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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.
"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!
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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.
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.
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)
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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is for baby cows.
Moooo!
I love cheese! Just not a million pounds of it. No Whey...
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And Trump criticizes Canada's supply management which is aimed to discourage overproduction. Jesus.
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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.
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).
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What's more the obvious solution is for our dairy industry to start making more expensive cheeses and carving into the imports.
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.
is for baby cows.
Moooo!
I love cheese! Just not a million pounds of it. No Whey...
I Gouda hand it to you. Feta love of God, that's so funny, I Camembert it. Emmental for cheese jokes -- I just Edam up.
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Then why is anything better than spray-cheese so bloody expensive?
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?
That's nearly enough cheese to make another Moon!
Last night, I was wondering what exactly "American cheese" is.
It's this tasteless, rubbery gunk that, in some cases, looks pretty close to cheese.
It's really weird stuff, when I lived in the US I initially bought generic cheese (i.e. went for the most average product because their cheese looks weird and I wanted to go for the safest option), and it was tasteless rubbery gunk. So I bought stronger cheese, and it was tasteless rubbery gunk. Then I bought extra strong, mature, whatever cheese, and it was still tasteless rubbery gunk. A few months later I was on a plane stuck on the tarmac due to snow and chatting to the guy next to me, who was a cheese importer. He said business was tough, because it was hard to sell cheese with any flavour when most people went for the most bland gunk there was. So there were twenty different types of cheese in the supermarket, but all were the same bland gunk, because that's what sold.
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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In 1900 America was much more advanced then Russia, which still had an aristocracy that traded in peasants and a big secret police bureaucracy. America also didn't sacrifice a large chunk of its population and industrial base to win WWII or have people like Stalin in charge to set things back.
Another example is China, who once they did switch to a more mixed system advanced pretty quick. When I was a kid, it was "eat your dinner, there's millions of starving Chinese". They were also smart enough to switch governments from the progressive to conservative parts of the party every 8 years, not too different from America. Now that Xi has decided to be dictator for life, they'll probably run into the complacency leading to corruption and no innovation problems.
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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.
You’re right about the summary, but what the (Vox) article really said is American (along with “cheddar, Swiss and other cheese varieties on record”), which is much worse than just “cheese from the U.S.” Go ahead and check that Wikipedia article, and enjoy the mouth-watering pictures and description: “American cheese cannot be legally sold under the name (authentic) "cheese" in the US. Instead, federal laws mandate that it be labeled as "processed cheese" [...] or "cheese food".” Perhaps we should just stick to its popular earlier names of “factory cheese” or “yellow cheese” (Which, without a doubt, many of our contemporaries will surmise comes from yellow cows.)
So, may be the USDA should instead say that we have a monster surplus of... “cheese food” (sounds like food for the cheese monster, yum).
In all fairness, there are good cheese producers in this country (and also in Canada), who try to fight the Walmarts of the cheese industry and deserve some recognition. However, I suspect that those producers are little concerned by the USDA surplus report.
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". :-)
Clearly, we need to make America Grate again.
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There's something worse: American "chocolate". I first thought the sample I tried is badly spoiled -- it tasted like vomit. Turns out, US manufacturers intentionally add butyric acid (which is a good part of what makes vomit smell) because it was what "consumers demand".
Early on, chocolate production in the US was done with exceptionally bad hygiene and poor process, resulting in a product that was spoiled and in any civilised setting would be thrown out. Yet like that cheese gunk, companies instead make people think this is what chocolate tastes like.
Being able to legally call a product with no cocoa at all "chocolate" doesn't help, either.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The most insane experience I had there was when I bought small mozzarella balls to use as appetizer. Placed in the middle of a dinner table, after a few minutes, they started doing weird fizzing noises, to the point that all conversation stopped and we looked at them: they shriveled, spitting their water out and turned to grey raisins after 5 minutes. We threw them out.
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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...
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A lot of American Cheese Products, such as cheese wizz and those orange slices aren't made from cheese curds. Instead they are made from the whey, there are special powdering towers used to remove the water resulting in a whey powder that is used to make all that crap. It's actually kind of a genius solution to reduce waste from traditional cheese making, and produce more profit in the mean time. That said I don't like it much either.
My blood is curdling, there's got to be a cheddar way of making cheesy jokes, just leave it brie. Some cultures are better left provolone.
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American Cheese is a style of cheese. It is mostly made from vegetable oil; it isn't really real cheese. They're allowed to call it 100% cheese if they have some minimum percentage of milk.
There is no style of product called American Chocolate. American chocolate is just chocolate made in America.
Anybody who bakes with chocolate buys "baking chocolate," which is 100% pure chocolate. It tastes different depending on the grade of cacao used, but not based on where it is made. And if you use this and eat it frequently, you do know what chocolate tastes like.
The local stores have chocolate bars from 35% to 85% chocolate. A 65% chocolate bar made in Portland tastes the same as a 65% one made in Amsterdam.
The stuff you're eating isn't chocolate. It is "chocolate flavored."