. If you loved visiting this stunning spot, take a trip to Fisher Cave in Meramec State Park. Gastro Obscura covers the worlds most wondrous food and drink. In 2016, dairy farmers resorted to simply dumping 43 million gallons of milk down the drain. DUFFIN: But cheese just doesn't travel well. However, when Prohibition was enacted in 1919 via the 18th Amendment, the alcohol purveyor shut its doors. Does the government own 1.3 billion pounds of cheese? - WMAZ 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. G. DEP: (Rapping) Can't buy trees with government cheese. I am in an old, converted limestone mine. sign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. MALONE: And so our country has a tradition of programs to help farmers. NOVAKOVIC: You've got two levers you can pull on. CALLAHAN: So it'd be all the way to the ceiling. It can fit a train car. Ever wonder what its like to work underground? Lawmakers worried that any blow to the nations dairy farmers could lead to drastic shortages down the line.