Say Cheese and Smile--All the Way to the Bank

Somewhere in the back of our minds, most of us probably retain the idea that somehow that block of cheese we bought at the supermarket came from some little old cheese maker who milks his cows, carefully hand-tends his curds and then delivers the cheese to the market himself.

The reality, of course, is something else. After all, there were almost 7 billion pounds of cheese made in this country last year. More than a third of all the milk produced in this country is turned into cheese, and only a very tiny percentage of that is actually made in the kind of farmhouse operation we like to imagine.

The way the cheese business really works is more interesting, if less romantic, than our imaginations. Cheese is both milk’s leap toward immortality and a money-in-the-bank commodity.

It still begins with cows, of course. But the size and distribution of the American dairy herd has changed radically in the last 30 years. In 1959, the average dairy farm had nine cows. In 1992, it had 61. In 1992, half of all the dairy cows in America were in herds of more than 100.

Most of these huge herds are in the Western states. The average herd in the Pacific region (California, Washington and Idaho) is more than 240 cows, while in the area we usually think of as dairy country--Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota--the average is fewer than 50.

As a result, the Pacific region now accounts for almost a quarter of all the milk produced in the United States, roughly equal to that of those traditional dairy states.

Once the farmer has milked his cows, typically he sells the milk to his co-op (roughly 80% of America’s milk passes through a co-op). There the milk is combined with milk from other farmers and then sold in huge lots--20,000 gallons is the standard--to various processors, who will turn it into anything from Sonoma Jack to dehydrated whey solids.

Today, almost half of the cheese made in the United States is that familiar mild orange brick called Cheddar (it actually has very little to do with a traditional British Cheddar). Of the rest, the majority (and almost half of all of the cheese made in California) is mozzarella (which has equally little to do with authentic Italian mozzarella).

Although the amount of so-called American cheese produced has doubled since 1970, mozzarella production has increased almost six-fold, a tribute to America’s infatuation with pizza.

Once the cheese has been made, it is sold--in 40-pound blocks or 640-pound barrels--to a wholesaler, who either cuts it and wraps it to be sold as is, passes it on to another producer for private labeling or hands it off to be made into processed cheese. The U.S. produced more than 1 billion pounds of that squishy stuff last year.

Any milk or cheese that can’t be sold above a minimum “support” price ($10.10 per hundred pounds of milk, or $1.12 for 10 pounds of cheese) is bought by the federal government to be distributed through poverty and school lunch programs.

As the market for cheese has improved, the amount of milk bought by the government has plummeted. In 1983, almost 10% of all milk produced in this country wound up in government hands in one form or another. Today, less than half of 1% does.

It’s the wholesaler who then delivers the cheese to your supermarket shelves. Or, almost as likely, to the purchasing center of your friendly fast-food chain. About 35% of all cheese made today winds up in food service--meaning roughly 2.4 billion pounds of cheese ending up on assorted cheeseburgers, tacos and pizzas.