Why does the U.S. have a billion-pound stash of cheese?

714 Million Barrel Petroleum Reserve? Sure. But the U.S. Also has a 700,000 ton Cheese Reserve!

A dairy farmer with baby cows



Cheese mountains, milk lakes, and other surprising stockpiles


On the surface, Springfield, Missouri, looks like an ordinary city. Yet underneath, in a containment facility hidden in the hollows of former limestone mines, lie stacks upon stacks of industrial barrels. Their contents: hundreds of thousands of pounds of cheese.

This immense mound of dairy is only part of the 1.4 billion pounds the U.S. government has amassed over the last century. Essentially all of this is in the form of commodity cheese, a highly processed product sometimes referred to as “government cheese.” 

As bizarre as the American cheese mountain may be, it’s far from the only gastronomic stockpile scattered around the globe. Some have become peculiar points of national pride: When the Swiss government announced that it would do away with the country's 15,000-tonne coffee stash, the public outcry was immediate. 

Other food reserves have become politically weaponized or endlessly ridiculed. As The Washington Post reported in 1981, one USDA official suggested that the most practical option would be for the U.S. government to just fling its cheese hoard into the sea. 

Here are some of the largest—and strangest—caches of food in the world.


The United States’ Cheese Mountain
Demand for dairy in the U.S. has plummeted 42 percent since 1975, but that hasn’t stopped American farmers from producing more and more of it. Over the years, the industry has found all sorts of ways to get rid of its excess supply, from dumping 43 million gallons of milk to stockpiling cheese.

“The reason why the dairy industry gets such preferential treatment is its status as this uncontested food in the diet,” says Dr. Andrea Wiley, author of Re-Imagining Milk. With the rise of refrigeration in the early 1900s, the dairy industry consolidated and grew more powerful. 

“Basically the dairy industry was looking to expand its market, and the USDA was looking to expand the agricultural economy, and they become very intertwined,” Wiley says.

By the 1930s and ‘40s, milk was touted as essential for both growing children and adults. “Leading up to the Second World War, dairy was used in this very patriotic way—strengthening our bodies to fight the war,” Wiley says. “Then in the wake of the Second World War, [demand for milk] began to decline. So you have this super robust dairy industry, but the market can’t absorb it.” 

In 1949, the Agricultural Act allowed a government agency to buy up dairy products to stabilize prices. Within 30 years, a modest stash ballooned to more than 500 million pounds of cheese. Under the Reagan Administration, the USDA dumped 30 million pounds of commodity cheese on welfare programs and into school lunches.

Yet this Special Dairy Distribution Program barely made a dent. Partnerships with fast-food companies like Taco Bell and Domino’s—which a government agency paid millions to make cheesier products—helped, but still weren’t enough. 

In 2016, the government scooped up another $20 million worth of cheese and the stockpile grew larger still under the Trump Administration. Today, cheese mountain is bigger than ever.

“We’re still dealing with wartime policies [even though] we haven’t had a World War in over 70 years,” Wiley says. “They’re kind of just stuck with a lot of really bad cheese.”

Europe’s Butter Mountains and Milk Lakes

Europe has also been propping up its dairy industry for decades, to the extent that it's been a sticking point for conservative British politicians from Margaret Thatcher to various Brexiteers. By 1984, outrage over government-subsidized “butter mountains” and “milk lakes” led lawmakers to introduce a dairy cap.

Much like America’s cheese mountain, the European Union’s mountains and lakes of dairy aren’t literal. Instead, most of the milk lakes exist in the form of sacks upon sacks of dehydrated skim milk powder languishing in warehouses in Germany, Belgium, and France. 

While the EU swore they’d put a stop to this, these stockpiles have still grown at times. In the wake of a market crisis in 2015, the Agriculture Commission doled out more than €1 billion in aid to dairy farmers, approximately €640 million of which went to purchase skim milk powder.

Predictably, people were not happy. Politicians vowed to get rid of it and, for the time being at least, most of the supplies have dwindled. Now the wine lakes, on the other hand …

China’s Frozen Pork Reserve
In 2020, China consumed 40.3 million metric tonnes of pork—more than double than the entire European Union. Not only is the country the planet’s largest consumer of pork, but it’s also its largest producer. 

China’s pork industry is so economically critical that the government hangs onto a sizable cache in order to keep prices consistent. When prices dropped earlier this year, the government declared it would buy up extra supply from farmers at a fixed rate, adding 38,000 metric tonnes to its frozen pork reserve in March.

But this meaty mountain works as a stabilizing force in the other direction as well. For instance, a 2018 outbreak of African swine fever dealt a $130 billion blow to the industry. To help make up for the decreased supply, in 2020, the government released a staggering 670,000 metric tonnes of its supply into the market over 38 drops.

Canada’s Maple Syrup Reserve
Of course Canada has a Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve. Quebec is responsible for 73 percent of the world’s maple syrup, more than half of which winds up in the United States. And unlike a moldering pile of cheese, the saccharine stash is treated like liquid gold. 

It’s so valuable, in fact, that thieves made off with 9,571 barrels—or 2,700 metric tonnes—of the stuff in 2012. The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, as it came to be known, amounted to $18 million in pilfered tree sap. 

Not all Canadian maple syrup harvesters are thrilled about the government’s policies, which strictly regulate how much product they can sell. Still, that extra supply comes in handy. In 2021, after an alarmingly low harvest, the government released more than 22,600 metric tonnes of maple syrup from its precious supply to make up the difference. 

Fortunately, there’s still plenty to go around. Canada’s maple syrup trove is vast, with dimensions equivalent to five football fields. Given that climate change is expected to impact maple syrup production, those supplies may soon be more valuable than ever.
A large bunch of unripe bananas hangs from a tree

Sacred Granaries, Kasbahs, and Feasts in Morocco

On this Gastro Obscura trip, you will participate in North African culinary traditions and see the historic sites that shaped them, including an overlooked wonder of the world, the Amtoudi Granary, a fortress-like food vault and an early form of banking that once served as a crossroads of culinary tradition for the Berber people.Book Today

Landing On The Moon

Moonfire The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 features hundreds of images from NASA vaults and magazine archives that document the successful moon landing including the above photograph of astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin setting up an experiment on the lunar surface

Today's selection -- from Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by Catherine Thimmesh. With alarms sounding and fuel running out, Neil Armstrong came within seconds of crashing the Apollo 11 landing module:

"BAM! Suddenly, the master alarm in the lunar mod­ule rang out for attention with all the racket of a fire bell going off in a broom closet. 'Program alarm,' astronaut Neil Armstrong called out from the LM ('LEM') in a clipped but calm voice. 'It's a "twelve-oh-two."'

"'1202,' repeated astronaut Buzz Aldrin. They were 33,500 feet from the moon.

"Translation: We have a problem! What is it?

"Do we land? Do we abort? Are we in danger? Are we blowing up? Tell us what to do. Hurry!

"In Mission Control, the words TWELVE OH TWO tumbled out of the communications loop. The weight of the problem landed with a thud in the lap of twenty-six-year-old Steve Bales. Bales, call name GUIDO, was the mission con­troller for guidance and navigation.

"A moment earlier (after some worries with navigation problems), Bales had relaxed with a deep breath, thinking at last: We're going to make it. Now, wham! His mind, again sent rac­ing; his blood rushing; his heart fluttering; his breath -- still as stone. But he wasn't alone.

"A voice on another loop -- belonging to one of Bales's backroom support guys, twenty-four-year-old computer whiz kid Jack Garman -- burst in to make sure Bales was aware of the 1202. A quick glance at a master list told them a 1202 was executive overflow. Simply put, the computer had too much to do. But program alarms, as Garman knew firsthand, were built into the computer solely to test the software. By their very definition, they weren't alarms that should happen in flight. (During development, these alarms were testing computing cycles.)

"Yet there it was: 1202. An unreal reality. First, stunned inactivity at Steve Bales's console.

"Then, a bombardment of thoughts: What's the problem? Do they land? Do they abort? Are they in danger? Are they blowing up? Tell them what to do. Hurry!

"Bales scoured his guidance and navigation data. Searching. Sifting. Sorting.

"Flight Director Kranz plucked details from a flood of incoming information. 

"Juggling. Judging.

"Backroom guy Jack Garman (call name AGC) consulted his handwritten program alarm list, mandated by Gene Kranz (and neatly stashed beneath the Plexiglas on his console).

"CapCom Charlie Duke (or Capsule Communicator, the voice link between Mission Control and the spacecraft) mused aloud: 'It's the same one we had [in the simulator].'

"And indeed, in one of the very last simulations, or practice sessions, before liftoff of Apollo 11, mission controllers found themselves stumped when faced with a sim­ilar program alarm. While training with the backup crew, SimSup Jay Honeycutt (or Simulation Supervisor) had asked software expert Jack Garman to concoct some sort of computer glitch for the controllers to solve. So Garman remembered the hidden software testing alarms and threw out one of those. It wasn't a 1202, but a similar type -- one that supposedly should never happen in actual flight (because the situ­ations that would trigger those alarms had presumably already been removed from the software).

"During that simulation, that test, GUIDO Steve Bales had called for an abort -- an immediate end to the landing. They stopped the pretend -- land on the moon. But it was the wrong call. While the computer was definitely having difficulties, it would still have been safe to continue the landing because the LM's criti­cal functions were still working.

"'And so [Flight Director] Gene Kranz, who's the real hero of that situation, sat us all down and said, "You WILL document every single program alarm, every single possible one that can happen" and what we should do about it if it happens,' recalled AGC Jack Garman, explaining how they ended up with a written record of those 'nonexistent' program alarms.

"Sometimes, after the bugs have all been removed during development, programmers might go back in and remove all their testing alarms. But often, it's considerably more efficient (and cheaper) to just leave them buried unseen, deep down in the software.

"'So I remember,' continued Jack Garman, 'going back to my little corner with my friends -- my col­leagues -- and we wrote them all down. Wrote them on a sheet of paper (twenty or thirty of these alarms that were not supposed to happen), taped this list to a piece of cardboard, and stuck it under­neath the Plexiglas on the console.'

"As they would discover later, though it seemed an impossible situation, it wasn't a false alarm. Executive overflow meant the computer was too busy. And the computer was too busy (it turned out) because a switch had been mistakenly left on.

"'Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm,' said Armstrong from the lunar module as it contin­ued its rapid -- and very real -- descent to the moon.

"'he astronauts had no idea what these alarms were,' explained Garman. 'Absolutely no idea. These alarms were software development alarms. They'd never seen them. Never studied them. Never had them. No one in Mission Control knew what they were, not Kranz or anybody.'

"GUIDO Steve Bales determined the computer had not lost track of the LM's altitude or speed -- critical for avoiding a lunar crash -- and still had its guidance control, also essential. Flight Director Gene Kranz determined, with input from his controllers, that all other systems were functioning within acceptable parameters. AGC Jack Garman concluded that as long as the alarm didn't recur, they were okay.

"Garman prompted GUIDO Steve Bales, who gave the 'Go' to Flight Director Kranz, who in turn gave the command to CapCom Charlie Duke. CapCom relayed the message to Armstrong and Aldrin. 'We are Go on that alarm,' he told Neil and Buzz and the hundreds of others listening in on the loops. Not more than twenty seconds had passed from the time the 1202 was first called out.

"'Program alarm!' Buzz responded from the LM. 'Same one.'

"Garman clarified to Bales that as long as the alarm was not ,constant -- not continuous -- they were okay. The rest of Bales's information looked good. He told the Flight Director, 'We’re Go.' Kranz 'went around the horn' -- polling his controllers for their status reports -- they were all 'Go.' Kranz told his voice link to the astronauts, 'CapCom, we are Go for landing.'

"Aldrin acknowledged the good-to-Go. They were 3,000 feet from the moon now. 'Program alarm!' Buzz called. '1201.'

"'When it occurred again a few minutes later,' Jack Garman recalled, 'a different alarm but it was the same type ... I remember distinctly yelling -- by this time yelling, you know, in the loop here -- 'SAME TYPE [in other words, Hang/ tight!] and he [GUIDO Steve Bales] yells 'SAME TYPE!’ I could hear my voice echoing. Then the CapCom says, 'SAME TYPE!' Boom, boom, boom, going up.'

"Their voices were rapid-fire. Crisp. Assured. There was no hesitation. But you could practically hear the adrenaline rushing in their vocal tones, practically hear the thumping of their hearts as the alarms continued to pop up.

"Then the Eagle was down to 2,000 feet. Another alarm! 1202. Mission Control snapped, Roger, no sweat. And again, 1202! Then the Eagle was down to 700 feet, then 500. Now, they were hovering -- helicopter-like -- presumably scouting a landing spot.

"In hundreds of practice simulations, they would have landed by now. But Mission Control couldn't see the perilous crater and boulder field confronting Neil and Buzz. Those things, coupled with the distraction of the alarms, had slowed them down.

"More than eleven minutes had passed since they started down to the moon. There was only twelve minutes' worth of fuel in the descent stage."

Team Moon How 400000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
 
author: Catherine Thimmesh  
title: Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon  
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children  
date: Copyright 2006 Catherine Thimmesh  
page(s): 18-24