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Speaker 1: A twenty nine cold of E thirty fifty pout KRCD
Speaker 1: talk station. I'm very happy Friday to you, and I'm
Speaker 1: pleased to Welcome to the five Kersey Morning Show. Author
Speaker 1: of his first book, which we're talking about today, Land Rich,
Speaker 1: Cash Poor, My Family's Hope and The Untold History of
Speaker 1: the Disappearing American Farmer, author Brian Reisinger. But he's more
Speaker 1: than an author. He's got a background that's rather impressive.
Speaker 1: Grew up on a family farm in Salt County, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and of course this is what the book is premised on.
Speaker 1: Columnists consultant. He's worked with his father from the time
Speaker 1: he could walk and before entering the world of business,
Speaker 1: journalism and public policy. If you see where he has
Speaker 1: been published, if I had read the list off of
Speaker 1: all the outlets like US Day Today and Yahoo News
Speaker 1: and the newspapers, that would spend the entire time up
Speaker 1: with that. But he's well published and again his first book.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Morning Show. It's a real pleasure to
Speaker 1: have you on today. Brian Reisinger.
Speaker 3: Hey, good morning, Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your backgrounds, I do come from a farming background,
Speaker 1: not me. I did not farm, but I laid witness
Speaker 1: to I have uncles that had farms on my father's
Speaker 1: side of the family, and my wife is the daughter
Speaker 1: of a dairy farmer from a little town called Avella, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He's departed, but he worked his butt off, and I
Speaker 1: bet you have some understanding of what kind of work
Speaker 1: it takes to run a dairy farm.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, those are some good roots you've got. I
Speaker 3: appreciate hearing about that. You know, it is a beautiful
Speaker 3: way of life. It's a difficult way of life, and
Speaker 3: we take it all as it comes. You know. The
Speaker 3: best example I have, we talk about this in the book,
Speaker 3: My dad was inducted in the family business at the
Speaker 3: tender age of eight. Yeah, when my grandpa was climbing
Speaker 3: on a corn crib and slipped off till thirty feet
Speaker 3: and broke his back on the frozen ground. And my
Speaker 3: grandpa ultimately got back up on his feet. But my
Speaker 3: dad started doing the work for a man at eight
Speaker 3: years old, and he loved it. He loved the calves
Speaker 3: and the clean country when he was a kid, and
Speaker 3: he has never stopped. In fact, I was talking to
Speaker 3: him this morning. He's getting ready to harvest corn a
Speaker 3: little bit later today. And you know, it just shows
Speaker 3: what fun families go through, the kind of resilience they
Speaker 3: have and the difficulty of life, but the beauty the
Speaker 3: way of life, because it gets done in your blood
Speaker 3: and your bones and you come to love it too well.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't had that childhood experience, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine a young person these days grows up in the
Speaker 1: comfortable suburbs playing video games all day ever entering the
Speaker 1: world of farming and taking on that commitment because once
Speaker 1: they you know, stare the real, legitimate hard work that
Speaker 1: you have to do literally every day in the face,
Speaker 1: recognizing that if you don't do the hard work, you're
Speaker 1: gonna starve. No one's going to go down that road.
Speaker 1: This is a generation after generation matter of pride more
Speaker 1: than an economic boon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean it has such a
Speaker 3: big impact on so many issues in our country, you know,
Speaker 3: our food prices, our food availability. But it's also part
Speaker 3: of who we are in such a big way. I'm
Speaker 3: grateful to have grown up there. And you're right, it's
Speaker 3: so difficult, and there's a lot of hard work. You
Speaker 3: work and sun up to sundown. You learn a lot
Speaker 3: of good values along the way, and you also get
Speaker 3: a lot of incredible experiences. You know, I remember gettingup
Speaker 3: at odd hours when there was a cowho was having
Speaker 3: a hard time delivering her calf and labor, and my
Speaker 3: dad to take us down to the barn and he'd
Speaker 3: helped deliver the calf. We watch it tickets first breaths.
Speaker 3: You know, things that you learn about circle of life,
Speaker 3: the value hard work.
Speaker 1: And other things you know, and that's interesting and I
Speaker 1: keep thinking again, my father in law. I had more
Speaker 1: experience seeing what he had to do day in and
Speaker 1: day out. And I've heard so many stories from my
Speaker 1: wife over the years, that sense of community, especially in
Speaker 1: a little tiny community like of Bella, Pennsylvania, which no
Speaker 1: one's ever heard of. You know, he slaughtered a cow.
Speaker 1: It was tough economic times. I think it was back
Speaker 1: in the seventies or maybe even earlier than that, but
Speaker 1: he was a family that needed some help and her
Speaker 1: dad was happy to help out and give them some
Speaker 1: of the meat from the slaughtered cow. That sense of
Speaker 1: community really really is steeped into the equation and I
Speaker 1: think that's a real blessing, and that's something a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't have in their life. But it's a
Speaker 1: character building thing. You know, my wife can tell the
Speaker 1: same story as you about Listen if you're old enough
Speaker 1: to pick up something and help out in some way.
Speaker 1: You're going to be working at that age, and she
Speaker 1: worked from you all the time you're sitting around there's
Speaker 1: nothing to do. No on a farm, there is always
Speaker 1: something to do, and kids participate in that from as
Speaker 1: soon as they can, just like you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, you are so you know. It reminds me
Speaker 3: of a story of my family back in the late
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies early the nineteen eighties, as we were heading
Speaker 3: toward what was called the farm crisis, where tens of
Speaker 3: thousands of farms got wiped out all over the Midwest,
Speaker 3: my home state, as well as where you guys are in,
Speaker 3: all over the country too. And what happened is the
Speaker 3: year my parents were married, nineteen seventy six, they actually
Speaker 3: had faced a drought and we had dry conditions or
Speaker 3: wiping out our crops, and they had local neighbors who
Speaker 3: let them pick up, you know, loose hay off their barn.
Speaker 3: There was an old man nearby who told my dad, hey,
Speaker 3: if you do the harvest for me, I'm too old
Speaker 3: to do the work. If you do the harvest for me,
Speaker 3: we can go halves, so you can have half my hay. Crop,
Speaker 3: and it's what got them to the winter. It kept
Speaker 3: them from taking out a whole bunch of debt before
Speaker 3: the farm crisis, which is an era when debt drove
Speaker 3: all kinds of farms under. And that is something you
Speaker 3: see over and over where that unique farmland spirit. That's
Speaker 3: that blend of being willing to come run when a
Speaker 3: neighbor is in need. And also the individualism it takes
Speaker 3: the digger living out of the dirt. It's both those
Speaker 3: things and it's something that slips away in this country.
Speaker 3: Has our farms just here unfortunately?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, when I was a younger person,
Speaker 1: you know, more of a kill mall l God sort
Speaker 1: it out, kind of a conservative. Now I find myself
Speaker 1: to be in the little il libertarian category. And of course,
Speaker 1: before I married my wife and was introduced more intimately
Speaker 1: with the realities of farming, I always was one of
Speaker 1: the guys would say, well, what corporate farms. You know,
Speaker 1: there's Mellencamp out there doing farm aide. If they can't
Speaker 1: survive corporate farms, Well, they're bigger, they're more efficient, they're
Speaker 1: backed by big money. Isn't that the direction to go?
Speaker 1: But there's something that we said about preserving the family farm.
Speaker 3: You know there is And here's the way I look
Speaker 3: at it too. I mean, I think it's important to
Speaker 3: understand economics. Those farms, to your point, they got bigger,
Speaker 3: trying to make it, trying to survive, and there's things
Speaker 3: all across our entire economy that are driving that. And
Speaker 3: the issue is in our country's history. And we found
Speaker 3: this as we looked at the book, because we've hidden
Speaker 3: airs of history driven the disappearance of these farms with
Speaker 3: my family story, and as I examine what was going on,
Speaker 3: we found that time after time, there's ways that our
Speaker 3: government as well as other things really stack the deck
Speaker 3: against small farms. So it's not that family farms are saying,
Speaker 3: hey we need you know, super special treatment or anything
Speaker 3: like that. What family farms are saying is, hey, we
Speaker 3: want a fair shot. And there's ways that family farm
Speaker 3: has been stamped out over the decades, one way or another,
Speaker 3: for years and years and years. So you know, some
Speaker 3: of those bigger farms, they got bigger, needing to make it,
Speaker 3: find ways to be more efficient, and you know, they've
Speaker 3: got a role that they play. And a lot of
Speaker 3: these family farms, a lot of these smaller farms, you know,
Speaker 3: they've got the ability to play a role too, and
Speaker 3: they're as efficient as competitive. They just aren't as big
Speaker 3: and don't have that scale. But there's a role they
Speaker 3: can play, you know, whether it's in a niche of
Speaker 3: our food economy or what have you. Those are the
Speaker 3: things that I'm exploring, is how can we have farms
Speaker 3: of all kinds being able to find a way for
Speaker 3: because if family farms get a fair shot, they can
Speaker 3: do that well.
Speaker 1: And I get a sense that, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people I don't know whether it's a majority or not,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, but a sufficient number of people appreciate everything
Speaker 1: you are talking about and talk about in the book
Speaker 1: Langridge Cash Poor. But this goes along with this push
Speaker 1: to buy local. You see it all the place. We
Speaker 1: try to locally sourced ingredients. That really translates to we're
Speaker 1: buying from local small farms and businesses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're so right, And we are at a time
Speaker 3: in our country where people care more than ever about
Speaker 3: where their food comes from. And I think that's an opportunity.
Speaker 3: You know, we've lost forty five thousand farms per year
Speaker 3: on average for the past century. That's a devastating amount.
Speaker 3: We've lost seventy percent of our farms, but we still
Speaker 3: have a lot of farms left in this country. People
Speaker 3: are amazed to hear that eighty eight percent of them
Speaker 3: are small farms. And what we need to do is
Speaker 3: figure out a way to make those farms go from
Speaker 3: being supplemental income to full time income because lobbyse families.
Speaker 3: The way they can hold on their farms is they
Speaker 3: work multiple jobs. You know, they're working construction sites to
Speaker 3: pulling factors, just poorn concrete and work on a farm.
Speaker 3: How do we find a way to have these farms
Speaker 3: be growing entrepreneurial adventures again they can be full time
Speaker 3: income for these families. Well, one of the ways is
Speaker 3: everybody care about where their food comes from and taking
Speaker 3: steps to buy from local and regional food sources and
Speaker 3: support their farms with new economic opportunity.
Speaker 1: Absolute right. And I just have to ask you because
Speaker 1: it seems to me the EPA, the federal government is
Speaker 1: literally everywhere. Is there a risk or is there are
Speaker 1: there threats posed by the regulatory oversight that seems to
Speaker 1: be more and more intrusive in our world, and that
Speaker 1: I presume a small farmer would have a much larger
Speaker 1: struggle complying with are you do small farmers feel that
Speaker 1: intrusion or haven't they got there yet? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: figured it was yes, go ahead and.
Speaker 3: Explain, yes, yeah, you know, I mean those things create
Speaker 3: such costs. Here, here's the thing about our whether it's
Speaker 3: our regulations or our farm programs with substitution or whatever,
Speaker 3: the issue is there are people on the right, the left,
Speaker 3: outside farming, inside farming, have something that they don't like
Speaker 3: about it. We have so many things we got to change.
Speaker 3: One of the issues that we face is that regulatory burden.
Speaker 3: It creates expenses, it creates costs, It makes it more
Speaker 3: difficult to try new types of business, all these things,
Speaker 3: and they're designed to go after the big farms. But
Speaker 3: the issue is not only those big farms trying to
Speaker 3: figure out if VA can handle costs. You get the
Speaker 3: small farms that have to face similar regulation, and it
Speaker 3: really is something that they're not in a position to
Speaker 3: be able to afford. And so in many cases, a
Speaker 3: lot of these regulations end up hurting some of the
Speaker 3: very farms that some of these folks say that they
Speaker 3: would support as well, which is an irony of you
Speaker 3: unintended consequences of.
Speaker 1: Government, no question about it, And Lord, don't we live
Speaker 1: with that reality every single day. The name of the
Speaker 1: book Landridge cash Board, My Family's Hope and the Untold
Speaker 1: History of the Disappearing American Farmer by my guest today,
Speaker 1: Brian Reisinger. Brian, you still own the family farm?
Speaker 3: Hey, I appreciate you asking. My dad owns a farm
Speaker 3: and my sister's working to take it over. She has
Speaker 3: a little more talent for cattle and crops than I do,
Speaker 3: so while I work to tell our stories my career
Speaker 3: off the farm, she's working to take it over. But
Speaker 3: they do still throw me in a tracker in my
Speaker 3: days off and I help on on the business side.
Speaker 3: So it's a family venture, on and on to each generation.
Speaker 1: Well that's great. I don't know where she got it,
Speaker 1: probably definitely one hundred percent. For my wife, my daughter,
Speaker 1: it's not and we call it the farm. But she
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend hopefully soon to be fiance then husband,
Speaker 1: Eric got five and a half acres, They got a
Speaker 1: farm tracker, they had a successful year growing vegetables and crops,
Speaker 1: and they're on their way to almost Eric's building a
Speaker 1: chicken coop right now, so it'll soon be a really
Speaker 1: tiny family farm, but a farm nonetheless, And we are
Speaker 1: just enjoying the hell out of them making progress and
Speaker 1: being so proud of what they're trying to accomplish. So
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of genetics in there and I
Speaker 1: think's helping them out. Brian, it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 1: But your book is on my blog page at fifty
Speaker 1: five kr see dot com, so my list isn't a
Speaker 1: right where to go to get a copy of land
Speaker 1: Ridge Cash for great conversation, Brian, uplifting and I wish
Speaker 1: you all the best and hopefully sell a lot of books.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very interesting and important subject.
Speaker 3: Hey, thank you so much. I hope people go on
Speaker 3: there and find it on your page. It's also available
Speaker 3: on Amazon anywhere if people buy books online or at
Speaker 3: bookstores they have or they can order it for you.
Speaker 3: And I just hope we keep conversation going on these issues.
Speaker 3: So I appreciate your time exactly.
Speaker 1: I will too. Take care man, have a wonderful weekend.
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