Why The US Government Has Been Stockpiling Cheese For Nearly 100 Years

The United States has hoarded billions of pounds of cheese for several decades. The original idea after World War II was to subsidize the American farmer and ensure food was always available. At the time, the price of dairy products fluctuated so wildly that the milk and cheese supply became unpredictable. President Harry Truman stepped in with the 1949 Dairy Product Price Support Program, essentially buying and holding dairy products until the market conditions were right to resell. Then, the economic crisis in the 1970s caused inflation to jump from 5.5% to 14%. President Jimmy Carter promised farmers he would help, which meant buying dairy products in record numbers. The government converted the raw dairy into powdered milk, cheese, and butter and put them into cold storage.

By the 1980s, however, the government had more cheese than they could sell and the cheese had sat so long that it was molding. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan's solution was the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program to give the excess cheese (along with butter, peanut butter, and other overstock) to Americans at risk of food insecurity. However, the program distributed only 30 million pounds of the 560 million pounds of surplus cheese.  In 2016 and again in 2020, the USDA started distributing stockpiled cheese and dairy products through food banks and other agencies that help the unhoused and people experiencing food insecurity. The stockpile will continue to be an option when the country needs it.

Contrary to the rumors, not all cheese stockpiled by the government (specifically the USDA) is publicly owned, and there's more to it than milk and cheese. As of September 2024, the U.S. cold storage includes frozen fruit, fruit juice, poultry, eggs, beef, and potatoes. These food stockpiles were rumored to be in underground caves in Missouri. In reality, stockpiled government cheese and other foods are stored all over the U.S.

The government has tried some creative ways to get rid of all that cheese, but the stockpile has continued to grow as dairy consumption has dropped. President Bill Clinton tried to alleviate the cheese hoard through Dairy Management Inc. It's a marketing and strategy agency within the USDA that had a $140 million budget to use in figuring out how to get rid of the surplus of cheese. The agency funneled money to ad campaigns like "Got Milk?" and to fast food companies for new cheesier and dairy-based food options. This was the origin of Pizza Hut's stuff crust pizzas, Taco Bell's whipped freezes, and other dairy-based options found on Wendy's, McDonald's, and Burger King's menus. None of these efforts have succeeded in reducing the cheese stockpile, however.