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American Cheese Surplus Reaches Record High
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there's a 1.4 billion-pound cheese surplus. "The glut, which at 900,000 cubic yards is the largest in U.S. history, means that there is enough cheese sitting in cold storage to wrap around the U.S. Capitol," reports NPR. Americans managed to consume nearly 37 pounds per capita in 2017, but that wasn't enough to reduce the surplus. From the report: The stockpile started to build several years ago, in large part because the pace of milk production began to exceed the rates of consumption, says Andrew Novakovic, professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University. Over the past 10 years, milk production has increased by 13 percent because of high prices. But what dairy farmers failed to realize was that Americans are drinking less milk. According to data from the USDA, Americans drank just 149 pounds of milk per capita in 2017, down from 247 pounds in 1975.
Suppliers turn that extra milk into cheese because it is less perishable and stays fresh for longer periods. But Americans are turning their noses up at those processed cheese slices and string cheese -- varieties that are a main driver of the U.S. cheese market -- in favor of more refined options, Novakovic tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson. Despite this shift, sales of mozzarella cheese, the single largest type of cheese produced and consumed in the U.S., remain strong, he says. Novakovic also notes that imported cheeses tend to cost more, so when people choose those, they buy less cheese overall. The growing surplus of American-made cheese and milk means that prices are declining. The current average price of whole milk is $15.12 per 100 pounds, which is much lower than the price required for dairy farmers to break even.
Suppliers turn that extra milk into cheese because it is less perishable and stays fresh for longer periods. But Americans are turning their noses up at those processed cheese slices and string cheese -- varieties that are a main driver of the U.S. cheese market -- in favor of more refined options, Novakovic tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson. Despite this shift, sales of mozzarella cheese, the single largest type of cheese produced and consumed in the U.S., remain strong, he says. Novakovic also notes that imported cheeses tend to cost more, so when people choose those, they buy less cheese overall. The growing surplus of American-made cheese and milk means that prices are declining. The current average price of whole milk is $15.12 per 100 pounds, which is much lower than the price required for dairy farmers to break even.
Cheesus Christ that's a lot of cheese!
That's not 'yo cheese!
"The glut, which at 900,000 cubic yards is the largest in U.S. history, means that there is enough cheese sitting in cold storage to wrap around the U.S. Capitol,"
Awesome! The artist Christo merely wrapped the German Parliament in cloth. Wrapping the US Capitol in cheese would absolutely top that!
Now, if we also have a surplus of bacon . . . we could also wrap it in that, and fry that bastard, and have lunch for the rest of the year!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
is for baby cows.
If an industry consistently produces more than consumers demand and has prices below break even, the normal market response would be for some of the producers to go out of business. The only reason they don't is because of government subsidies. There's no good reason for the government to constantly exempt farmers from the normal law of supply and demand.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Gov like to control price, production, quota, tax, import, export, subsidise... the end result is always the same: too much or not enough.
I love cheese, fancy or not. But it's expensive. Quit hoarding, lower the price, and I'll eat it! Dairy product boom and bust is nothing new in the U.S. When I was a kid, dairy was like some kind of strategic item, with practically a command economy, government subsidies always coming and going. Our neighbor (farmer) got in and out of the dairy business every few years, following the subsidies. In fat (ha ha) years, the government was giving the stuff away.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I'd buy yogurt daily, but my supermarket stopped carrying key-lime flavored whole milk yogurt. And every single other whole milk yogurt that isn't plain or in a three dollar glass jar. Damn lowfat poseur wannabe fake yogurt eaters.
Maybe if the cheese was of a better quality like you get elsewhere in the world it would sell better?
Also, cheese isn't the only thing to do with excess milk - butter and milk powder are globally traded commodities.
Do the Chinese buy up US-made infant formula like they do Australian and New Zealand formulas?
Also interesting to note that the article talked about consolidation of diary farms, but what it omitted is that on a global scale, the average US dairy farm is still what would be considered a hobby farm in Australia and New Zealand (the world's largest exporter of dairy products)
Thank you folks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to try our award-winning potato bar.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If Americans aren't eating processed cheese slices or string cheese, the Feds should be discouraging dairy farmers from making it. Sell off what they've got in storage to supply the market, and get the farmers to make other cheeses instead, such as Swiss, Cheddar, Muenster and Jack. Also, get them to make more yogurt, as that's very popular now especially among the health conscious and those trying to lose weight.
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True mozzarella is made from buffalo not cow's
ignorance is not an excuse
Mozzarella was granted Protected Designation of Origin status by the European Union in 1996
And Trump criticizes Canada's supply management which is aimed to discourage overproduction. Jesus.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
These are the results of corporate America not responding quickly enough (and maybe doubling down against) to demands by Americans for healthier foods. I feel badly for the small farmers that are adversely impacted because they basically produce what the larger buyers order them to produce. I recall something the President of Kraft Foods said in the 1960s. He said that these preservatives were made for the space race and to keep food fresh for astronauts on long trips. He specifically said these preservatives are not safe for long term consumption. It just goes to show Corporate America doesn't give a flying fuck about you and me past the money we give.
You are exactly correct. This isn't a problem with capitalism, but government intervention.
The government is PAYING farmers to produce milk... Disrupting the natural supply and demand curbs.. Over 70% of producer's profits come from the government, so we are getting loads of extra production that cannot be used.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dairy-subsidies-government-farm-programs-surplus-cheese/
Capitalism is doing that it does best and producing what it can sell, only in this case the government is paying for a bunch of it so we have more than we can use. Yet again another way government wastes your money....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Just stop f'ing subsidizing stuff. The end result is always uneconomic, unintended consequences. And, "American cheese" just sucks, anyway. If they're going to build a cheese bank, make it aged Cheddar or Colby or Gouda (IMHO).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Time for a world record Fondue!
No.
What's more the obvious solution is for our dairy industry to start making more expensive cheeses and carving into the imports.
Keto!
Could it be that the product isn't cheese? The label says "pasteurized process cheese food". Send it to any cheese producing region in the world and see how it's received by the locals. My mom made grilled cheese sandwiches when I was a child but I wouldn't eat the stuff today. Local stores carry a wide variety of cheese with different flavors and textures.
The Free Market is a bitch isn't it.
First in line for free markets, first in line for a government handout--Go Red!.
You're talking like the free market system has a hope in hell of working with dairy in an efficient way. There's a reason why most countries regulate the dairy market.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You could call it the Strategic Cheese Reserve.
Turn it into Cheetos dust and ship it to Pennsylvania Avenue. Will be absorbed in no time.
Government cheese! I've made a few omelets from it back in the 80s. The stuff was pretty decent. Do they still distribute it?
Excellent story about it at Planet Money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/31/643486297/episode-862-big-government-cheese
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
If it were totally 100% left up to the free market, the REAL situation we'd have with food supplies is that they'd wildly thrash back and forth between abundance and scarcity. One year, stores would have lots of cheap cheese to try and dump. The next year, after farmers left the dairy business, supply might appear normal. Then we'd have a year when something went wrong, and suddenly buying a pound of sliced Swiss cheese might entail driving around to 3 grocery stores trying to find one that wasn't completely wiped out of cheese... then paying $2.50 per slice for it.
Food is one of those areas where wasteful abundance IS a net improvement over efficient, profitable scarcity. People might not literally STARVE, but the fact is, living in a first-world country brings with it certain norms and assumptions, like "I can go to any grocery store, whenever I want, expecting to find reasonable, sane quantities of whatever I want to buy... and find it there, in stock, at the same price it was last week."
Do you REALLY want to live in a world where food becomes genuinely seasonal and regional again, and you have to plan "what do I feel like eating tonight" around "what does the store actually have available to PURCHASE this week?" Personally, I LIKE being able to walk into Publix any time I damn well please, confident that they're likely to have whatever I want in abundance regardless of what this year's crop yield was like, or where I'm geographically located.
Then why is anything better than spray-cheese so bloody expensive?
Given the current crisis I think this may be worth a thought.
At first the border wall was to be made of concrete, then of steel. Given it's to be a monument to the Great Pumpkin's ego, why not make it of surplus cheese? It's the right color at least, and undoubtedly at least as effective over the long run.
"But Americans are turning their noses up at those processed cheese slices"
Since the late 80s most Americans except the poor have turned their noses up at this crap. If you're only now realizing this, then you're so out of touch with reality that it is no surprise that America's dairy farmers are facing such a shortage of sales and money.
Processed 'cheese' isn't cheese at all, so get rid of that shit to start with.
... to produce more tasty meat. Oh, sorry, I did forget that feeding natural food to living beings is kind of a no-go in the US. But seriously, you should at least once taste local specialties like the "Tiroler Milchkalb" in Austria, those are calves actually fed with cow milk, and you can taste the difference.
TFS Didn't say cheese. It said "American Cheese". That's the problem. No one wants to eat American Cheese.
I've got some lovely French cheese in the fridge at home.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Wait, is this a surplus of cheese in America, or a surplus of American Cheese? (heavily processed cheese squares). Or both? A surplus of American American cheese?
Recommended by a French guy.
Potential as a building material? I mean, if they could make the moon out of it. Just sayin'
The amount of uneducated posts in the comments is really not a good reflection of the depth of knowledge on Slashdot.
I work in the dairy industry. Many people on here seem to think this excess exists because of government subsidies keeping farmers afloat. That's not true at all. very little money is passed directly to small family farms. Our area used to be filled with 50-100 cow farms run by individual families. Over the last 3-4 years about 75% have gone bankrupt. These are people who have done this all their lives, and when they close the doors most have no idea where to go and many are resorting to suicide. Its a really sad reflection on the population that seems to think things like farm to table, small farmers, etc are a hip thing... unfortunately we hung the family farm out to dry years ago.
There's no good reason for the government to constantly exempt farmers from the normal law of supply and demand.
There is a reason, and it's a damn good one: To regulate supply and stabilize pricing.
Think about it: have you ever had to worry about food, really, really worry about it? A moderate price increase due to increasing oil prices at the turn of the century is the closest our country has ever come to a "food crisis". There has never been a serious food shortage or price inflation for food in the US for as long as I've been alive.
It used to not be that way. You can go back to the 70s, and read about how rapidly fluctuating food prices created quite a political stir, as evidenced by the April 1973 cover of Time Magazine. If you study the data on this page, you can see both how food prices (particularly beef) stabilized after 1980, and how the average worker has seen a steady increase over time in the amount of food that can be purchased with their wages.
That has been the primary purpose of the US Farm Bill: to encourage, subsidize, and regulate the food market, stabilizing pricing and providing ample food supply. Because when there's oversupply, people complain about food going to waste. When there's a lack of supply, people riot and governments collapse. Which would you really prefer?
WIC, food stamps, SNAP, or others...give it to them.
What I strange topic to come up now. Last night, I was wondering what exactly "American cheese" is. I looked it up on Wikipedia and from there I started reading on Wikipedia about the sizeable cheese stockpiles in various countries.
Odd that this would come up on Slashdot the next day.
Living overseas, I cannot find American Cheese or a decent Cheddar ANYWHERE!
Send all that Land o Lakes American and Cabot Cheddar Cheese overseas! I need to show these locals how Americans get fat (and what good, stick-to-your-ribs mac-n-cheese is)!
Cheese and Rice that's a bad pun.
If there is so much cheese why has the price not gone down? You want me to buy crappy American cheese than give it to me at Chinese cheese prices!
It's time for another Big Block of Cheese Day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm9HZq53rqU
There's a reason why most countries regulate the dairy market.
What reason is that?
How come the countries that do NOT subsidize dairy have not seen the sky collapse?
If it were totally 100% left up to the free market, the REAL situation we'd have with food supplies is that they'd wildly thrash back and forth between abundance and scarcity.
Most countries don't subsidize dairy, and many don't subsidize farms or food at all. Please provide some examples of the "thrashing" that occurs in these countries.
grilled cheese sandwiches. I've never found another cheese that comes close for overall perfection of that specific food. Real butter, almost any sort of bread works.
American cheese sucks for pretty much everything else.
Imagine a fridge with 900,000 cubic yards of cheese, imagine the stink!
Hang on, just had an idea, roll it down to the border and make a wall out of it. The stench will stop all those nasty Mexicans from even thinking of coming into your marvelous utopia!
It's a surplus of cheese made in America, not a surplus of "American" Cheese....
And you can largely thank our government for having a consistent food supply. The government heavily regulates what's grown and how it's grown via those subsidies. Before that we had over farming and farmers growing too much of the same, profitable crops until they market saturated and collapsed....
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The only country I know of with deregulated milk is Austrailia, and they have experienced a great amount of instability with waves of dairy farmers quitting the industry.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The book those cheese farmers better read
Do you REALLY want to live in a world where food becomes genuinely seasonal and regional again, and you have to plan "what do I feel like eating tonight" around "what does the store actually have available to PURCHASE this week?"
Yes.
I for one can't wait for the "more refined options". There have been some good domestic cheeses appearing. There's no reason Wisconsin couldn't produce cheeses that are easily on par with the famous French varieties for half the price. I'm looking forward to $6/lb Wisconsin "Epoisses". :-)
Imagine how many gigabags of Doritos this much cheese could be made into!
Cheese is a kind of meat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Nothing beats gooey melty AMERICAN cheese on a burger. No other cheese turns into such a perfect melty sauce like the processed stuff.
Scott
The genesis of this policy was during WWII (or maybe even WWI?)... As one poster noted, it takes time to ramp up (or down) ANY farming production. When you lived (live?) in a world so close to global conflict, ACTUALLY involving soldiers and their support teams, you have to be able to feed them. The idea of keeping a lot of food stockpiled doesn't seem crazy in that context.
Not saying that it's still applicable, but I'm not saying it's not either.
The local stuff is so expensive no one can afford it!
kill two birds with one stone as it where... (yea its a horrible saying)
Keeping americans cheesed up during the lean times ahead.
Omelette du fromage!
Clearly, we need to make America Grate again.
"Cats like plain crisps"
America's per-capita milk consumption is inversely related to its average IQ, and for the same demographic reasons.
If it were totally 100% left up to the free market, the REAL situation we'd have with food supplies is that they'd wildly thrash back and forth between abundance and scarcity.
No they won't. Any smart farmer or investor will see it happening once or twice and buy up farms that are going out of business. When supply falls far enough, they'll restart production and be the first to make a huge profit. If they're a food distributor, they'll be buying a lot of freezers to store food when it's cheap, selling it when it gets expensive.
This happens so often that people invented the entire futures market to deal with this problem before it even occurs.
Just make it out of the excess cheese!
Your sig is rather on topic in this case, though rather wrong. (Celine's first law? She should stick to singing.) We have an ample food supply in the US and won't starve in the case of embargo or war. It is, in fact, national security. Quite frankly I'd rather 'waste' tax money to stabilize food prices and ensure US food production capacity over most other spending. Fortunately, the cost is not so great on the national scale of things - $20 billion dollars per year. Worth it.
Yes, I'd rather not put ethanol in my gas tank. It degrades my gas mileage.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
This is yet another case of the failures of modern capitalism.
We constantly talk about food shortages and how there's not enough food to cover the world. The fact is that there is no food shortage, there is a logistics issue.
Instead of mass industrialization of the planet's farming resources, we instead over produce the hell out of one thing hoping to make a quick buck but discount that everyone else is doing the same thing. American capitalism does this to far too many industries. Fracking for example... yes... a new source of fuel is probably good, but overproducing excessively in order to make a buck before the market goes sour isn't. Dairy seemed like a good idea, so everyone did it and now there too much of it. The market correction will be a mess. We will literally slaughter massive numbers of animals just to adjust to poor planning. What will we do with the dead cows? Just compost?
When Amazon finally takes on logistics for meat and dairy, what will the impact be?
So, instead of shipping massive amounts of meat to massive amounts of stores which is put on display and later thrown away because every store needed at least a few packages of this or that, what happens when meat is butchered and processed to order through a website and it's more effective than going to a local store. Consider that a grocery store throws away about 1/3rd or more of all their perishables. Now, Amazon can charge the same price but reduce their logistics cost and their losses due to waste by 1/3rd. They'll collapse the markets. Add to this other perishables. So if Amazon is throttling production of meats, dairy products and even produce based on real-time data, they can probably increase efficiency by 50% or more. What then?
I am no lover of Amazon, but the benefits of a single overlord corporation in the 21st century looks more and more attractive. If it's Amazon or whoever else.. who cares, just make it work.
And dont preach market forces at me when US farms are subsedisd. We do that in the EU and... Glut happens.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Time for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to do an "EAT MORE PIZZA" public service announcement. I'm off to collect my Nobel for economics.
Before about 14 years old I probably drunk more milk than water because milk was delicious and inexpensive. Then the public media campaign about eating healthy, counting calories and fats began. And that must have hit everyone's milk consumption badly. I mean, one cup of 2% milk, that's 8 ounces, contains over one hundred calories, some fat and even cholesterol. And I can't get buy with only 8ounces of fluid when eating a meal. So eventually I switched to diet soda, and then lemonade, unsweet iced tea and such, even though deep down I know that fresh milk is more delicious.
awesome!
High quality baby formula is selling for ridiculous prices in certain Asian countries - there's a known problem of people buying up all the baby formula in shops to send overseas and reap a good (ie: 100+%) profit.
Use your surplus milk on formula instead of low quality/cost cheese and pull back some of your trade deficit.
they could process it into house style bricks, leave it outside for a few months to go stale and hard and then Trump can use them to build his wall. might attract all the "rats" he complains about too...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
That's about 688,331 cubic meters, or...
11,628,410,000 Imperial Teaspoons
Can't Donald build his Mexican frontier with this cheese? It's not proper cheese so will resist everything. It resists digestion already, so they can't eat their way through..
You can get much more than 15.00 per hundred pounds of steak.
One reason is that you can't ship any kind of raw milk cheese across state borders in the US unless the cheese has aged for at least 60 days. This eliminates a large number of very delicious cheeses that can't survive for 60 days, such as authentic Camembert, Roquefort, and Brie. (Or whatever they'd be called when made by Americans.) Plus, most milk that's pasteurized in the US is done via ultra-high temperature pasteurization, which ruins quite a bit of the milk's flavor. UHT is a lot cheaper to do than slower, lower temperature pasteurization. Both things serve to radically reduce the quality of American cheese, even if it's not American cheese.
You're talking like the free market system has a hope in hell of working with dairy in an efficient way. There's a reason why most countries regulate the dairy market.
Woosh!
No, I'm saying government intervention has messed things up in the free market system and THAT'S why it's not working efficiently.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Add a little bit of stilton to the top of the cheese and grill the result. Stilton is fattier and softer and really pings, so you don't need much, either a few separated lumps or very thin slices scattered around, depending on taste and thickness of cheese.
Also you can add dried herbs to the top instead of stilton, just grill it slightly slower so that the dried herbs get moist.
What many Americans think is cheese could not legally be sold as cheese in many parts of the world, because it's not actually cheese.
We were in Florida a few years ago, and we bought those "American" cheese slices at Wal Mart (for my father in law, because he eats like a child) ... I kid you not, the package said something like "artificial simulated cheese slices" or something like that.
I was like, wait, what ... it's fake fake cheese?
Whatever the hell it was, it was pretty far removed from what I'd call cheese, just some kind of polymerized oil. It may not have even had the word "cheese" on the packaging anywhere.
Pretty gross stuff.
A lot of that surplus is Cheddar. What's happening right now? That's right, it's aging! Aged cheddar is better, therefore this is just an opportunity in disguise.
So what the fuck is the difference between "government" and "Capitalism"????
NONE. No fucking difference.This is the fault of capitalism. Capitalism demanded that the government subsidies this and capitalism demanded that farmers over produce to get the best payments for their labour.
Wonder if we can finally get rid of milk price controls, since leftists hate rural people now.
The Empire stopped using Imperial units years ago.
It's time the colonies did likewise.
But only from the deli. A lot of people don't even seem to know there is decent american cheese and think that kraft crap and clones are the only option.
Eat it.
That's what she said.
Make sure you make quality product without pesticides and rBGH, don't give cows corn and then we will talk but knowing how shit is run in the USSA this will not happen.
Well, OK, calcium anyway.
If you do the high-protein, near-zero-carb weight loss routine without massively increasing your calcium intake, your bones get brittle... thus, the snapping of the bones in my feet when I jumped over a small wall... (yeah, actual voice of experience talking here - someone who has never done the experiment will now post to tell me I'm wrong because their Dunning-Kruger and college degree says it isn't so; THIS IS THE INTERNET!)
Drink at least a pint of milk a day - I have a pint at lunch - and as long as you're not lactose intolerant or allergic, all will be well. And you can help your neighbors and fight the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, if that matters to you, by buying organic milk locally.
Source: Over 15 years systematic experimentation with high-protein, low carb diets, including weight loss, weight maintenance and athletic performance dieting. Failures: several broken bones and clinically confirmed bone mass reduction. Successes: Over 30 lb weight loss maintained for ten years and bone degradation reversed through consumption of dairy products.
We have people going hungry right here.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Try living in a region where essentially no fruit is grown, the only major local vegetable is the potato, and the only local nut (aside from the politicians) is the sunflower seed. You'll soon be thankful for the ability to ship an orange a few thousand miles cheaply.
It is the peak of irony to me that the same people who insist on local, seasonal food have no qualms purchasing their underwear from India, their televisions and phones from China, and their vehicles from Japan and Mexico.
The argument that, historically, people only ate what was available locally to them so we should try to replicate that model for all time holds no weight with me because:
1. Historically people didn't have access to cheap shipping of food, so they were forced to eat locally (not by choice or for health reasons), and
2. Maybe people shouldn't live outside the tropical zone where fresh fruit and vegetables grow all year long if that is truly the best diet.
beep boop.
Double woosh. I'm saying you're wrong. Australia tried that and it is so chaotic to be in that business, farmers left the industry in droves. The key is the right kind of regulation. How about getting rid of the dumb idea that that the government subsidizes for products it doesn't need for one thing.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
and someone falls, hook, line and sinker....
however, your use of the pejorative "cracker" indicates a couple if interesting things...
According to the math in the article, it only works out to be a 45 day supply.
1.4B pounts of cheese is 4.6 pounds per capita.
Americans average 37 pounds of cheese per capita per year.
(4.6/37)*365 = about a 45 day supply.
This should not be news.
of American cheese? I recall seeing Emmental served all over France. I know itâ(TM)s supposed to be âSwissâ(TM) but it was pretty horrific nonetheless
> "The glut, which at 900,000 cubic yards is the largest in U.S. history, means that there is enough cheese sitting in cold storage to wrap around the U.S. Capitol,"
Ah, there it is. I was wondering what unit of measure they were going to use this time around, since clearly "Libraries of Congress" doesn't apply here.
But how many Olympic pools could you fill with that cheese?
To jam up the President's butt and maybe it'll stop spouting things on Twitter.
The only countries that don't subsidize food production are desert countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar Kuwait ...idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wallace: "Yes, cheese please!"
You whooshed yourself again?!?!
Do you fucking ever notice that other people contradicted you? Did you know it is possible for them to understand, and still say something different?
You don't have to announce it to the whole world that completely lack "theory of mind" whenever you're confused. You look like a real dumbass waving your hand around like that and making noises.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
https://www.arabianbusiness.co...
https://www.albawaba.com/busin...
Qatar also has food subsidies, but they're decreasing them to spend the money getting ready for the World Cup in 2022. But they import 40% of their food from Saudi Arabia, so see above.
Vegetables are known to grow in winter like onion, cabbage and whatever.
It doesn't hurt too much to eat vegetable and fruit seasonally although you can spend years/decade without realizing what the seasons are. I'm in Western Europe so when you eventually pay attention you can see there's a huge supply of peach and melon in summer, while oversupply of onion is at a different time of the year, etc.
Pumpkins would be when there's that huge festival in the US where people carve them into lanterns.
You can still cheat by having tomato year round, cereals are available year round anyway, I think hen live at any time of the year and thus eggs are year round.
I don't think food has to be really local, at least for a large bunch of it. Ironically, huge trucks have a much higher energy efficiency than a half full panel van.
Some seasonality doesn't hurt for fruit and vegetables, though it's hurt by stunted popular food culture. Popular culture is supposed to contain old wildly known soups, recipes and dishes (for example, whatever one that will use up cherries)
There's this problem with dairy in France because of the European Union pushing for totalitarian market ideology.
Farmers are indebted and live on half the minimum wage, so they're not buying anything. They go out of business. Those who benefit are megafarms/corporations and the investors and distributors as you sum up. But even then it's hard to believe that this shit is that beneficial, such disorder has costs. Quality goes down, as well. If the end game is factory farms and cheese factories, we lost our cheese and it's not worth it at all. Don't want to replace ALL my cheese with white (or pale yellow) featureless sterilized blobs.
Silly effect when milk price goes way down : smaller producers sell under costs, have to hope they stay afloat till next year and are forced to rely on subsidies and debt for survival. Mega producers may increase production such that they continue to make some money even at very low margins. Distributors i.e. supermarkets oligopoly stabilize consumer prices i.e. retail prices don't go down and they accaparate the now huge margin for themselves.
So, it "works". I don't have to be happy or wish for it to "work" that way. Fuck the EU and bring back milk quotas then it works too.
Food stamps, as originally created, was a way to simultaneously solve two problems with one government program (most politicians nowadays have no interest in such efficiencies). Food stamps would food the truly needy AND smooth-out the ups and downs of farming, by giving the poor "stamps" that could be exchanged at the store for healthy farm-grown foods (meat, veggies, flour, dairy (including cheese of course)). This all changed when more recent left-leaning politicians wanted to remove any stigma from people on such benefits and they redesigned the food stamp program to instead provide a card that looked and acted like a credit card.
Now, people who depend on their neighbors to feed them via taxation and government handouts are able to buy prepared foods and so they often buy things that do not directly benefit the nation's farmers. People buying pre-made pizzas and other foods are just as likely to be getting ingredients from Mexico or Canada or Brazil as from within the USA, so there is a higher liklihood that surpluses of various farm products in the USA will not be addressed as well by the food stamp program.
plentiful low-cost Pizza!
Try to find the best side of at least one thing every day, and you'll live a happier life and your friends and family will be sublty affected for the better too - no matter who is in any elected office. It works if you're a right-winger and Obama is in office, or if you're a left-winger and Trump is there.
The only people that can stand American Cheese are those born in US. The rest of the world despises any American made cheese.
Not to mention cheddar, the thing that is not a cheese.
Yikes!
I completely reject the label of "American Cheese". It's like taking a mongrel dog and insisting that this is now a breed, the "American Mongrel". There's no such thing as "American Cheese", it's a pastiche, an amalgam, a cheese porphyry.
I'm pretty sure that cheese makers and fast food outlets think they can pull a fast one. "American Cheese, it's the only authentically patriotic cheese, because it has the word American in it!" And all this for what is actually a boring, bland, 100% generic cheese. It has no aging, little flavor, no character, and a smell that could possibly be described as 'inoffensive'.
"American Cheese, you're going to remember only that it was inoffensive!"