Millions Of Pounds Of Cheese Stored In Underground Missouri Cave — Here's Why

Area 51 has nothing on this secret cave. Buckle up because it's nacho ordinary tale! Cheesy puns aside this cave is something straight out of the movies. Millions of pounds of cheese are stored in this underground Missouri cave. The USDA has kept these cheeses and dairy products in caves for decades. However, the reasons why may surprise you.

Secret Underground Missouri Cave

While this story seems impossible, Andrew M. Novakovi?, an agricultural economics professor at Cornell University, said that these caves are definitely real. He told Food & Wine that these caverns "were once enormous man-made caves that were dug for mining purposes."  He continued that "once the mining operations played out, the remaining system of caverns were recognized as an opportunity for climate-controlled storage with massive holding capacity and access."

In addition to the massive holding capacity, the NY Post shares that "the caverns have extremely tall ceilings that can accommodate large tractor trailers and can run into the millions of square feet, meant for large equipment to easily drive in and around to drop off their loads.

So this underground Missouri cave has all the space, but what made the government fill it with millions of pounds of cheese? A news report claims it all started with the Agricultural Act of 1949. That act "gave the Depression Era Commodity Credit Corp., or CCC, the authority to buy dairy products like cheese from farmers to help stabilize prices."

Then, dairy products were in shortage in the 1970s. The NY Post shares that "President Jimmy Carter allowed the dairy industry to go full speed ahead on crafting milk products around 1977." By doing this, the government poured "2 billion into the dairy industry over the next four years — which led to a surplus of cheese in the 1980s.

Millions Of Pounds Of Cheese With Nowhere To Go

While cheese is delicious, having a surplus and other dairy products can be taxing. That is because dairy products go bad quickly. That same news report covers how much of a disaster the dairy industry was after Jimmy Carter. Then, Ronald Reagan took office.

It claims, "It cost the government about $1 million a day in interest and storage cost just to keep the cheese." It continues that the government had so much cheese that they were considering dumping some into the ocean just to get rid of it. Dairy farmers were frantic as their cheese was rotting.

"We've got 60 million of these that the government owns. It's moldy, it's deteriotrating...we can't find a marekt for it, we can't sell it, and we're looking to give some of it away."

Enter the secret underground Missouri cave. While the government gave the poor cheese and served it in school lunches, there was still a surplus. Where could they put the millions of pounds of cheese?

America Cheese And Missouri Caves To The Rescue

Novakovi? further elaborated to Food & Wine. Once the government learned they had to use it or lose it regarding the surplus of cheese, they came to a quick determination. They created what is now called 'American cheese', aka super processed cheese. While they were able to create a very "standardized and transportable loaf of American cheese," they still had no place to store it.

Once news of the Missouri cave came about, it seemed like the perfect place. Despite its massive height and storing capacity it is also "amenable to climate control." Novakovi? says, "The natural underground temperature is in the low 60s with moderate humidity." This made it work well for storing millions of pounds of cheese. Let's not be too cheesy about it, but this story is one for the ages.  It's un-brie-lievable!