view the rest of the comments
Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
For anyone curious about this, go google “cheese caves”. The US government has massive caverns full of cheese. The government keeps buying cheese to subsidize the dairy industry, and ensure they keep enough dairy cows around.
But this also means they have a metric fuckload of cheese, and no way to get rid of it. They can’t just give it away to the public or sell it at cost, because that would crash the price, which would harm the farmers, which would defeat the entire purpose of the subsidy in the first place. So they just lock it in a cave. The government has entire caves that are just packed full of cheese. It’ll never be eaten, and is simply left there to age.
I believe one of the biggest reasons for even keeping the cheese around at all (instead of just doing something like tossing it into a volcano) is so they can use it as a strategic food reserve during war or famine. If, for instance, the government suddenly needs to feed a much larger army, it can start tapping into that massive food reserve simply by opening the cheese caves and pulling out the (now very aged) cheese. But that’s a very large “what if”. Or maybe there’s some big disease that wipes out the majority of the dairy cows. The government would be able to keep shelves stocked while farmers work on replenishing their herds.
Government cheese is called that for a reason. Anyways I totally agree with you but it's interesting so I'm just providing a link for anyone who is interested in learning more.
Isn't there the thing where the cheese needs to age by just sitting there, the farmer needs cash flow, so the cheese is put up as collateral. (But yes there is government cheese too.)