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the Double A Highway northbound two seventy five. They cleared the wreck before twenty eight and Milford chuck ing rom on fifty five krc the talk station.
A twenty nine cold of E thirty fifty pout KRCD talk station. I'm very happy Friday to you, and I'm pleased to Welcome to the five Kersey Morning Show. Author of his first book, which we're talking about today, Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope and The Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer, author Brian Reisinger. But he's more than an author. He's got a background that's rather impressive.
Grew up on a family farm in Salt County, Wisconsin, and of course this is what the book is premised on. Columnists consultant. He's worked with his father from the time he could walk and before entering the world of business, journalism and public policy. If you see where he has been published, if I had read the list off of all the outlets like US Day Today and Yahoo News and the newspapers, that would spend the entire time up with that. But he's well published and again his first book.
Welcome to the Morning Show. It's a real pleasure to have you on today. Brian Reisinger.
Hey, good morning, Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Yeah, your backgrounds, I do come from a farming background, not me. I did not farm, but I laid witness to I have uncles that had farms on my father's side of the family, and my wife is the daughter of a dairy farmer from a little town called Avella, Pennsylvania. He's departed, but he worked his butt off, and I bet you have some understanding of what kind of work it takes to run a dairy farm.
Yeah. Absolutely, those are some good roots you've got. I appreciate hearing about that. You know, it is a beautiful way of life. It's a difficult way of life, and we take it all as it comes. You know. The best example I have, we talk about this in the book, My dad was inducted in the family business at the tender age of eight. Yeah, when my grandpa was climbing on a corn crib and slipped off till thirty feet and broke his back on the frozen ground. And my
grandpa ultimately got back up on his feet. But my dad started doing the work for a man at eight years old, and he loved it. He loved the calves and the clean country when he was a kid, and he has never stopped. In fact, I was talking to him this morning. He's getting ready to harvest corn a
little bit later today. And you know, it just shows what fun families go through, the kind of resilience they have and the difficulty of life, but the beauty the way of life, because it gets done in your blood and your bones and you come to love it too well.
And if you didn't had that childhood experience, I can't imagine a young person these days grows up in the comfortable suburbs playing video games all day ever entering the world of farming and taking on that commitment because once they you know, stare the real, legitimate hard work that you have to do literally every day in the face, recognizing that if you don't do the hard work, you're gonna starve. No one's going to go down that road.
This is a generation after generation matter of pride more than an economic boon.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean it has such a big impact on so many issues in our country, you know, our food prices, our food availability. But it's also part of who we are in such a big way. I'm grateful to have grown up there. And you're right, it's so difficult, and there's a lot of hard work. You work and sun up to sundown. You learn a lot of good values along the way, and you also get
a lot of incredible experiences. You know, I remember gettingup at odd hours when there was a cowho was having a hard time delivering her calf and labor, and my dad to take us down to the barn and he'd helped deliver the calf. We watch it tickets first breaths. You know, things that you learn about circle of life, the value hard work.
And other things you know, and that's interesting and I keep thinking again, my father in law. I had more experience seeing what he had to do day in and day out. And I've heard so many stories from my wife over the years, that sense of community, especially in a little tiny community like of Bella, Pennsylvania, which no one's ever heard of. You know, he slaughtered a cow.
It was tough economic times. I think it was back in the seventies or maybe even earlier than that, but he was a family that needed some help and her dad was happy to help out and give them some of the meat from the slaughtered cow. That sense of community really really is steeped into the equation and I think that's a real blessing, and that's something a lot of people don't have in their life. But it's a
character building thing. You know, my wife can tell the same story as you about Listen if you're old enough to pick up something and help out in some way. You're going to be working at that age, and she worked from you all the time you're sitting around there's nothing to do. No on a farm, there is always something to do, and kids participate in that from as soon as they can, just like you.
Yeah, man, you are so you know. It reminds me of a story of my family back in the late nineteen seventies early the nineteen eighties, as we were heading toward what was called the farm crisis, where tens of thousands of farms got wiped out all over the Midwest, my home state, as well as where you guys are in,
all over the country too. And what happened is the year my parents were married, nineteen seventy six, they actually had faced a drought and we had dry conditions or wiping out our crops, and they had local neighbors who let them pick up, you know, loose hay off their barn. There was an old man nearby who told my dad, hey, if you do the harvest for me, I'm too old to do the work. If you do the harvest for me, we can go halves, so you can have half my hay. Crop,
and it's what got them to the winter. It kept them from taking out a whole bunch of debt before the farm crisis, which is an era when debt drove all kinds of farms under. And that is something you see over and over where that unique farmland spirit. That's that blend of being willing to come run when a neighbor is in need. And also the individualism it takes the digger living out of the dirt. It's both those things and it's something that slips away in this country.
Has our farms just here unfortunately?
Yeah, And you know, when I was a younger person, you know, more of a kill mall l God sort it out, kind of a conservative. Now I find myself to be in the little il libertarian category. And of course, before I married my wife and was introduced more intimately with the realities of farming, I always was one of the guys would say, well, what corporate farms. You know,
there's Mellencamp out there doing farm aide. If they can't survive corporate farms, Well, they're bigger, they're more efficient, they're backed by big money. Isn't that the direction to go? But there's something that we said about preserving the family farm.
You know there is And here's the way I look at it too. I mean, I think it's important to understand economics. Those farms, to your point, they got bigger, trying to make it, trying to survive, and there's things all across our entire economy that are driving that. And
the issue is in our country's history. And we found this as we looked at the book, because we've hidden airs of history driven the disappearance of these farms with my family story, and as I examine what was going on, we found that time after time, there's ways that our government as well as other things really stack the deck against small farms. So it's not that family farms are saying, hey we need you know, super special treatment or anything like that. What family farms are saying is, hey, we
want a fair shot. And there's ways that family farm has been stamped out over the decades, one way or another, for years and years and years. So you know, some of those bigger farms, they got bigger, needing to make it, find ways to be more efficient, and you know, they've got a role that they play. And a lot of these family farms, a lot of these smaller farms, you know, they've got the ability to play a role too, and they're as efficient as competitive. They just aren't as big
and don't have that scale. But there's a role they can play, you know, whether it's in a niche of our food economy or what have you. Those are the things that I'm exploring, is how can we have farms of all kinds being able to find a way for because if family farms get a fair shot, they can do that well.
And I get a sense that, you know, a lot of people I don't know whether it's a majority or not, doesn't matter, but a sufficient number of people appreciate everything you are talking about and talk about in the book Langridge Cash Poor. But this goes along with this push to buy local. You see it all the place. We try to locally sourced ingredients. That really translates to we're buying from local small farms and businesses.
Yeah, you're so right, And we are at a time in our country where people care more than ever about where their food comes from. And I think that's an opportunity. You know, we've lost forty five thousand farms per year on average for the past century. That's a devastating amount. We've lost seventy percent of our farms, but we still have a lot of farms left in this country. People are amazed to hear that eighty eight percent of them
are small farms. And what we need to do is figure out a way to make those farms go from being supplemental income to full time income because lobbyse families. The way they can hold on their farms is they work multiple jobs. You know, they're working construction sites to pulling factors, just poorn concrete and work on a farm. How do we find a way to have these farms be growing entrepreneurial adventures again they can be full time
income for these families. Well, one of the ways is everybody care about where their food comes from and taking steps to buy from local and regional food sources and support their farms with new economic opportunity.
Absolute right. And I just have to ask you because it seems to me the EPA, the federal government is literally everywhere. Is there a risk or is there are there threats posed by the regulatory oversight that seems to be more and more intrusive in our world, and that I presume a small farmer would have a much larger struggle complying with are you do small farmers feel that intrusion or haven't they got there yet? Oh yeah, I figured it was yes, go ahead and.
Explain, yes, yeah, you know, I mean those things create such costs. Here, here's the thing about our whether it's our regulations or our farm programs with substitution or whatever, the issue is there are people on the right, the left, outside farming, inside farming, have something that they don't like about it. We have so many things we got to change. One of the issues that we face is that regulatory burden.
It creates expenses, it creates costs, It makes it more difficult to try new types of business, all these things, and they're designed to go after the big farms. But the issue is not only those big farms trying to figure out if VA can handle costs. You get the small farms that have to face similar regulation, and it really is something that they're not in a position to
be able to afford. And so in many cases, a lot of these regulations end up hurting some of the very farms that some of these folks say that they would support as well, which is an irony of you unintended consequences of.
Government, no question about it, And Lord, don't we live with that reality every single day. The name of the book Landridge cash Board, My Family's Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer by my guest today, Brian Reisinger. Brian, you still own the family farm?
Hey, I appreciate you asking. My dad owns a farm and my sister's working to take it over. She has a little more talent for cattle and crops than I do, so while I work to tell our stories my career off the farm, she's working to take it over. But they do still throw me in a tracker in my days off and I help on on the business side. So it's a family venture, on and on to each generation.
Well that's great. I don't know where she got it, probably definitely one hundred percent. For my wife, my daughter,
it's not and we call it the farm. But she and her boyfriend hopefully soon to be fiance then husband, Eric got five and a half acres, They got a farm tracker, they had a successful year growing vegetables and crops, and they're on their way to almost Eric's building a chicken coop right now, so it'll soon be a really tiny family farm, but a farm nonetheless, And we are just enjoying the hell out of them making progress and
being so proud of what they're trying to accomplish. So there's a little bit of genetics in there and I think's helping them out. Brian, it's been a real pleasure. But your book is on my blog page at fifty five kr see dot com, so my list isn't a right where to go to get a copy of land Ridge Cash for great conversation, Brian, uplifting and I wish you all the best and hopefully sell a lot of books. I think it's a very interesting and important subject.
Hey, thank you so much. I hope people go on there and find it on your page. It's also available on Amazon anywhere if people buy books online or at bookstores they have or they can order it for you. And I just hope we keep conversation going on these issues. So I appreciate your time exactly.
I will too. Take care man, have a wonderful weekend. It's coming up in e forty one to fifty five KRC The Talks.
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