It sounds amazing. How we got to this point is a long story, and it starts during a national dairy shortage in the 1970s. JAY-Z: (Rapping) After that government cheese, we eatin' steak. I was hired as a cheese grader. MALONE: Today's episode was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, Nick Fountain and Rhaina Cohen. Kansas City, MO 64112. Cheese Caves Myth: Debunked. Like, this is the original bridge to nowhere. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. ASCHEBROCK: Nope. In a blog post by writer Libbie Bond, the Deans are described as among the first in America to visualize abandoned mines as commercial real estate.. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The retail price of milk is going up more than 6 cents a gallon - soon. MALONE: Karen's doing the dance. The Missouri River town is known for its charming main drag and castle-like college, Park University. 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. Now heres a story that comes full circle. MALONE: The government is creating a price floor. AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: The White House is coming to the aid of farmers hurt by its own hard-line trade policies. The government would buy as much milk as it took to move that price. But there is a chance that the government may be in the business of government cheese again. Want more adventures like this? 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. DUFFIN: Hello. Lets just call it tunnel vision. Rather, the "caves" are part of a 3.2-million-square-foot warehouse under part of Springfield.. MALONE: Right. The bar stools are original and survived some of the flooding. And he says the government could not just release a flood of surplus cheese onto the market because it would crush cheese producers. You took away my customers. NOVAKOVIC: (Laughter) That was the unintended consequence that was fun. MALONE: Andy is still in the dairy world. I can tell you what we had to reject it for - flat, bitter, yeasty, malty, old milk, fruity MALONE: That sounds lovely. Get more stories delivered right to your email. It is an enormous artificial cave situated above the Missouri River. It's got its flaws. NOVAKOVIC: Well, I think there's two basic lessons. The best hidden gems and little known destinations - straight to your inbox. Anyway, whats weird is that Peters talks about working beneath Park University in a limestone cave. (SOUNDBITE OF KAZAM'S "ROMANTIQUE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. Secretive Experiences Sample spirits made by S.D. As a busy mother of one crazy kid, two cats, and two geckos, they write whenever there is spare time. Lemp Brewery, located in St. Louis, is another unique place to explore. Copyright 2018 NPR. PHIL HARTMAN: (As character) Matt, we're ready for you. is cottonseed oil safe for nut allergy NOVAKOVIC: (Laughter) Well, that was the unintended consequence that was fun, but the bite came in terms of how much it cost for that opportunity. This story was first published in KCUR's Creative Adventure newsletter. On a given day, kids scramble over its playground, neighbors walk their dogs through its green acres, and teens meet for pick-up games on its soccer fields and volleyball courts. Metallic, sour, whey taint, weedy, onion, barny, lipase and sulfide. But remember; the raw ingredients were grade A cheddar cheese, some of it personally certified by Bob Aschebrock. MALONE: I'm Kenny Malone. But this was not putting even a dent in the surplus. 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. KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) A mother is in custody after her two children were found barefoot, dirty, and living in a wooden shipping crate in an underground cave part of a massive subterranean network carved out beneath Kansas City. The complex contains almost 7 miles of illuminated, paved roads and several miles of railroad track. 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. Even the beverage distributors, they had cheese in the storage. Starting in 1995, a government nonprofit has promoted a pro-dairy policy - in direct opposition to the Department of Agriculture and government nutritionists. Thanks for listening. Each week, KCUR's Adventure! Family-run for more than a century, this pizzeria makes a unique mustard pie. 2023 Atlas Obscura. 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. MALONE: For a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you cannot overstate how influential government cheese became. In 1976, Jimmy Carter got on a stage and said something seemingly innocuous. 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.. You cansign up to receive stories like this in your inbox every Tuesday. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the largest domestic reserve of cheese of all varieties, including cheddar, Swiss and American . ASCHEBROCK: And that's what you grade. SubTroplis is definitely one of the most incredible underground places in Missouri. MALONE: So if you wanted to sell cheese to the government, Bob would show up with this, like, hollow rod called a cheese trier. You could destroy the surplus, but that looks pretty bad. Limestone caves in the Kansas City area have been used to store immigration records for years. This one-of-a-kind display showcases a wide variety of hair art, historic hair pieces, and more. Myths surround the cave, as they do with many of Missouri's caverns. And they go to their bosses. Although other facilities like SubTropolis exist, there are none on the same such scale. 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. A cave in Kansas formerly used to store government cheese. The Federal Government stores tons of surplus cheese and other dairy products in the mines. Government cheese, as the orange blocks of commodity cheese came to be called, wasnt exactly popular with all of its recipients. You need a hacksaw. DUFFIN: It is a case study in what happens when price controls run full speed into the realities of the market. Production has increased 3% in the past year, and 29% in the last decade. Deep under Springfield, Missouri, lies a cheese cave of industrial proportions, a 2-million-square-foot refrigerated warehouse called Springfield Underground.Since 2008, Kraft Foods has rented . UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A state official estimated 300,000 people will get a taste of today's cheese. Want to explore Waldo? In the 2000s, you could still take an official tour and potentially find a way in for a D.I.Y. ASCHEBROCK: It was 10 times better than - I hate - you know, Velveeta is OK. 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. With these historical details in mind, whos to say there isnt a tunnel beneath 9th & State that was used to ferry booze between Missouri and Kansas? Search Query Show Search Podcasts & Shows Over the course of the decade, inflation in the U.S. skyrocketed from 5.5 percent up to 14 percent. The 43,000,000 square feet structure is owned by Americold and is primarily used for food production. The National Archives' Central Plains regional archives is moving into the heart of Kansas City's cultural and historic area. More Info Directions. Born from tragedy, the remote national park is bringing tourism and other changes. 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 . 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. Share your experiences in the comment section below. SubTropolis is a 55,000,000-square-foot (5,100,000m2), 1,100-acre (4.5km2) 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. San Francisco is one of three cities in which needy people lined up to get the surplus cheese. A large portion is also owned by companies, who . A set of caves along Interstate 435 offered a convenient cold-storage option. We are @planetmoney. If the girl's MALONE: Government cheese also shows up in tons of songs. 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 . And do you, like, smack your forehead? DUFFIN: Just this week, we finally learned some of the details. NOVAKOVIC: Well, probably, you know, close to a hundred percent are able. Yes, that is a lot of cheese. 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 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. Love Kansas? Though its more a part of Midtown than Downtown, the space once known as Deans Downtown Underground is definitely down there. The main brewing cellar, now outfitted with seating areas, a bar and raised stage, reaches 55 feet underground. Youll love exploring this amazing geological wonder. Which makes for a thriving underground business community, as unnerving as a giant hole in the side of a bluff may be. Sign up for our newsletter and enter to win the second edition of our book. CALLAHAN: So you'd be - it's 17 feet, 16 feet. DUFFIN: Like, hey, people of America, wouldn't you like to drink more milk? Last year, the U.S. produced nearly 12 billion pounds of cheese -- an all-time high, according to the USDA. No purchase necessary. 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. Posted on June 8, 2022 ; in pete davidson first snl episode; by It can fit a train car. 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. Go to the shop Go to the shop. India and Bhutan's yak herders face steep challenges. It's going up because the government MALONE: And do you - you hear of it. Either one should get you a higher price. When maple syrup supplies run low, Canada taps into its strategic reserve. And Congress is like wait - no, we also love the farmers. They believe it was once part of the historic Heim Brewery, whose East Bottoms bottling plant theyd been renovating. (SOUNDBITE OF FREDERIC AUGER'S "SUNBURN"). This restaurant serves wood-fired fare served in a natural cave with a live spring. Well, its called SubTropolis, is owned by Hunt Midwest yes, the same Hunt family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs and is wide enough to hold 42 Arrowhead Stadiums. Theres even a train track winding through the colossal complex, and many, many exit signs. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The great cheese giveaway began today in California. DUFFIN: This was not just political pandering. We also suggest picking up a digital hygrometer to measure cheese humidity, whether you're simply storing cheese in your Grotto or having fun with home cheesemaking. ASCHEBROCK: Will eat any cheese. I mean, we had cheese in every cold storage in the United States, including the caves in Kansas that were full of that stuff. ANDY NOVAKOVIC: Oh, yeah. Missouri has more than 7,000 caves under its ground, though fewer than 20 are easily accessible to most people. MALONE: Within five years, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen. DUFFIN: The thing about price controls is that once you start them, they are really, really hard to unwind. 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? 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. And so they pass a law saying that they want the price of milk to go up automatically every six months. He's been working here since the 1970s, since the cheese debacle. Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. SNOOP DOGG: Martha's never had a bite of government cheese in her life. Get more stories delivered right to your email. Cave cheese is any cheese that is ripened within a cave or cave-like environment, where consistently low temperatures and high levels of humidity are perfect for supporting the chemical reactions that take place in the cheese aging process. Our operators are standing by. 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. Accuracy and availability may vary. In 1887, J. Rieger & Co. distillers of top-notch whiskey, vodka and gin put down roots in the Livestock Exchange district of West Bottoms. MALONE: This is a cave full of cheese in Kansas City. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. Imagine watching lines of people wait around to be handed a giant block of moldy, bright orange cheese. The government has tended to stay away from buying cheese as a solution. MALONE: He and his colleagues are drowning in cheese. The New York Times declared that the bill would give poor Americans a slice of the cheese surplus.. DUFFIN: This is a basic supply-and-demand problem. Government buys more 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. MALONE: So a campaign promise - that's what we call those. BOB ASCHEBROCK: Yes. 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. Have you fallen in love with amateur spelunking? No, it isn't money but actually cheese, 1.4 billion pounds of it to be exact, stored in a cave in Missouri. 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. Long situated in a warehouse-style facility far from the major business district of Kansas . ASCHEBROCK: But then we had the issue of storing the stuff. He spent 30 years testing and tasting cheese for the United States government. 1 flavor defect he had to look out for was acidity. Even after the demand for dairy declined in the wake of World War II, the program functioned reasonably well for years. He says the government was buying powdered milk, butter and cheddar cheese - only grade-A cheddar, though. That's because it maintains the proper humidity that cheese needs to ripen to peak flavor and texture, just like a real cheese cave. NOVAKOVIC: So it's fundamental economics. What is cave cheese? It was created by digging into the Bethany Falls limestone mine and is, in places, 160 feet beneath the surface. MALONE: Even if that bite just looks like some delicious cheese? And the resulting demand just pushes the price of milk up. And he says getting rid of caves full of grade-A government cheese was an economically tricky issue. HOME; INTERIORS; EXTERIORS; OFFICE & PORTRAITS; PUBLICITY/EVENTS; CONSTRUCTION; INFO We hope so. Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding. Cheese-makers buy more milk. To do so, however, required a serious upfront investment. Lamar Hunt, the late founder of the Kansas City Chiefs, is perhaps the most well-known of the cave developers. The easier solution - maybe - the government could just start buying a ton of milk themselves. The government was buying 1 in every 4 pounds of the country's cheddar cheese. There's something instinctive in us that makes us want to leave a mark on the world. So they created a brand-new special program to give the cheese away through food banks. . Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. YOU CAN, Argentina's El Impenetrable Opens Up New Options For Its People, How Laos Got Its First Buffalo Dairy Farm, How the Capones Strong-Armed Their Way Into the Dairy Business, The French Art of Cheese-Label Collecting, The Last Cheesemakers of the Eastern Himalayas, Show & Tell: Inside a House of Hot Sauce With Vic Clinco, The Secret to China's Bounciest Meatballs. Roanoke Cave . MALONE: The government cheese caves started to empty out. 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. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. 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. DUFFIN: And when news gets out that the government is filling a cave with cheese, the press goes nuts because this is exactly what people think of when they think of a government program gone awry. An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. Jimmy Carter's campaign promise to help farmers in 1976 not only gave us government cheese but also milk mustaches. DUFFIN: In the pantheon of milk-related economic disasters, there is one that rises above the rest. honolulu police department records; spiritual meaning of the name ashley; mississippi election results 2021; charlie spring and nick nelson MALONE: The government asked economists, including Andy Novakovic, to figure out how it could get out of the cheese buying business without devastating the farmers they were trying to help in the first place. The government eventually tired of being involved in this . Central Plains Regional Archives Moves to Historic Downtown Location Spring 2009, vol. Makes sense, considering the natural limestone ledge bordering the river. 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. The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the worlds largest site of its kind. There are literally train tracks leading into it. Top editors give you the stories you want delivered right to your inbox each weekday. So these days, if the government wants to help farmers, what you'll generally hear about are direct subsidies as opposed to buying cheese. NOVAKOVIC: It's really hard to balance what you want to do socially or politically with what you can get away with economically. G. DEP: (Rapping) Can't buy trees with government 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? There are these massive columns, and it looks like something the "Lord Of The Rings" dwarves built. As recently as August of 2020, the Department of Agriculture announced the Cheese Purchase Program. MALONE: This is one of those slow-moving train wrecks that you can see coming from a mile away. Many tenants at . Caves are usually found underground. We've got 60 million of these that the government owns with mold. I am currently about 35 feet underground in an old converted limestone mine that is the size of 120 football fields. 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. MALONE: Right - very, very expensive cheese. Since that requires capital, the dairy industry starts consolidating, says Andrea Wiley, author of Re-Imagining Milk. Starting around the 1950s, investors started finding ways to use the abandoned underground space. However, when Prohibition was enacted in 1919 via the 18th Amendment, the alcohol purveyor shut its doors. MALONE: One part of the solution then was to gently get that milk supply down. Today, the government still buys and stores cheese for food assistance programs; however, only about 300 . 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. 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. ASCHEBROCK: I'm not running down Velveeta, but I'll tell you, the government processed loaf was 10 times - 100 times better. And Andy had a ringside seat to it. The 55,000,000-square-foot, 1,100-acre underground storage facility is believed to be the world's largest site of its kind. Springfield Underground, an Erlen Group Company is a commercial industrial park with the advantage of underground storage. There you go. MALONE: By this point, Jimmy Carter was out of office. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Help yourself. NOVAKOVIC: You can imagine the cheese company that's in the business of selling cheese is going to say, hey, what's the deal here? NOVAKOVIC: Yeah. OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. MALONE: Bob Aschebrock spent 30 years as a USDA cheese inspector. Hogwarts, who? JIMMY CARTER: Now, although I am a farmer, I'm not in favor of guaranteeing farmers a profit. MALONE: Novakovic says the government could have destroyed the cheese. Decades of propping up the dairy industryby buying up surplus milk and turning it into processed commodity cheesehad backfired, hard. And welcome to PLANET MONEY. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA AND SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY"). 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. Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. [3] The National Archives and Records Administration also leases space for a Federal Records Center. MARTHA STEWART: Where do you buy government cheese? DUFFIN: And if you're a cheese seller and you hear this - that someone is going to buy your cheese at this high price - you're like, well, I'm going to sell them my crappiest cheese at that price. Heap the flour on your countertop and make a well in the center. By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American. All rights reserved. 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. 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. Strong Distilling, the only known legal distillery operating in a cave, and catch a "Cave Concert" while you're there. 4701 Wyandotte Street. I am in an old, converted limestone mine. Just dont forget your pillar number. Stay up to date with what you want to know. This was generally the approach that we would use to support other kinds of farm industries. 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. There is currently about $85 million earmarked to buy dairy and distribute it to places like schools and food banks. 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. 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. MALONE: Government cheese became a symbol of a crappy government handout. NOVAKOVIC: So we have, you know, this immense surplus, and now you have the political problem. Government Cheese Over the years, the government has gravitated toward one method of unloading dairy surplus: giving it to the poor. A teeny bit was allowed but not too much. A NASA employee needing an area to test sensitive navigational instruments was among the first official cave occupants. All our area around here - everybody had cheese. Unlike corn or wheat, however, milk needed to be converted into more shelf-stable forms, specifically butter, dehydrated skim milk powder, and cheese. Dug into the Bethany Falls limestone mine, SubTropolis is, in places, 160 feet (49m) beneath the surface. Then, in the 1970s, everything started to go haywire. Like SubTropolis, the strangely sterile space is separated by humungous numbered pillars. Al and Ralph may have influenced food safety labeling and your pizzas cheese. DUFFIN: Finding a market for this stuff is in fact a pretty fascinating puzzle because getting rid of government surplus anything is an economically tricky thing. President Jimmy Carter wanted to help the dairy farmers. Known for its hiking trails (with Missouri River views), wineries and the McCormick distillery, Weston is also home to OMalleys, the oldest bar in Missouri. Leilas Hair Museum, located in Independence, is one of the most unusual places in Missouri. Jimmy Carter was running for president. And the United States Postal Service's Philatelic Sales Divison, the national distribution center for . It's deteriorating. But I am in favor of giving farmers an equal break. It also could have tried to send it overseas as foreign aid, like we do with other surplus commodities. NOVAKOVIC: The federal government wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with tanker loads of milk. MALONE: The government of the United States of America had caves full of cheddar cheese. Make sure to come up for fresh air, as well as bangers and mash. In second-stage of career life, this former college instructor enjoys contributing to OIYS, blogging, reading, and spending time with her kids. 41, no. government cheese caves kansas city

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