"The story of “government cheese” started with Jimmy Carter’s campaign promise to support the price of milk (specifically, to support a $0.06/gallon price increase). Consider it a rare campaign promise that happened to be kept, though it wasn’t completely thought through.
"Enforcing a higher price for something commonly either means restricting supply or increasing demand. In this case, supporting the price increase meant that the government had to buy milk en masse. What happens when you buy lots of milk? You discover that it does not keep well. That in turn led to the milk being converted into other forms that last longer: cheese, primarily. The other benefit of cheese being its greater density — producing one pound of cheese requires roughly 10 pounds of milk.
"But then what to do with the cheese? At first, the government just stored the cheese, where it apparently filled most of the large-scale cold storage in the US. (Rough cost for one year of the milk price support program (1981): $2 billion paid to dairy farmers in price support and $120 million in storage.)"
https://unintendedconsequenc.es/food-from-thought/
"The story of “government cheese” started with Jimmy Carter’s campaign promise to support the price of milk (specifically, to support a $0.06/gallon price increase). Consider it a rare campaign promise that happened to be kept, though it wasn’t completely thought through.
"Enforcing a higher price for something commonly either means restricting supply or increasing demand. In this case, supporting the price increase meant that the government had to buy milk en masse. What happens when you buy lots of milk? You discover that it does not keep well. That in turn led to the milk being converted into other forms that last longer: cheese, primarily. The other benefit of cheese being its greater density — producing one pound of cheese requires roughly 10 pounds of milk.
"But then what to do with the cheese? At first, the government just stored the cheese, where it apparently filled most of the large-scale cold storage in the US. (Rough cost for one year of the milk price support program (1981): $2 billion paid to dairy farmers in price support and $120 million in storage.)" https://unintendedconsequenc.es/food-from-thought/