If you’ve been on Facebook or Reddit recently, you may have come across a surprising yet fairly believable factoid stating that the U.S. government stores around 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in limestone caverns in Missouri.
Although there’s some truth in there, the Internet seems to have given Missouri an outsized role in the cheese storage situation—and overlooked the fact that the cheese is mainly owned by private companies.
Some of this cheesy story appears to have been conflated with the historic dairy surplus that resulted in the “government cheese” of the 1980s. In the late 1970s, after a decade of economic tumult and high inflation, government subsidies to the dairy industry resulted in a huge increase in production. Thus, the early 1980s saw a large cheese surplus (over 500 million pounds), which became the focus of a Reagan administration effort to distribute this surplus to Americans in need.
To prevent the cheese from spoiling or going moldy (though some of it did, in fact, become moldy), it was cooked and melted in a process that helped preserve it, making it far more transportable. The resulting product, a 5-lb block of yellowish processed cheddar (similar to the American cheese sold in stores), was widely known as government cheese. It was stored in over 150 warehouses, including subterranean facilities, in 35 U.S. states before distribution. An estimated 300 million pounds of government cheese were provided through various assistance programs.
Returning to the present, according to various versions of a story that began circulating online in 2024, 1.4 billion pounds of “government cheese” are currently stored in underground caves in Missouri, chosen for their large size and naturally agreeable climate conditions. It is true that Missouri is home to numerous underground storage facilities leased by private companies; however, the owners of these facilities have rebuffed the suggestion that they are “hiding” over a billion pounds of surplus processed cheese.
According to Atlas Obscura, 1.4 billion pounds represents the total amount of cheese in cold storage across the United States, the vast majority of which is owned privately. Some is indeed kept in Missouri. For example, Kraft Heinz and the Dairy Farmers of America keep a large cache of cheese in converted limestone quarries near Springfield, Missouri, which is perhaps the source of the viral confusion.
Cheesy but true:
- In 2023, Americans consumed nearly 42.3 pounds (19.1 kg) of cheese per person.
- Dairy products continue to be embedded into federal assistance efforts, from milk in school lunches to SNAP and WIC benefits to monthly cheese distribution for low-income seniors as part of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP).
- Missouri has over 7,000 limestone caves, ably earning its nickname as “the Cave State.” Crystal Caves and Fantastic Caverns, both natural caves near Springfield, Missouri, are among the most popular tourist attractions in the Ozarks.
- Interested in caves and cheese? You can visit the caves where cheddar cheese first originated (and where some is still aged) in the village of Cheddar in Somerset, southwest England.
