quote [ The United States has amassed its largest stockpile of cheese in the 100 years since regulators began keeping tabs, the result of booming domestic production of milk and consumers' waning interest in the dairy beverage. The 1.39 billion-pound stockpile, tallied by the Agriculture Department last week, represents a 6 percent increase over this time last year and a 16 percent increase since an earlier surplus prompted a federal cheese buy-up in 2016. Dairy groups aren't yet asking USDA to buy the surplus, however — a common practice that the American Farm Bureau Federation calls "quantitative cheesing." ]