Coming up on eight oh five and fifty five care CD talk station. I'm very happy Friday Eve to you. Been looking forward to this conversation all morning. My next guest Brian Reisinger. He grew up on a family farm in Sault County, Wisconsin and loves to talk about the hidden stories of rural America. Like most children of farmers, he worked with his father from the time he could walk before he ultimately entered the world of business and
business journalism and public policy. He has been published in like every single publication you can think of, USA Today, Newsweek, Yahoo News, Wisconsin Public Radios, Wisconsin Life. I could go on Real Clear Politics and go to that site all
the time. He also is an award winner National Society and Newspaper Calumnists, first Place in Seven Hills Literary Contrast Contest, and the Soul Sword And I could go on, But today we're going to talk about his very first book, Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope and the untold history of the Disappearing American Farmer. Brian, Welcome to the Morning Show. It's a real pleasure to have you on today. Hey, good morning, It's good. I feel like I have some
at least connection with you. I am. I outkicked my coverage when I married my wife. She grew up on a rural dairy farm out in Pennsylvania, a little town no one's ever heard of called Avella. Her dad literally worked his entire life every single day. If you don't milk the cows twice a day, you don't get paid. So it was a small farm, a house he built himself.
They all grew up, they all worked the farm, never had really much money at all, but it was just it's just it's an amazing life when you hear the stories and the hardships that go along with it. It's not an easy life at all. Something I know that I'm telling you that you know about, and so quite often you know multiple generations. You know, kids want to move away, they want to go to the city. They don't want to follow in their father's or mother's footsteps.
And I suppose that's part of this disappearing American farmer concept. But it's beyond that, isn't it, Because it's expensive to be a small farmer these days.
You're absolutely right. I'm so glad we share that history. And it sounds like your wife's probably a hard working person with all values and had a great child that you know, you're absolutely right in terms of the way you describe the way of life. And here's the issue. It goes so deep. It does have to do with what's our next generation doing, but it has to do with economic factors, governmental factors, technological factors, all kinds of ways that we've been leaving our family farmers behind.
That's what we do in the book.
We dive into the hidden airs of history that are driving that disappearance. Why is it happening and what's the consequence.
To all of us?
And then when we leave that with my family's story, and those are stories that are probably like the ones you heard from your wife's family stories. Is survival of you know, weather farm acts and economical people from the depression to today. And you know, it's definitely a unique thing. It's a life filled with with both beauty and hardship that goes hand in hand.
Well. Growing up, you know, I not fully appreciating the concept of the small, the family farm by contrast to
the corporate farm. And of course, if you're a corporate farm, you can afford to buy the what I don't know how much one of those massive tractors costs there are hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I just I can't imagine a situation where my now late father in law, he lived in ninety three, I think years old, the idea that he could ever afford something that costs so much in order to just sort of just try to
keep up in terms of competing. I mean, it's just it represents such a colossal challenge for small farmers to compete with, you know, somebody who's got tens of millions of dollars because they're backed up by major corporations.
You know, it does.
And here's what's going on.
We've got that kind of force going on all across our economy. So the food companies are working to keep up with the rest of the American economy by getting bigger and bigger. The agribusiness companies work and keep a food company, and the farmers are not trying to keep up with the AGGA business food company sverone's trying to keep up with the Joneses. So you got farmers, whether they're big, small, or medium, they are all trying to keep up with the Jones And everybody has that pressure
to get bigger or get out. Our bigger farmers got that way trying to survive a lot of our medium and smaller farms. You ended up not making it because that we do still have a lot of family farms left in this country. But it's truly against the odds.
It's people like your father and mom work continue to work, trying to figure a way to be competitive, to be efficient, to be resourceful, even though the economic crises and government policies, you know, hit them in unique ways that people don't understand. And even though so much of our technology, to your point, has been leaving family farms behind. It doesn't have to
be this way, but it certainly is this way. With the deck stacked against our family farmer who's whatever their type of size, fighting to keep.
Going well, and it almost seems like they're intentionally trying to put the small farm out of business. And I don't know if you've ever seen it, and I know it's Britain or the United Kingdom and Clarkson's farm, you know, Jeremy Clarkson has this farm and every show really illustrates the insanity of the micro management of government authorities over the types of crops that are grown where they can
be grown. You know, the amount of moisture contact a content in a rape seed, And it's almost as if they want to drive them ount of business with rules and regulations. Then you keep on the whole idea of this climate change religion, cow flatulence. We need to regulate that, we need to regulate how much space your chickens have or your pork has. I mean, it just adds so much additional cost burden and I guess paperwork on the small farmer.
Yeah, you know, you're so right. Every single day, government requirements, regulations, taxes, different things are really waging war on the American family farmer, and you know, the people who care about our environment. The irony is that there's nobody who cares as much about our soil health and abundant water, clean water as our farmers. So there's a lot of room for people
who care about environment and farmers to work together. But the problem is our political debates divide everybody, and we've got government that's really stamping out family farmers. I give you one brief, perfect example. This happens. This stuff happens every single day. But there's really really serious times in our history or escalated in the farm crisis. The government was pushing more debt on farms to make them get bigger, and then within a few years they raised interest rates
because they were trying to deal with inflation. You can argue four or against the government trying to encourage farmers to expand, you can argue four or against changing interest rates. But when you push debt on them with the government, and then you use that same government to make that debt more expensive, you wipe out tens of thousands of farms.
My parents, we tell the story in the book. They just barely survived that they had been dealing with a drought and almost had to take out a bunch of debt right before the farm crisis hit. They didn't have to do that because they've banded together with neighbors to get through that drought year, and they avoided taken on debt which would have wiped them out in the nineteen eighties, just like happened at tens of thousands of farms, all at the hand of our government.
And I'm so glad you brought that up, that banded together, because I've also gotten stories from my wife, you know, anecdotes, and it's like I shouldn't. I should give credit to my dad's side of the family too, because they were all what I call dirt farmers in Tennessee. So I
got farm stock on both sides. But the idea of community, and this is one of the more positive things, and one of the reality is of you know, when you ask yourself, when you hear about you and I talking about all this crisis and the problems and the difficulties of being a farmer. There are so many rewards to being a small farmer. And part of it is that sense of community. Because the entire region where my wife
grew up, they're all farmers. They're all engaged in the dairy business or you know, or or at least some aspect of farming. And when the hard times hit, when people, you know, struggle with difficulties, they all step up to the plate and help each other out. It's a beautiful thing to behold.
That's absolutely right. By the way, I'm glad that they put a microphone in front of somebody who's got farming on both sides of your family. That's outstanding.
Yeah, well, you see, I do. You're following the footsteps. I practiced law for sixteen years, and I've been on the radio now for this is my nineteenth year. I think I was frightened away by the hardships that I saw when I was exposed to it.
Brian, Well, I'll tell you we struggle with those same things in our family. My sister's work and take over the farm for my dad. I worked with my dad from the time like a walk. I love my roots, but I didn't have their talent for cattle and crops. So although I still worked them on the business side and they throw me a track from my dad, but sue my writing career. I'm just honored to be able to tell the stories. So you and I have come to some of the same things. But you know your
point on neighbors banning together. You're absolutely right. That neighbor that I mentioned that helped my parents get through the farm crisis in nineteen y is what happened is he was an elderly man didn't need all the crops in his field. My dad was a young man starting out and had field that were barely putting up the crops he need to feed his animals, so they went what they call halves. And you might know this from your own family background, when you go have one guy does
the work and then they split the crop right. Well, the old man the name was Leo, and he refused to take his fair share. He gave my dad more of the crop than he ought to have, and my dad kept on going down there trying to pay him money. And he walked into the guy's cigarette you know, filled living room, trying to hand him money. There after dame finding the guy said you just got married. You don't know me nothing to take it and go, And we get emotional just thinking about what he's been gone for
a number of years now. But if he hadn't done that, my parents would have taken out a load of debt potentially just before the farm crisis hit. And it was that working together and that sense of local community that really got people through. And by the way, you know, my dad was able to help this guy, but he put in extra hours working around the clock to get the crops off this guy's feel. So it's people helping people, you know.
Yeah, And the other sense I always get is in another story back in from my wife. Back in the seventies, we went through stagflation and the economy went down the toilet and I'm sure it happened in multiple different times over the life of that particular farm and my father in law. But because they were realistic and not materialistic, they pretty much were self sufficient. They didn't you know, want more. They didn't think that, oh my god, you know, I wish I had a better this, or that they
had everything they needed. And so when hard times hit the general population and people then had to do without something, they became used to like, oh, we're going to have to cut back on this, or we need to drop the country club membership because of the you know, the
economic day, their life remained static. They continued to live at the same level, which was enough to feed them and satisfy them and pay the bills, and they it was sort of if they didn't have a newspaper, they didn't even realize the rest of the world was going through this turmoil.
Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, It's one of the things that I encountered so much when I was working on the book, because I knew these family stories, I knew bits and pieces of them, and I wanted to reconstruct and be able to tell the survival stories. But then I started researching what was going on around us at that time. What was happening to my great grandparents in the early nineteen nine So what was happening to my grandparents and the depression? What were the bigger forces
at play? And it's so true that you know, when you're on the ground and the farm, you don't necessarily have a way to see the bigger forces affecting you. And then vice versa. Right the rest of the country that's living out some of those forces doesn't necessarily get a chance to see what's on the farm. And that's really the challenge, that's the core reason that our farms
are disappearance because that disconnects And here's the thing. It impacts not only our rural communities like where I'm from and like where your family has roots that are getting hollowed out, but it impacts every single American dinner table, because when we're losing our farms, we're impacting the price, the health, the security of the foot would supply for every single American.
Brian Rising here, the author of the book we're talking about today, land Rich, Cash Poor of my Family's hope and the untold history of the disappearing American farmer. Brian, if you could fix something, And I mean, I guess for an initial question of the answer, can the small farm, can the the the American small farmer be saved? Can they continue assuming they desire to continue farming as opposed
to corporate sized farms? Can they survive? And if there's something if the answer may be leaning toward no because of all the things that we sort of scratch the surface of that you dive in your dep two in your book, what would you change that might lead to a better life for them or a more successful, lasting farm life.
Absolutely, you know there is reason for hope. We've lost seventy percent of our farms in the past century, which is devastating, but we still got nearly two million left. And here's the incredible thing. Ninety six percent of them are family farms. And it's because people have farms that they're working part time, walls, pulling two to three jobs
to keep things going. So these are families, nearly two million families that are you know, continuing to fight forward even though we haven't, you know, made the economics work in this country. Imagine if we made the economics work again. And so we do need to change things, and there's moves we can make that can inject new entrepreneur opportunity
out there for our farmers. We need to research and development revolution so that all of our technology is bringing farms of all sizes, medium and small as well as large along. We need to change our policies to make sure we got fair markets for small businesses in this country. And we need to make sure the consumers who care about where their food comes from take steps toward buying from local farmers. Buy from a farmer down the road, you know that kind of thing.
Yeah, I imagine that that was an injection of positivity the whole buy local, buy from your local farmers that you know, eat and consume local. What's available fresh from the farm, you know, grass raised, a grass fed beef raised from your local farmer. It should be easier for I suppose farmers to slaughter their own beef and sell it locally. Maybe I knew Congressman Tom some Mess. He's
on my program a lot. I'm a huge fan of it is he has his own farm, and you know, he is a big fan of you know, raw milk or some health benefits of that. My wife grew up drinking it, you know, straight from the cows. It's as healthy as she could possibly be. So, you know, but maybe this RFK junior emphasis towards health might give that much needed infusion for the local farmer.
Yeah, you know, that's the hope. There's always opportunity in peril and for the farmer, and you know, people caring about where the food comes from and us shifting toward farmers able to meet the markets they are meet now, but also meet new markets from people who care about local, regional fresh food, who care about specialty foods. Being able to shift our farm economy in that direction. That creates an entrepreneur opportunity for our farmers. It also creates more
options for our consumers. We've got to make sure that we make those transitions. Understand that farms are small businesses. Then I have a whole lot of money sitting around and investing new things, but they can make change over time. And if we can get focused on that and every consumer takes a step toward the farmer, I know the farmers are ready to take more steps toward the consumer.
And knowing the farmers the way I do, I know you you are right on that. Brian Rising, your author of land Ridge Cash Poor, My family's hope and the untold history of the disappearing American farmer. Hopefully we can reverse that process. Brian, it's been a real pleasure talking
with you today. I appreciate you spending time with my listeners of me and for writing the book, which is now available on my blog page at fifty five krs dot com so people can easily get a copy of it, and I strongly encourage them to do that because you will have a much more profound appreciation for the hard work that these men and women put in every single day. Brian, you take great care of yourself.
Hey, thank you too, thanks for having me my pleasure.
It's eight nineteen right now, fifty five KR City Dog Station, it being Thursday. I heard me the aviation expert Jay Ratliffe waiting in the wings. Looking forward to having him back on as I always am. Maybe a word or two about the markets, given his experience with and activities trading stocks every day. Jay Radley will be up soon. I hope you can stick around for that. But first, speaking of farming, you can get I'll tell you what, but our remot is in addition