Speaker 1: That government regulation, government outreach. When it goes too far,
it adds not only time and halse so, but it
adds costs. You know, compliance costs and makes it so
that you can only operate in certain ways. That limits
the type of business you can or can't do. And
a lot of these, you know, small businesses are small
family farms, whether they're amish or not, are not able
to sustain that kind of thing. You know, the great
big operations can do that, and they got the army
lobbyists and lawyers and accountants to help them do it too.
Speaker 2: You are listening to Carrie Leutz's Financial Survival Network, where
you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else
to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial
Survival Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork
dot com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial
Survival Network now more than ever.
Speaker 3: And welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial
Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, a lot
of changes taking place in the country, a lot of things,
maybe good and bad. What's going to happen with the
Trump tariffs? They're definitely coming. There's no question about it.
And what effect will that have on the dollar, on trade,
on inflation. And right now we have Brian Reisinger with us. Brian,
great to talk to you, and Hey, you're particularly concerned
about the impact upon farming based on your book Land Rich,
Cash Poor, My Family's Hope and the untold history of
the disappearing American farmer. They seem to want to get
rid of farmers in this country. You know, the last election,
the amiship been under attack because they sell raw milk
and the government keeps wanting to regulate their farm, and
to a large extent they voted to reject over regulation
because of their own financial interests. They're interests same as
farmers across the country, aren't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you for having me, and
you're absolutely right. I mean the Amash farmers, particularly in
Pennsylvania area where there's a lot of them. From a
voting standpoint, you know, in many ways they're not unlike
family farms all across the country. I mean in some
ways that they there's certain technology they don't use that
family farms like the one I grew up Undo, But
a lot of our small family farms are working in
the same types of economics that those Amish farms are.
And the reality is that government regulation, government outreach, when
it goes too far, it adds not only time and
hass so, but it adds costs, you know, compliance costs.
It makes it so that you can only operate in
certain ways. That limits the type of business you can
or can't do. And a lot of these, you know,
small businesses, are small family farms, whether they're Amish or not,
are not able to sustain that kind of thing. You know,
the great big operations can do that, and they got
the army of lobbyists and lawyers and accountants to help
them do it too, on top of having the money
to do it. But it's a lot of times it's
the small family farm, it's the Amish farmer. It's just
like a small business, just like a main street business.
They have a real challenge with those additional costs and
when they're already operating on tight margins.
Speaker 3: So what about like it looks like a lot of
small farmers getting into organic and healthy farming, and you know,
I know, we weren't really going to talk about this,
but you get a higher margin there. And honestly, the
food tastes better. You know, up until ten years ago
I kind of rejected the whole natural foods. Then I
really researched it. These big factory farms have really been
injurious to American health, haven't they?
Speaker 1: And global Yeah, you know, we have an instance where
people care more than ever about where their food comes from.
And that's a good thing. That's a start because it
creates an opportunity for some thing we haven't had in
this country for a long time, which is new entrepreneur
opportunity for our farmers. You know, so many of our
family farms are locked into growing on a certain type
of crop because there's some level of income they can
count on. There might be government support, you know, guaranteeing
more of that income, but it's not the kind of
income they need. The problem isn't solved. Their costs are
going up, and to your point, the margins are getting tighter,
you know, and they don't set those prices, you know,
their prices set by global and international national commodity markets,
et cetera. Sometimes that maybe a regional commodity market, and
so you know, pursuing fresh, local food, specialty food markets,
those are opportunities to set some prices that can you know,
improve your margins a little bit. So it's a real opportunity.
Here's the challenge to it is that we're just really
beginning for that to be serious enough. What you're talking
about and the way that you and others have become
more attuned to that. You know, it's the same for
farm families like ours. The demand is really just beginning.
You know, we need a stronger local food when we
need stronger local and regional economies. We need stronger special
markets for more farms to be able to shift to
that entrepren opportunity. So it's headed in a good direction,
but we need that consumer demand to build more of
that market viability for farmers so that more of those
farmers can make that transition because they want to do it.
They just want to work the land and grow something
that people want to put in their bodies. You know.
Speaker 3: You know, I really when it comes to neat beef
and the chicken, I want hormone free, antibiotic free, and
when it comes to fish, I want wild caught. And
it seems like with the current change of administration coming
RFK Junior is going to head up the Health and
Human Services Department. He's going to be the secretary there.
We could be seeing the entire food debate change. Yeah,
it could be completely upended. And to your point of
your earlier question, there's opportunity there for farmers. You know,
there's opportunity for farmers to be able to transition toward
new types of crop products that can supply.
Speaker 1: More of that food. We can have new entrepreneur opportunity
for our farmers, and we can have more choices for
an increasingly health and food conscious consumer public. And the
thing that we need to do is figure out how
do we do that and allow farms that are small
businesses to make that transition. You know, a lot of
farms have a certain number acres they have to put
into that one crop they're growing to be able to
make the money they need to and there again, most
they're not what they need, but it's better than nothing.
And in order to be able to experiment with new
crops and transition from one crop to another crop and
see if it works, there's risk to that, and there's
also cost to that when they have type margins. So
we need to navigate this in a way that can
allow our country small businesses to pivot toward that new opportunity,
and I think we can do that. But that's there's
there's sort of always there's a pattern. As I was
investigating Wire Farm's been disappearing for decades, and that is
that hope and peril often go hand in hand, you know,
because change needs to occur, and there's some pain that
comes with that, but there's also new upside and that's
what we need to figure out how to do with
our American farmer and our food supply.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you just think, if you could eat healthy
when you're younger, a lot of the medical conditions you
have when you get older, the chronic conditions wouldn't exist.
And so to pay a little bit more, you know.
The thing that gets me though, is a lot of
a lot of this stuff is dictated by the government
packaging and what you can say and what you can't.
And you know, you go into whole foods and you think, oh,
it's organic. It might be organic, but it's it's nutrient
it's nutritionally sparse. You want nutritionally dense foods. And that's
something that the average consumer, unless you've got this certain
meter to measure the food, you can't know so you
want organic, but actually it could be worse for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And you know the reality is
that our our government has not been able to navigate
this the right way for us. A lot of times
the government ends up being captured by certain types of industries,
you know. So there's a lot of changes need to happen.
And now here's the thing you've touched on costs, and
you're right about it. The traditional issue has been that
our kind of conventional food system provides cheaper food, then
the local food movement provides maybe better but more expensive food.
Here's the thing about that paradigm that's changing. Everybody knows
food prices are through the roof. So our kind of
conventional food system isn't necessarily doing what it used to do.
It isn't necessarily providing affordable food anymore. In fact, it's
not just inflation, the runaway inflation that we saw. It's
there are other reasons that food has risen at a
higher rate than inflation, and one of them has to
do with the destruction of our family farms. And here's
what I mean by that. The fewer small family farms
that we have that means that more of Our food
supply is in fewer hands, right and you've got a
really large integrated food system with you know, very few
you paths relatively speaking, for the food to go from
the farm gate to the dinner table. It's you know,
great big distribution centers, great big food processes, great big companies.
They're all trying to keep up with the rest of
American et communy. It is a systemic wide thing. But
here's what happens. We saw this during COVID and we're
seeing it during bird flu. Now, when you know a
farm or a distribution center or processing center goes down
for some reason in COVID because they're being shut down
with bird flu, because they maybe have to slaughter a
whole bunch of chickens, because there's an infection that affects
our food supply in a huge way. So why are
the price of eggs through the rough right now? It's
because our supply chain is vulnerable. Why was food more
expensive or you know a lot of it you couldn't
buy during COVID because our supply chain was disrupted. So
the more farms we wipe out, the more we have
this system that's capable of modern miracles. But is also
deeply vulnerable the supply chain disruption and the price goes
through the rough and the availability. I was into the basement.
Speaker 3: So what about technology for small farmers, the ability to
have a tractor that's geo fenced and the automated all
these other things. Is that bringing a big change?
Speaker 1: It is, and it's a change that can go either way.
It can either help with the challenge of our disappearing
American farmer and what it does to the costs and
the health and the security of our food supply, or
it can hurt. And what I mean by that is,
you know, one of the things I found in my
book lang Reage, Cash Poor is that there were economic crises,
there were government mistakes, and then there were technological issues.
Those are the three big types of things that have
been driving the disciplines of our farms. Technology has always
been a double edged sore. The innovation of technology is
what allowed us to have more people taken on more
acres and more animals with fewer people breaking their backs
to do it. Is the reason that not everyone in
this country has to grow their food. You know, It's
the reason that household budgets are have a smaller share
of their money going toward grocery stores. The flip side
is most of our technology, for the better part of
all the past fifty sixty years, has gone toward just
finding ways that farms can get bigger, can get economic scale.
That was important for a time to be able to
accomplish that, and you know, have again so that not
everyone in this country shu grow their own food. But
it went so far, and we have so much technology
that's been leaving behind other family farms. It didn't need
to be that way. About the sixties and the seventies,
we hit that point where we needed to be made
kind of change when you talk to economists, and what
we should have been doing is pursuing what's called scale
neutral technology. That's where you can pursue technology that can
be affordable and practical not only for large farms, but
also for medium and small size farms. We missed that opportunity.
So for the best you know, fifty some odd years,
we've been marching toward more and more technology that frankly
is leaving small farms behind, not letting them innovate. They
could be perfectly efficient, they could be just as smart,
they could be just as hard working, In many cases
they're more hard working, but they don't have the technological
innovation opportunity that other operations do, so they go by
the wayside. Right now, with AI and with other types
of technology, we have the opportunity to make the choice.
Are we going to have that technology be scale neutral
and bring more of our farms along? Are we going
to have it leave more of our farms behind? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I heard about the drones using drones to
plant to plant fields and sounds like it's going to
be pretty amazing. Well, so the concept of the family farmer,
is it going to continue on? You know, the government
loves concentration because then it's easier to regulate and easier
to tax. You know, they get one check instead of
ten thousand checks for in ten thousand tax returns. I mean,
that's what they're about. But it looks like the people,
maybe you're at the point where we're rebelling against this.
I think that's absolute right. It's a choice that we're
all gonna make.
Speaker 1: Are we going to have more consumers moving in the
direction of buying their food and other goods in this
country in a way that supports American farmers? Are we
going to continue on the current path. You're absolutely right,
and there is something we knew about it. So the
stats are kind of, you know, are kind of terrifying
when you're hear. But then there's also hope. US forty
five thousand farms per year on average for the past century.
That's seventy percent of farms. We also have still nearly
two million farms less than this country. And of those
two million farms, eighty eight percent of them or small
family farms. Ninety six of them are family operations, even
if they're bigger. So you got nearly two million farm
families operate in small farms that this country has made
it almost impossible economically to continue. We are still doing it.
How are they doing it? They're working two to three jobs.
You got guys working factory shifts or porn concrete, you know,
and operating a farm. And what if we were to
pursue the kinds of changes you and I were talking about,
What if we were to have new entrepreneur opportunity for
our farms in this country. Imagine these nearly two million
farm families that are still at it even though it's
impossible economically. Imagine what they could accomplish if they were
able to have growing entrepreneurial ventures with their small businesses. Again,
so we can turn this around. But if we don't,
if we continue to lose farms at the rate of
forty five thousand a year on a we're going to
wipe out most of the best of our family farms
if within a generation. That's that's the math, and it's un.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that would really be a shame and it's
unnecessary and should be avoided. Small as beautiful as that
book came out in the eighties. Anyway, Brian will have
a link in the show notes to this interview on
Financial Survival Network dot com for your book. Is there
a website we can find you at?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, So people can find my book on Amazon
or any other online retailer language check or also my
website is Brian Dasherisinger dot com. So Brian b R
I A N dash Risinger R E I S I
n G e R dot com. And you know, I
just appreciate anybody who picks up the book. We talk
about the hidden reasons our farms are just appearing. Will
leave that with my family's four generation story from the depression. Today,
anybody who gets us talking about these issues has become
a part of the solution, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: I love it. Hey got a question for Brian or
my off shoot me an email kl at Carrie LUTs
dot com Brian, which is the best of luck.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Krey, Thank care, Thanks for listening to
Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times.
For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial
Survival Network
Speaker 1: Now more than ever,