UK Column Radio

Land Rich, Cash Poor-The Disappearing American Farmer-with Brian Reisinger

Brian Reisinger tells Charles Malet about the painful demise of the small American farm, and what can be done to undo the damage. Read the write-up at: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/land-rich-cash-poor-the-disappearing-american-farmer-with-brian-reisinger

Duration:: 1h 0m
Broadcast on:: 19 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

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Now, we are lucky enough to have an international audience, and I think they would love to have the scene set by you in winding the clock back a little bit. And before we get to where you are now, would you just give a potted history of your family's farm in the generations that preceded yours? How were things and how have they got to the point of your involvement? Yeah, absolutely. So our farm began more than 100 years ago in the early 1900s, 1912. My great-grandfather, Alice Reisinger, he actually fled pre-world war one Europe. He had grown up in Bavaria, Germany. He'd been in the military, and he knew he did not want to fight in the war for Germany. He wanted to have a better life, and so he went to America, and he found that life in the rolling hills of Southern Wisconsin, which is beautiful, but it also a very tough, but rewarding living, digging your living out of the dirt. So he began farming there with my great-grandma in 1912, and the farm rose up through those years that were very difficult subsistence farming, but they were also great economic opportunity from the standpoint of farming was a growing entrepreneurial venture in America at that time. My grandpa came after him and survived a childhood and adolescence through years of depression, climbed out of the Great Depression into the middle class and ran our farm after that. My dad and my mom took over then in the 1970s and sailed into not only a drought in their first-year marriage, but into the farm crisis in the 1980s, and then that took us on into the current generation where we've survived globalization, recession, COVID, and more, with my sister actually working full-time with my dad on the farm and working to take it over while I help out on the side and volunteer on the business side, they throw me the tractor on my days off, and I work hard to tell our stories. Excellent. There's going to be a lot more to get into. In those generations that you've just described, what sorts of farming has been conducted in terms of the sort of mix between arable and pastoral, and also I think the developments, particularly with regard to say mechanization and all the rest of it. Yeah, absolutely. What you're talking about is a really crucial thing, and it feeds into the overall theme of the book, the disappearing American farmer. Why have our farms been disappearing in our country? What has been going on? How does that affect our economy and the rest of the world? And in the early years, it was really very broadly mixed agriculture. So every animal you could imagine waddling about the farm yard, every type of crop, you could imagine they grew fruits, vegetables, row crops. They raised all kinds of animals in addition to raising milk cows and milking cows to produce dairy products, so on and so forth. As the years unfolded in those early years, my great grandparents began to really focus on dairy farming. That's something that was very central to Wisconsin's economy, it still is. And the reason for that is Wisconsin didn't have the big wide open acreage of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies where you could plant miles and miles of wheat, for instance. We had good, solid, fertile ground, but it was rolling hills. So we needed to find a way to grow crops that would actually be used to just feed dairy cows, because milking cows was a way to be able to make money that you needed to make ends meet rather than being able to plant as much wheat or corn as other places. So eventually that evolved into farms like ours growing alfalfa and corn to feed dairy cows and milking dairy cows to produce milk, cream, cheese, so on and so forth. So that's the way that the economy really unfolded in Wisconsin. It's undergone great changes since, and it's undergone a great amount of economic hardship over the decades. But that's the model that emerged and that has mostly defined our way of life and our economy. Excellent. And you alluded to your book, which absolutely we will come on to discuss. So for the audience waiting to hear about that just wait a little bit longer. What I would like to do, because I think it really helps with context. It's just to understand the market that that farm back then was satisfying. And how was that done? Where did how far did the produce go? At that time it was a lot of local and regional. So milk is a very perishable product, like a lot of agricultural products. But it was local and regional. And so they would go into town. They would sell the cream locally. They would sell the milk. The milk might be transported a bit further. And it was a local regional market where my great-grandfather was selling it to someone that he knew right there in town. And many of the people who would drink that milk or would utilize that cream or eat food products that was made from that milk were in his, you know, general region. That very much evolved. And milk is now a commodity that is sold, bought and sold upon a national and at times international supply chain. And it is much different world where the farmer and the consumer are not as connected as they were in those early days. Absolutely. I think a situation we're seeing very much here in the United Kingdom and in a lot of the so-called developed world. Now your book, The Tyke of Witch is Land Rich, Cash Poor. My family's hope and the untold history of the disappearing American farmer. I mean, the title itself tells a lot. But tell us, what is it that compelled you to write such a book? Well, this story in some ways has been with me from the beginning. I grew up with my dad from the time I could walk. And even as a child and moving on through adolescence, I had the sense that our way of life was disappearing. We saw farm auctions. We saw farms going under. I saw kids getting on to the school bus to go to school from dormant farms. I had teachers who would say, "How many of you grew up on a farm?" And I would raise my hand and each year, there were fewer and fewer kids like me. And so I knew that farms were disappearing. I didn't understand why and I didn't understand the impact. And as I grew into adulthood, I pursued a career off the farm in writing. And I worked in business journalism. I worked in public policy and I began to see the ways that the American economy, and in many ways, the global economy, has left behind family farms in our country. And I believe to a degree has occurred in other countries as well. It is an outgrowth of the way that our economy has evolved. And so I decided that it was time to answer that question that had been with me since my childhood. So what we've done with the book is we've looked at hidden areas of American history and in many ways they intersect with international history as well. Hidden areas of history that have driven the disappearance of the American farmer. And then we weave that with our family's story of us surviving everything from the Great Depression on up through COVID. And we've tried to answer that question of how did this happen and what is the impact? And on that, it's obviously involved an author and a lot of research to produce such a thing. What is it in doing that that's really surprised you? You know, I was amazed at the number of times that we had decisions that were made knowingly or unknowingly that made this worse. And what I mean by that is there's some natural things that people would expect, particularly if they understand and believe in a market economy and understand how economics work. There was going to be natural consolidation. Once North American continent was settled, there was only so much farmland. You know, you're always going to have the situation where one neighbor is doing a bit better than his fellow farmer and is able to buy him and get a little bigger and do a little better. That's natural market forces. That's natural industry consolidation. Some of it happens. It can be good. It can be bad. It's a natural thing. What we had happen in America was an unnatural thing. We had some of those natural forces going, of course, but we also had decisions by our government knowingly and unknowingly that tilted the scales against family farms. We also had social factors that drove things. We also had decisions we made about our technology and what kinds of technology we wanted to pursue that tilted things against family farms. There was decision after decision that sort of planted the seeds of a very vulnerable American farm landscape that unfortunately has come home to roost decade after decade to the tune of 45,000 farms per year for the past century. That's how many farms America has lost is 45,000 farms per year on average past 100 years. And it's a shocking outcome and one that didn't need to be to the degree that it did. Who's shocking indeed? No, essential being either slightly diplomatic or certainly giving if not the government that others benefit of the diet by talking about decisions being made unknowingly. Just go a bit more into that if you come with perhaps a couple of examples of the decisions taken and the effects that they've had you've seen. Exactly. I'll give you some examples and you're not wrong in that there are times where it's very clear that our government has had a certain goal that's been detrimental to farmers and other times I think there's been bumbling that's gone on. And I'll give one example and I will stipulate it by saying that we've seen it under both of the major political parties in our country on the establishment of the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party have made these mistakes. There are people from all ends of the political spectrum that have anger and frustration with it for those people who don't trust government or think that government can be part of the problem. There are plenty of examples in the 1980s is a prime one so I mentioned that my parents their first year of marriage were surviving a drought. That was in 1976 and they got through that early difficult period only to sail into the 1980s farm crisis and this was a time when tens of thousands of farms were wiped out where rural America. Most of the communities like where I'm from have really their own specific depression you know it was something specific to rural communities and there are a lot of things contributed to it but the government action that contributed to it is actually pretty shocking. So in the 1970s and the run up to this. Both parties had for a long time been encouraging one where another farms to quote get big or get out meaning those farms needed to get bigger and some of those farms they do that for natural reasons they do that to survive they do that to support more than one family. The reality is that whether it's large medium or small all of them were being pushed to get bigger or to get out so there was natural industry consolidation that was being compounded by what the government was doing. One way they were doing that was by encouraging more government fueled that. So farmers were being encouraged by government programs to take out more debt saying we need you to get bigger we need to take on more acreage we need you to produce more food for less. They were doing that and they were taking out that debt yes of their own decision making but also at the encouragement and the government money inducement of our federal government. And then shortly after that as inflation in the American economy got out of control the federal government raised interest rates as we've seen them doing in more recent years to control inflation as well. Now you can argue for or against those different programs and those different initiatives but when you have a government that does those two things in a row says hey farmers take out all this debt and now we're going to make that debt more expensive. You had farmers who were suddenly underwater who had months or years to pay off debt who suddenly had their loans getting called in and they didn't have the money to do it through no fault of their own it was because of the actions of our government inducing that debt and making it suddenly devastatingly more expensive. And so farmers have been caught in the middle of you know bumbling and or you know poorly conceived or poorly executed government decisions on top of the fact that our government has been driving toward fewer farms in this country unfortunately. Absolutely now the mention of the word debt one thinks of enormous amounts of money being channeled somewhere who was benefiting during that period from an industrial corporate angle. Well it was supposed to be the farmers who are benefiting from getting some easier financing from the government and able to take out the money and that's not the way that it turned out and as it turned out the government didn't benefit either the government also shot itself in the foot because the farms began struggling so much the agricultural lenders began struggling so much private lenders who had nothing to do with the situation suffered because the farmers were suffering. And so the whole economy got in a complete downward spiral in rural communities and the government programs that were involved in these things also began to teeter and topple and needed to be short up and dealt with. And so none of the people who are supposed to benefit benefited and the government that did this really didn't benefit either. One thing that did happen is that it contributed further toward more and more family farms disappearing. More and more of the farms that did succeed in the larger farms and so some of the larger companies in the agricultural sector I don't know if they would have wished this I don't know if they would have said this is how we ought to benefit ourselves. But those folks who are bigger and able to sustain things more would have benefited from the standpoint of there was more industry consolidation at that point again I don't know that they necessarily would have wished that, but it did serve to move the American economy further away from the family farm model and further toward large integrated industry that is dominated by a few players impacting our entire food supply. It's not the only thing that contributed toward that but it's a moment and history that did. Absolutely I think a tale that could be rolled across almost any industry over that time period or at least between between then and now. Now that was the the unknowing side of the government decision making process which hasn't turned out well how about knowing things that they knew were going to cause problems for farmers. Yeah that's a great question. You know in the depression when a lot of government programs were first instituted. There was a knowledge that they were doing certain things to bring commodity prices up, price support to could help farms of all sizes etc. But there was also a knowledge that they needed to have American farms producing a certain amount in a certain way and there were governing boards that were set up that would make decisions about how assistance was going to happen. Those boards almost always shifted toward helping certain types of farms, certain sizes of farms as you get on through the continuation of subsidies in our country where government money is used to encourage one type of crop over another. We have had very deliberate decisions to prop up certain types of crops, sugar is a good example and that is something that is now pervasive throughout the American diet and is also a big part of the American economy through government fueled money. And that's done at the same time that you know one state over from where I grew up I grew up in southern Wisconsin, one state over in Michigan. They're very big on growing asparagus and blueberries and crops like that food crops like that not only don't have the same level of powerful subsidies of like the sugar industry. But in many cases they don't have baseline crop insurance in general that crop insurance that's supposed to be there the government helps back the financial instrument for it to be there because of things like uncontrollable weather. Things that are uncontrollable factors weather disasters stuff like that things that maybe a lot of people might have an easier time agreeing we should have a baseline of that many of these food crops don't have anything like that. So the decisions made about where subsidies ought to go and where they ought not go have had a very severe impact. Absolutely. And on that you're talking about the decision making processes by government which in effect have delivered opportunities or advantages to larger farms corporations. How now are they exerting the perhaps you know sort of untoward influence that they have specifically with regard to government policy. It's a great question we wrestle with this in the book and what I talk about is it is really the system more so than anyone particular actor what I mean by that is the American economy. It's not just in one certain sector and I think you referenced this as well all across the American economy we have industries that are largely dominated by a few large players that's something that's happening all over. And so at the end of the day the food companies that have grown large needed to do that to keep up with the retailers and so many of the other folks all across the American economy that have gotten really big. The agribusiness companies needed to keep up with the food companies the farms needed to keep up with the agribusiness companies so this is an endless thing that is all across the American system. And it is systemic which I think is really important to recognize because it makes it so much more pervasive so much more problematic so much more difficult. It also explains why there are some good folks in agriculture who have decided they need to get bigger to survive they've responded to those market incentives. Now there are other folks who might be taking advantage of the situation. There are one of the biggest challenges and problems that we have in American agriculture is that not only has this happened naturally and unnaturally and not only are people and companies trying to keep up with other companies. But it really sets up a situation where farms that are not of a certain size just economically can't make it anymore it has ground down their living where if you aren't of a certain size you can't make a living no matter how efficient you are. No matter how effective you are no matter how competitive you are in every other single way. If you don't have that economic scale you don't have the ability to be able to negotiate the kinds of prices you need to be able to negotiate the situations you need to be able to spread out costs. Enough across enough of your operation and one of the most dangerous and insidious parts of this is the way that the Chinese government and other foreign adversaries have begun to take advantage of this. So they have done heavy investment in American agriculture and this is companies but it is also farmland and the amount of American farmland that has become subject to foreign ownership skyrocketed by 15% in just two years. Now it's still a relatively small slice of American farmland but it is growing so rapidly that it's become a very major bipartisan concern. And so there are foreign adversaries that have been exerting their influence over American agriculture in a wide variety of ways one of which is even getting their hands on the very land where we grow our food. Yeah I mean at the point well worth making and I think also domestically there are a number of bigger players entering the industry for a better word people like Bill Gates who've made a very big thing about agriculture and similarly have bought up huge tracts of land. Now you've grown up in farming you've researched all this for a book you know about this to what extent does the general public have any idea. It's a great question and I think that in general the public isn't aware of it because they're living their lives they have their own difficult economic situations and our country hasn't focused on it enough for people to realize what's going on I think people have a general sense that there aren't as many farms as there used to be but they don't understand the degree to which it's happened because we don't talk about it and they don't understand the impact. And the degree to which it's happened we've talked about two degree forty five thousand farms per year for the past century on average that's a devastating number three per day in my home state of Wisconsin at certain points. The impact is something that the American public is beginning to feel but because we all haven't been honest about this. They aren't necessarily where why it is and what I mean by that is food prices through the roof times of disaster where certain types of foods are not available in addition to being expensive they may not be available altogether. Impacts on our national security impacts on our environment impacts on our rural urban divide impacts on our mental health all these things are happening. And the American public is experiencing them but whether or not they connect them to the disappearance of the American farmer is very doubtful because our country has not faced what we've done to our farmers. Indeed and I think one you meant an oblique reference to it a minute ago. The scale of the problem is not understood and I think also even though food security is a massive concern. People are in effect sold the narrative that the solution to all this is technology but I think your opinion of that is not quite that that's the case. Yeah you know solution is partially about technology but technology has also been partially the problem and we need to get technology right in this country. The to take just as an example as we dive into the technology issue to take the issue of food prices. The reason that food prices are so high in America are many fold inflation that everyone is debating how to fix is one of them. But another is that we have a supply chain that is so integrated that there are very few paths for the food to get from the farm gate to the dinner table or not enough of them. So that supply chain is disrupted by COVID or by bird flu or by a war or by a weather event. We have one large distribution center that goes down it can suddenly impact the price of food because of the availability suddenly plummets. And the other reason that food prices have gone so high is because of innovation is struggling in America America has been a leader in global innovation and we have the ability to be that again. But right now we are not and so over the long term food prices are going to continue to go up because innovation has way now that gets to the question of what ways can technology help and hurt. Technology made it possible for American farms and farms and other parts of the globe to take on more acreage and more animals with fewer people breaking their backs to do it that to a point was a good thing that was a good advancement. What happened in the second half the 20th century is America lost sight of something called scale neutral technology scale neutral means it could work for large medium and small size farms just as well. And we lost sight of that most of the technology we had and up being the sort that tilted the scales against the small farms and the small farms were left behind. So technological innovation can be part of the solution but if that technological innovation continues to leave behind our small farms we are going to continue to have farms disappear. We're going to continue to have problems with our supply chain. We're going to continue to have problems with innovation you can't beat down an industry that hard and expect those who emerge even if they are big and strong to be able to do what we need for our economy. You know, in talking about that something being scale neutral and saying it was that that idea was lost sight of in terms of technological advancement. I don't want to necessarily suggest that you've sort of missed something as it were but it was there not a least a small minority of voices who at the time saw where this may go and in effect sort of stood against it or was there really a sort of blanket acceptance of these sorts of changes. This is what's so fascinating about this period of history. The time in which it happened there were so many distractions that I think it was largely missed not to say that there weren't anybody who noticed it but here's what was going on. Farm wages were far below factory wages at this time in our country and we needed some of that technology to help make it so that farms didn't have to have as much labor because they couldn't get the labor and so we needed things to kind of even out. Eventually farm wages caught up to factory wages to a degree to the point that we wouldn't have to have technology continuing to help farms get bigger and bigger. We could also have technology that helped farms of all sizes innovate. We missed that moment and part of the reason we missed that moment is because amazingly this happened at the same time as that 1980s farm crisis we talked about. So if you were to have voices who could have said, hey, this technology is going to leave behind our farms, that's going to make farms disappear. If someone would have been saying that at that time it was really screaming into the void because we have tens of thousands of farms being wiped out because of geopolitical and governmental decisions and an economic depression in rural communities. And so this issue of technology was kind of that sleeper force. It was kind of that underground beneath the surface sinister force that nobody realized what was going on. We had technology that had been helping farms get bigger and that was needed to a degree in those days. And then by the time we could have done something about it changed it in the 70s and 80s. We had all these other reasons for economic devastation to be hitting farms and so it was largely missed. There were farmers who were the sort of people who would resist technological innovation wanted to continue with the old ways who said this technology isn't good, it's not going to work, that kind of thing. But they were largely the sorts of folks who were resisting innovation in general. They were resisting advancement in general. It's not that they had a special insight into the type of technology. It was more that they didn't want to really engage in technological advancement. The reality is that had we spotted this and had we not been distracted by the farm crisis and all of the economic devastation. We could have said there's a way for farms of all sizes to advance and to maintain some of the old ways and to maintain that small family feel to their farm while also being able to technologically innovate. We didn't have to have a false choice between moving forward or being left behind. And the reality is that we did because we were in such a cataclysmic time for American agriculture, so few people realized it. And with that in mind, effectively the false binary presented. Do you see any of the existing technologies or communications platforms at the moment as providing a means by which the smaller farm may make a resurgence of some sort? What's such an interesting thing to look at because we are at a crucial critical pivotal time in American evolution on this issue. And what I mean by that is the level of technological innovation that is possible right now is further than ever before, but our risk of letting it leave more farms behind is even greater. So a good example is artificial intelligence. AI is the kind of technology that could lead toward really helping only certain types of farms, larger farms. You can imagine a world where we have multiple large farming implements all being driven by one worker in front of a bank of screens kind of like NASA style. That is a world that AI makes possible. There are also technologies that involve AI utilizing small modular vehicles where they're small vehicles that can self drive across fields and they could spray those fields, whether it's with chemicals or whether it is with natural products, whatever the farm wants to do. They could be going across these fields helping to improve the yield of those fields or treat issues with those fields. We could have those small modular vehicles that could be practical and affordable for farms of all sizes. What is America going to go? Is our private industry that drives most of our research and development are our companies going to see that there is value in them being able to partner with farms of all sizes in the event of a disaster. You don't want to have only certain types of farms that you're partnering with because if our supply and chain were disrupted, there's value in having partners of all sizes and all types. We need to have our private industry recognize that. We also need to have our government able to have a type of research and development funding that is properly accountable and that can keep pace because right now American innovation in that regard is falling behind. So all across the private sector and the public sector, we need to have a recognition that scale and neutral technology is part of this answer. And if we don't, AI is going to take an issue that occurred in the 20th century and is going to make it a far more difficult and pervasive issue in the 21st century. Therefore, having considered what you just said, in relation to your family farm, how does that bear significance to the current situation or indeed the sort of view of the future there. Yeah, well we're a great example of how technology impacted things. In the 1980s, when my parents were surviving the farm crisis, they had a time period where our milk hurt at that time became sick with an infection called mastitis and it was nearly the whole herd. They got through it. They survived. Their herd didn't get wiped out and they managed to make it. One of the reasons they're able to do that is because they installed a pipeline in the barn that took the milk directly from the cows, others, to the cooling tank, as opposed to being transported by hand. It was much more sanitary. It was a type of technology that at that time was on a scale that was affordable for farms of all sizes. And so they're able to do that. What we saw over the decades is that there were fewer and fewer examples of technology like that. In order to be able to technologically know it, you would have to get far bigger. And so our dairy herd was 50 cows, and that at one time was about medium. It was in the slightly lower side. The midpoint for dairy herd size in the 1980s was around 80 cows. So 50 was in that ballpark. Now the midpoint is 1200 cows. And we have found that there is very little technology that can allow farms of our size to be able to continue to milk. Now recently we are still farming. But recently in the spring of 2021, our family made a choice, which was to recognize that and other economic realities and say, we either have to take our 50 cow dairy herd and get much bigger. Or we need to pursue a different path and try to see if we can diversify our farming operation. We opted for the second. So my dad made the decision to sell our herd of cows and to shift toward diversified farming, doing different types of farming in the future. We're lucky enough that we didn't have debt and that we did it at a time where it was early enough, where we could try to make those transitions where we didn't have to sell our land along with our dairy herd. So many farms get to a point where because of debt or other dire economic circumstances when they sell their herd, they have to sell their land. So we're very grateful the way I have our land. We're very grateful that my dad is still working and that my sister's working to take it over and that I can be part of it and that our kids can be part of it. But it is a very dire situation from the standpoint of farms trying to make that transition and try to avoid the devastation that could come instead. Absolutely. And tell us how have you diversified? What have you gone into and how is that turning out? Yeah, so far it's working well. The margins are still tight for any farm, particularly a farm of our size, but so far what we're doing is we're cash cropping. So we're growing the crops that we would have back in the day when we were milk cows. We're also growing other types of crop, more types of wheat, more soybeans that can be used for all kinds of different things and just continuing to look at what crop mix is going to make sense for us. We're also raising beef for consumers and then we're also raising cows for other dairy herds. We raise heifers that become dairy cows on other farms. And so we're doing those three main lines of business and what it allows us to do is figure out when to buy and sell certain types of crops and products and have a little bit more diversification ability to hedge our bets and more than one revenue stream to depend upon. The flip side of it is, we don't have that dependable monthly milk check. And so it's been a challenge, but so far it is something that's working out. Excellent. And just tell me more, specifically talking about the beef for consumers. Do you mean dealing directly with your client base? Yeah, in some cases we do that. We also sell beef cattle into and out of local sale barns. So we'll purchase animals and we'll help them grow up to a certain weight and then we'll sell them back into the sale barn and we'll sell them to other producers. So we're part of that beef economy in a wide variety of ways, but to some degree we also sell directly to consumer and we're working on more ways to do that as well. We're trying to have as many ways that we can get our products from our farm gate to dinner tables or other places and ways that they'd be used as possible. So in some ways we're a supplier to other farms and in some ways we're a producer, direct to consumer as well. And for decades there's been a great interest in America, well in the provenance of food and all the natural elements of it. So is this a model that you see being replicated elsewhere and that you see sort of reaping dividends as the years go on? There are many farms that are trying to figure out what their path is that are diversifying or that are pursuing alternative specialty products or that are trying to work directly with consumers. There are many farms that find that it doesn't work. The margins are still very, very tight. And the reality is that most of these farms don't make the full-time income for their families. My family isn't an exception to this. My sister works more than one job. And that has become the norm. The farms in our country, they're quite large, or the smaller farms that remain are generally supplemental income. And you have people who are working construction sites or pulling factory shifts or pouring concrete or operating other small businesses, working two or three jobs alongside of operating that farm because they love it. And what we need to do in this country is figure out a way for those farms to be growing entrepreneurial ventures again. And that is the dilemma that we face. Absolutely. And then on that, we talked about government regulation. We've talked about huge corporate interests and the fact that the scale of operations has changed quite so radically. Is the small farmer in effect penalized by regulation? Does that better suit the bigger producers? And therefore, what can you do about it? Yeah, absolutely. Government regulation increases the cost of being able to make a living and increases costs. It increases compliance. It makes it more difficult and more expensive. And the reality is that whether those regulations are designed to regulate larger entities or not, they affect the smaller entities. And the smaller entities are the ones that don't have the resources to deal with them. And so it has absolutely added costs and problems and challenges on top of tax burden and other issues. And so when you have farms that each year are finding that no matter how good they are, no matter how competitive they are, no matter how hard they work, the system is unfair to them. And it is each year getting harder and harder to make a living. When you add on to that, the government making it more expensive, it's even more problematic. And on that, and by way of an example, there seem to be much to do about Thomas Massey's prime bill, which was to reduce federal interference in the slaughter and movement of meat. Has that or other sort of in effect areas of pushback that have made any substantial difference to smaller farms? And I think America is wrestling very much with how to do this. We need more of the American public becoming aware of these issues to be able to put more pressure on their elected officials to deal with it. We need both parties to engage in this issue and really need a fundamental transformation by both parties. We need both parties to recognize and understand the ways in which we have driven farms out of business in this country and the ways that that's impacting food. And so there are folks who are aware of the issue and are working on it, but not nearly enough people. And to a large degree, our farm regime, as it were, for government programs is something that everybody has something they don't like. The right and the left have things that they criticize about our subsidies and other government programs. People outside of farming certainly critique that and people within farming. And so everybody has something they don't like. The problem is that in America, we aren't rolling up our sleeves to do the kinds of deep reform needed. We're really just sort of tinkering around the edges of those programs if we're dealing with them at all. And so these government programs are getting piled one on top of another. One economist that I spoke with described it like a fragile Jenga tower, which is to say you could argue in favor or against any one particular government policy or program. What we have right now is they have been all stacked on top of one another in a very fragile way. And we're not sure what to do with any one particular block. And if we were to move it in the wrong way, the whole tower could come down. A terrifying prospect. I think I'm right. The current farm bill is under review for the next five years. Is that something that is, well, obviously it's of interest to you, but how exactly will that retain to your family's predicament? The farm bill is a crucial piece of legislation. And the problem that we have is that because of partisan gridlock, Congress has not been able to take up the bill in a meaningful way. It actually did expire. And so what happens is one thing is that because the farm bill affects so much of how the industry is constructed and affects so much about pricing and other things. In order for agricultural lenders to lend money to farmers to be able to plant, many farmers will take out a loan to plant their crops and then we'll pay off that loan when their crops come in or at a later point. And so in order for our farmers to be able to receive financing, whatever kind of finance they want to do, they need to have a farm bill so that all the lenders can say, okay, this is the shape of the industry. Here's how this is going to work. And since we don't have that, it impacts financing for families. The other thing that it does is, it means that we don't have a long term sense of where the industry is going and we're missing an opportunity for reform. In our case, our farm, we generally attempt to avoid debt whenever we can. There are times when we have to take it out and we'd be impacted by the fact that lending isn't something that can move forward right now. We at this point are trying to avoid debt as much as we can. So the way we're affected in bigger ways is just through the huge imbalances and problems with our government programs that aren't being meaningfully reformed. So to have new entrepreneurial ventures, to have new types of crops that we could grow and be able to make a profit on to try to bring our farm into a healthier economic state or farms like ours, we need to have deep reform to these government programs. And so some farms are affected in the immediate sense in terms of not being able to get the type of financing that they need. Other farms are affected in the longer term sense in the sense that most of these farms are locked into the type of farming they've been doing for a very long time, whether it's working or not, because the way our government programs have kept everyone locked. Yeah, it's quite a pickle to be in. And sort of on that, you know, your, well, the situation is asymmetric and so far as your voice compared with the bigger players will be very quiet. But so is there a sense of collaboration among smaller farmers and if so, how does that exert itself. There are organizations that organize smaller farms organizations that represent farms of all sizes. The farming industry is relatively well organized from that standpoint. The problem that we have is that the farmer and the consumer need to be in broader league together. And we need our country to understand the connection between what's happening to our farms and what's happened to our food. If we were to accomplish that where farmers and consumers could be rising up together to be talking about the impact on our food and why we need to create new opportunity for our farms, we can make a bigger change. And right now we have an organized industry that is largely left with trying to protect what it has, because we aren't able to make larger change. And there are examples of things that are misunderstandings that keep us from doing this. For instance, it's very natural. It's incorrect, but it's very natural for a lot of consumers to assume. Well, when I'm paying more for my groceries, that must mean that farmers are making more. That's not the case. The farm product goes through so many hands between the farm gate to the dinner table that each of those hands needs to make its profit along the way that when the price goes up or down on the grocery store, there's really not a fluctuation that the farmer feels. The farmer is facing changes in commodity prices and global markets that affect them. Usually when the consumer is facing a crunch, the farmer is facing a crunch as well. But there are ways that the disappearing American farmer is affecting food prices as we mentioned. So the farmer isn't making more money when the consumer pays more. But when we have so many farms disappearing and we have a highly integrated system that is so easily disrupted by disaster, that does increase the price of food. And when we have an industry that is getting hammered so hard that it can't properly innovate, that does affect food prices. And so the farmer isn't doing better when we have food prices. They're usually doing just as bad as the American consumer. But there are ways that the disappearance of our family farms is affecting the price of food. And if we could have farmers and consumers recognizing that together, it would be a much larger ground so there would be much more public support for larger scale changes. Which begs the question, what is the media doing about all of this? Well, it's very rare for farm country in our nation to get the kind of attention that it ought to get. It happens in spurts. So in the 1980s, when there were tens of thousands of farms being wiped out, there was a fairly legitimate national conversation around what to do. Since then, in the 2010s, when there were a lot of farms going under in 2016, 17, 18, there was a bit of a time where the national media was screaming about this issue. But in general, what America likes to do is remind itself of its beautiful farming history and tell itself stories about our hardworking brave farmers. And while those things are true in many ways, we're really lulling ourselves into sleep. We're really allowing ourselves to not believe that we're stamping our farms out in this country. And so there needs to be a much more serious national conversation. And unfortunately, the media tends to be focused on other things. And obviously, you've written a book, which we've talked about, and you write outside of that. Is this an area that you're writing on specifically, and you feel you're able to reach a further audience through that? Yeah, you know, I am grateful to say that the book seems to have begun a national conversation. We've had national media outlets covering this issue. And we've been doing well at trying to advance this and get more hearts and minds engaged on the issue. I'm also a columnist for the USA Today Network, where I write regular rural columns about what's happening to our farms and rural economy, but also more generally what's happening. What rural issues? What are those hidden stories of rural America to affect all of America? And I have found that although historically our country has failed to recognize these issues, and although historically, the media has been focused on other issues, I have found that there's an intense interest on this issue. And I'm grateful to say that I think it has to do with the fact that people in America care more than ever where their food comes from. And they've experienced disasters like COVID and other things, and they know that there's something as a miss. And people have a sense that there's something wrong. And so we're trying to give voice to what that thing is. And I'm glad to say that we've been able to contribute to a stronger national conversation than there's perhaps been in the past. Good. Well, I mean, that certainly sounds like progress. And I wish you luck with furthering that message. But tell me, though, you've looked into the past, certainly in your own family's context, but also the wider context, and you have a very good idea of what's going on now. What do you see as the big challenge of the future? The big challenge of the future is whether or not we're going to be able to change government policy in a way that can enable more entrepreneurial opportunity for farms. So are we going to be able to spur the kind of research and development revolution that we need with scaled neutral technology that can make it possible for more farms to innovate without having to lose their family farm status? Are we going to have government policies that allow American farmers to sell abroad without being subject to completely unfair and imbalanced trade policies? Are we going to have free but fair trade? Are we going to have opportunities for the American farmer and the American consumer to organize themselves around local and regional markets so that there can be more opportunity. If we can do this, there can be more opportunity for our farmers, and there can be more choices for our consumers. If we can't do all of these things, if we don't make changes across a number of fronts, we're going to continue to see farms disappear. We're going to continue to see problems with our food supply, and we're going to continue to face all of these problems which again, you know, span the gamut from the ways that they impact our mental health to our environment and beyond. And we talked about the influence that government decisions have, whether they're knowingly or unknowingly set in motion effectively in the wrong direction. You've given certain examples of being able to act in effect without subsidy and do stuff outside of government interference. To what extent do you think that can be expanded that people can operate outside of government control or reliance upon government? We're seeing it more and more with the farmers markets that's spread up across the country, and there's more interest, as I said, than before about where our food comes from. There is an interest in buying local and natural products. And so there is room for more of that, but we need to move to a place in this country where we both parties undergo a transformation to understand this issue in order for it to happen because otherwise what we really have is the pendulum swinging back and forth between the two parties and the reality is that the Democratic Party hasn't necessarily understood the way that regulations keep us from solutions. The reality is that the Republican Party for a long time has not necessarily seen the way that the direction and the anti-competitive direction that our economy has gone have made it harder for farmers as well. So we have deep realizations that we need from both our political parties. And on going back to the rural urban divide being one of the many factors that's changed over the years and the fact that you are diversifying certainly as a farm yourselves, and that this is happening more widely. Is there a movement towards effectively sort of showcasing the natural environment and the farmed environment to urban communities and trying to get people out to view what's going on to educate? Yeah, you know, that's done in a variety of ways. As people go more interested in their food, there's a lot more telling the story of where that food comes from. That's an opportunity for farms and ranches. The other thing that's going on is agritourism, where people are able to get out into the countryside and see what's going on over the weekend. I took my young seven-month-old girl to a pumpkin farm and I, although she's maybe too young to understand all of it, I like to expose her to things and she was able to see, and we were able to be there where so much food and other products are produced. And I think that there is an opportunity for more and more of that. And at the same time, so many of the built-in ways that we used to do that have gone away as our countries become more divided. There are still strong FFA, future farmers of America, and 4-H clubs. These are youth programs where kids learn about agriculture. And there are still a good many of those in rural areas and they're very important to the community, but the rural urban divide in our country, where urban American rural America are further apart. There are really two economies, the urban economy, where there's growth or downturn in the rural economy, where there's really never growth. There are divides between these people in terms of being able to know and understand one another. And so over time, more and more people have become more distant from where their food comes from and have become more distant from the farm economy, and they don't understand it as well. And in many cases, in the case of our citizenry, it's innocent. They don't have any idea. They don't have any way. And so there are efforts and there are things that we can do, but so much of the fiber that had tied us together has frayed in this country. You spoke about the young and about education. How is this subject dealt with by schools or the education system in explaining to children of school age, what the situation is and how important the support of, as you say, not just American, but smaller scale American farmers is? There are individual teachers out there who are trying, I spoke with the teacher the other day, who learned of my book, who was interested in the topic and wants to expose his kids to him more. So there's all kinds of people that are fighting this fight, but I do think that the rural urban divide in this country has gotten us further and further away from it. And I think that some of the divisive debates in our country have made it worse. For example, the debate over our environment in America, the reality is that farmers are the original conservationists and care about the land more than anyone. And so there are people who care about our environment and there are people who farm who could be in league together, who could be working together on things like soil health. How do we have healthy soil that can create high yields for the farmer and be healthy for the rest of us over the long term? Abundance of water. How can we have an abundant supply of clean water that can help facilitate farming can also make sure that we all have a clean natural resource on in the future. These are things that farmers and people who care about the environment could be working on together. Instead, we have very divisive debates around our environment and some of those debates end up targeting farms and putting farms in a position of having their way of life. Even more expensive and even more difficult to keep from being wiped out. And so we need to change our way of communicating around a number of issues, environment being one of them to be focusing on the areas of agreement that we can collaborate on rather than those things that divide us. So that's another barrier. Absolutely. And, you know, in the British context, we've just had statistics released on the effect of environmental schemes here and of our total utilised agricultural area. The uncropped area has risen by 107% in the last year due to the influence of environmental land management schemes, effectively farmers have had the carrot dangled in front of them to cease producing food in order to enter into an environment. For which they'll be paid a guaranteed return of these sorts of policies affecting use of land in the States. Those sorts of policies were utilised in a much heavier way during and after the Great Depression, when there was an effort to limit the supply of food to increase the price of that food. Ironically, at a time when many Americans were starving and so it was very controversial, but farmers were paid money to leave large tracts of land. They were actually paid to plow up fields and to leave them barren. There are in our country, there are some conservation programs that encourage farmers to, you know, rotate or have land be able to kind of recuperate and rest and be rejuvenated, but it is not on the kind of large scale that you're talking about where large amounts of farmland are being taken out of production by government programs, but it is something that this country has a history of in the past. With your amazing insights that you've had in writing the book and being able to see not just the current situation but the past, if you were able to pick up all the pieces of the jigsaw and put them back together in a slightly different way, how would you do that? Yes, if I had the magic wand and could go back in time, I would have ensured that any government programs that we had that needed to be there were there for baseline things like protecting against uncontrollable weather events. There needs to be some level of stability for our food supply, of course, but I would have strived to have our government making fewer choices about the types of farms that we ought to have. And I would have also had our, not only our government, but also our private industry focused as much as possible on investing in the type of innovation that can be utilized by the broadest base of farmers possible so that our private sector innovation on farms could have continued to be broadly shared. And I also would have made sure that as we were pursuing international trade that we were making sure that we were doing that in a way that allowed our farmers to compete on an even playing field. And those are just a few of the things but I think if our government had made different decisions on those issues, while we would have still had some degree of farms disappearing through natural market consolidation. We wouldn't have had to have jet fuel poured on it by our own political leaders. I'm sure we can go on forever discussing exactly how things could have been done differently. I mean, on the immediate horizon, do we talk about farm bill a bit, but do you see any significant sort of decision point looming where you feel that could be a real effect if such and such a thing did change. The farm bill is a very big one. We're also surrounded by moments like that right now in this time where Americans care more than ever where their food comes from. If we were in a position where the American public, everyone in the American public began to purchase food in a way that recognized the need for more opportunities for our farmers, we could make a change. And so what I mean by that is right now most people buy their food from the conventional store and it's bought off the national food market essentially. And going to a farmers market or something like that is a bit of a lark. It's something that's done on the weekends. It's usually done by affluent people. That sort of thing. If we were to have a world where the American consumer were to diversify how they purchase their groceries, this could make a huge difference. They could go to farmers markets for produce. They could stop off of the local butcher shop. By the way, they could go to their grocery store and many grocery stores are happy to carry local options if they know that their customers want that. And so if customers were consumers, we're going to their existing places where they buy their food and asking for fresh local food. And if they were patronizing places that provide it now and we could create more ways for the farmer and the consumer to be connected. This is something that could change everything. If each American consumer did that to a small degree, you can bet that the American system of entrepreneurialism would find a way to meet those needs. And so we're surrounded by those choices every moment, every day. And that's part of what I'm hoping is by telling the urgent story of our disappearing farmers. My hope is that more people pay attention to this issue. And perhaps it creates more market opportunities for farmers and more options and choices and better food security for consumers. Absolutely. And obviously, you know, very much the central purpose of your book, which on that, how are you finding its treatment by effectively broadcasters or media outlets that have the opportunity to be able to talk to you about it. And I would hope promote it. How's that going? The big challenge is getting folks to pay attention to what's going on and what's called the flyover country in America. When you're in the middle of the country like this, it is sometimes something that national media hasn't had a natural reason to look at, unfortunately. But when we've gotten the attention and we've got more attention than I think people expected us to, we've found that media outlets have generally understood the issue and been willing to highlight it. And I'm happy to say the Associated Press book review, provided a positive review, calling the book an anthem to the family farm in America. And we've found that where we've engaged in the conversation when we're able to get people's attention on this issue. It leads to really interesting discussions and robust debate. And I'm glad to say that the story I think has been received well and people seeing what's going on in our economy and us with our family story trying to show the impact that has on the ground seems to be having an impact. And so I hope that continues. Absolutely, so will I, so will the audience. So what I would like to do is just give you a chance, just remind us the title of the book and where people, I mean, bear in mind, the majority of the audience will be in the UK, but obviously all over the world, where can people find your book. Absolutely. Landridge cash pour is available on Amazon and any other online retailer. It's also available in bookstores nationwide across America. If you're in America, they can get it at a local bookstore, ask them to order it for you. Probably the easiest way is Amazon overseas. And so we have found that wherever we go, people who care about these issues are able to help advance it. So I hope that if anybody does me the honor of picking up the book, they find an interest and I hope that we can just continue to raise awareness of these issues and keep the conversation in order to be able to do something about it. Absolutely. And then you've spoken quite a bit about the family farm. Is it a place that people can visit and effectively sort of look at online or get in touch? Can we have details about that? Yeah, that's a great question. There's more about not only myself in the book, but also on our farm and at my website, brian-risinger.com. That's brianbrin-risinger.com. Well, we'll push people in that direction too. And other writings that you've done and sort of social media presence, how about that? Yeah, absolutely. I'm available on x at @brianj-risinger.com. So @brianbrin. J is in James Risinger, R-E-I-S-I-N-G-E-R. And also I have a wide variety of columns out there. I write for the USA Today Network via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in my home state of Wisconsin. And we tell a wide variety of stories there about farms and other types of people and issues in rural areas that, again, I think affect not only those rural areas, but affect many of the rest of us as well. And bear in mind what's on the horizon in November. How many of the presidential candidates have a copy of your book so far? Yeah, that's a great question. I hope that it gets to 100% because I'd like to have both parties and the leaders of both parties aware. I'm not sure, but I do know that a good many of my readers have been spreading it to public officials on both sides of the aisle. And my hope is that we can get more and more focused on it as we go along. Absolutely. And quite right. Now, brian, you've given us a fantastic ride through your thoughts, your life experiences, what's contained within your book. And I think the audience would have been very gripped by all that you've had to say. And of course, given people lots of food for thought. So just before I let you go, I would just remind the audience that notes that relate to what Brian said and links to his book and his social media presence and all the rest of it will be at UK column.org. If you are not already doing so, or in a position to support us financially, then please consider a membership with UK column. And it just remains for me to thank Brian very much indeed for joining me on a UK column interview and please do keep in touch. Brian, thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Charles. I appreciate it. Thank you for everything you're doing to raise the important issues that you do. Thank you. At Sprout's Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy, and delicious. Step into our bulk department to discover a world of options with hundreds of scoopable bulk bins and grab-and-go favorites. From wholesome grains and spices to limited time goodies like pumpkin apple cashews and butter toffee peanuts. Plus buying in bulk means you can get as much or as little as you like for your next recipe or snack attack. Visit your neighborhood Sprout's Farmers Market today, where flavor fills every scoop. (gentle music)