Why The US Government Has A Secret Cheese Cave

You may keep a lot of cheese in your fridge, but no cheese stock beats the U.S. government's store of 1.4 billion pounds of cheese, hidden away deep under the surface of Missouri.

In the 1970s, the U.S. faced a challenging economy, including a nationwide shortage of dairy products. The situation led to the government intervening and building the cheese cave.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter injected $2 billion into the struggling dairy industry

and bought up any milk that

went unsold, saving many

dairy farmers from financial ruin.

The government turned this milk into products like butter, milk powder, and cheese. In the early '80s, the government had over 500 million pounds of cheese stored across 35 states.

At the end of 1981, President Ronald Reagan created the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program to distribute this stock of "government cheese" to low-income communities.

Dairy continues to be produced in excess today. However,

most of the 1.4 billion pounds

of cheese that’s currently in government storage is actually owned by private companies.

The government's practice of stockpiling and distributing cheese and other dairy products helped countless hungry families and the entire American industry in the process.