The U.S. government, specifically the USDA, is storing billions of pounds of cheese in Missouri caves. But why?
Modern Farmer explains that, in part, it has to do with the fact that milk alone doesn’t store well for very long. But the other explanation has to do with manipulating and controlling the markets.
Initially, the purpose was to stabilize the markets while providing farmers a dependable income. But as the USDA stockpiled millions upon millions of pounds of milk, cheese and butter, they found they’d simply replaced one problem with another.
All told, the government now has 1.5 billion pounds of cheese and 355 million pounds of butter, along with incidentals such as 211 million pounds of pecans and 1 billion pounds of french fries.
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