George Noory and farmer Brian Reisinger discuss the struggles of the American farming industry, how corporate farms are destroying the small family farms, and how these obstacles are leading to a mental health crisis for farmers.
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And welcome back to Coast to Coast George nor with you our special guest this hour, Brian Reisinger. He'll be with us next hour as well to take calls. His book is called Land Rich, Cash Poor. Brian, if you had that one wish about the American farmer, or what would that wish be?
You know, that wish would be that we could find a way for the two million farms that we have remaining in this country to be growing entrepreneurial businesses. Again, when my great grandpa got here, farming was a hard life, but it was filled with opportunity buried in the land, and now that's less so. So many of the farm families that are operating these two million farms, unless they're on the larger end of the spectrum, are working construction jobs, pulling factory ships, porn concrete, you know, work in multiple jobs in addition to running their farm, and it's only supplemental incomes. Then and if we could find a way for people's desire to know where their food comes from and the greater safety, sometimes the better price is more options that could come with all of that could be a real boom for the consumer, but it could mean a resurrection for the American farmer. And that's what I worry about most is seeing farms slip away year after year and trying to find a way to do something about that.
Has the push for gluten free hurt farms at all.
You know, that is a great question, And I think that anything that limits the amount of stuff grown out of the grounds using our food is not necessarily a good thing. Now, that doesn't mean that people who have a specific gallergy into gooten or anything else shouldn't have options. They absolutely should have options in our food economy to have something that works well with their bodies. So there's a certain amount of that that I want to allow for. But I do think that some of the overall push and some of the desire to have foods that are say, artificially made or modified, foods that don't come from animal products, foods that don't come from things going out of the ground that are manufactured in a factory, that overall push, I think is part of an overall problem we have where we don't always know where our food is coming from, and part of a problem that we have where it is making it harder and harder for farms to have places to shift their food and fiber and sell it to make money, and that's contributing towards the problem. I think that in general, we're better off when we're eating things that are grown up out of the ground or that are raised on the land, when we're talking about meat, and so, I think there's a real value in people getting back to those basics. There's a reason that human civilization survived on that per centuries and there's good reason to continue with it, and I think it's something that can help people with having something more natural in their bodies.
Is this push to veganism hurting farms at all?
Yeah, you know, I think it is. And again I want to be respectful people's beliefs. If someone has a reason that they don't want to have meat in their body for a philosophical reason or for an individual health reason, I want to allow for that in this country. But I do think it is going too far. I think that there's an anti farm sentiment out there that people don't realize what it's doing to our farms. It's a natural thing to raise and consume animals and it's part of a circle life.
Now.
I grew up on a farm where we would see calves born. My dad would get up in middle night, take us down into the barn and we would see cavesborn. When there was a cow that was having difficulties labor and would he would help pull that calf and he would, you know, swipe its nose clean and help it take its first breath. We love our animals, and we also know our animals have a purpose. That's a circle life. That's a very natural thing for people. It's been part of mankind's existence for centuries.
Some of these big farms, I just am amazed at how they can pump out the foods that they do. For I was at the food store couple days ago. Brian picked up a carton of strawberries. The company was called driscoll. I don't know if they were in California or if they were made and planet in Mexico, but they must add hundreds of boxes and that was in just one store.
Yeah, it's really incredible, George. There are things about our food system they're a modern miracle, and then there are things about our food system that maybe aren't so good. And the reality is right now, we have a situation where of our two million farms that are left after having lost forty five thousand each year on average and the past century, a lot of our food is produced by a small number of large farms, and so we do depend on those farms. And some of those farms got that way just because of natural economic pressures and because of the need to support multiple generations of a family or what have you. But there is something to be said for the fact that we don't need to rely on a small number of large farms to suppuire food when we could have a large number of farms of all sizes, small, medium, and large supplying our food. Who to give us more choices. It would give us more ways to have food be affordable, particular during times of disaster when our supply chains get shut down. Having more ways for food to get from the farm gate to the dinner table would help us keep prices down and have our food supplied to be reliable. It could allow people to know more where the food comes from. It would allow farmers to have more entrepreneur opportunities. So there's something to be said for finding a way to spread out where our food comes from in this country so that we can keep it affordable and avoid disaster.
What percent of the farms are done with the large corporations as opposed to the individual farmer.
That is a great question. Now here's something that's interesting that I think people maybe don't realize when we hear the debates over larger farms. Ninety six percent of our farms in this country are still family operations.
Wow.
Now the number yeah, and the number of them that are not family operations. They to your point, they may be corporate owned, they maybe have different types of investor models and things like that. So those farms are out there, but many of even the largest farms in this country are family operations. Now they're large family businesses, and they may have boards and they may have other types of investors, but they're still family operations. Now, here's the thing. The small number of very large farms that supply a lot of our food, if you set them aside, it is still around nine and ten farms that are small and medium sized farms in this country. They're just not turning a profit, and they're the ones that are slipping away. Those are the ones that when people think of Charlotte's Web. You know, when people think of farm stories of families growing up on the land and the people who own the land, of the ones operating it, those are those farms, and those are the farms that are at risk of becoming land rich cash corps slipping away year after year.
It's traumatic, isn't it.
It really is an incredibly, incredibly heartrending thing to see. I you know, in recent years, there was a time period in my whole home state of Wisconsin where we were losing three farms per day, three farms per day, and we saw that, you know, among our neighbors. You know, my dad is still farming, and my sister's working to take over the farm, and we're so so fortunate to have made it through. COVID almost knocked us down for good, but we made it through. And we were looking around in the years before that and during and we saw farms getting auctioned. I remember picking up the phone talking to a woman whose son I went to school with, and I was trying to talk to her about rural issues, and she said, you know, I don't know what I can tell you because I don't know how many more days we're going to be here, and sure enough they were selling their farm before too long. It is. It is a tragic thing to see, whether it's the auction where you go and the farmers turn up to try to buy a cow to support their neighbors, or whether it is an individual sale to someone else, whether it's a bank foreclosure. It's happening every day in this country.
I had one hundred and fourteen acre farm there's Springfield, Illinois back in the nineties. It was a horse breeding farm and I was sharecropping with a neighbor who didn't have the money for all the acreage, and I didn't have the equipment for the farming, so we just did a deal and it worked.
Yeah, yeah, you know, there are ways. There are a lot of people who want to get into farming. That's the incredible thing. There's a whole new generation of people who want to get into farming. It is so difficult to do if you can't find a way for land access. What you did there is an example of a way for someone who didn't necessarily have the land to do it, to be able to find a way to do it. That is so hard to do. When we talk about the concept of land rich cash poor. What we're talking about is the fact that farmers who own their land own something that's incredibly valuable, but it is harder and harder to make a living. So each year, because of these economic forces, some of which we've talked about, it gets harder to grind out that living. Every single year, the good years are not as good, and the bad years are a little more devastating each year. That's what it means to be cash poor. You can't really make a living on that land over time, but if you were to turn around and sell the land, you lose everything else. You lose your job, your home, your community, your heritage, it's everything you know. Each generation is raised to hold on to that, and so that's the dilemma that people face. And when you add to that, for a farm family that doesn't own their land, the financial burden of trying to find a way to purchase that land is so incredibly high that it makes it even more difficult for those farms to be profitable. So I'm glad you were able to do that there in Illinois. It also illustrates, you know, how often it is that people aren't able to find fortunate opportunities like that. And it contributes towards just another way that we're not allowing the next generation of farmers to take root.
And one of the great feelings in the morning is walking through a field of cornstalks. It's strange, but it's got an eerie grade feeling to it.
It really does. Growing up close to the land walking through the fields like that. You know, my Dad and I, one of my best memories is not only the cornfields, but also driving down in our valley where our farm first began, where my great grandpa first found out living here in America, And we would drive my Debt's pick up and we'd rumble up onto the hillside and he'd get out and he'd kneel down and he'd take the hay in his hand. He'd just cut the hay a day or two before. He'd take the hay in his hand, and he'd look up at the sky and he would be feeling whether it was dry enough to bail it or chop it. And he'd be looking at the sky and he'd be trying to figure out whether it was going to be rain or sun that was going to be coming for the next day or two. And being that in close touch with the land and with the atmosphere and trying to make a decision. And you know, as a kid, I thought he could predict the winds of the weather, you know, and he couldn't, of course, but it was something that he almost did need to be able to do to make the right decisions on how to make sure that our friend could make it each year. And is early to your point, it's a magical thing to grow up getting an opportunity to be part of something like that.
What do you recommend a parent do to with their little kid where they don't have a farm, but they live in suburbia, but they have a little backyard and they can grow stuff. How do you get the kid involved that way?
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. It is an outstanding thing to have a garden in your backyard, whether it's you know, a few vegetables or whether you've got a whole plot back there. That's an outstanding thing. There's also opportunities with urban gardens where because more and more people want to know where their food is coming from, and then unfortunately there's fewer and fewer farms to supply it unless we do something about it. There are urban gardens where people were able to go to community spaces and gardens. You know, the other thing that I think maybe isn't as obvious of a choice, but it's not that far out of people's reach, is to have your kid go work on a farm. The reality is that because we do have two million farms left, even though we've lost seventy percent of them, there are farmers in all corners of this country. And you know, perhaps there's someone in your family that you know, or a friend of the family, or someone you get to know in your community. You want it to be someone that you trust. But boy, sending your kids to summer camp at the farm there couldn't be any more valuable. And you know, my parents, for many years, they weren't able to have a child until I came along and my sister a few years later. For many years when they were struggling to have children, they had a lot of family friends, relatives, cousins of mine who when they were young kids came out to the farm. And there's no better summer camp to learn about work, to learn about values, learn about the circle of life.
I used to grow a lot of tomatoes as a kid, and one of the reasons I did. It is because I got a kick kind of looking at those tomato worms that would come by, those big green things.
Yeah, they are strange creatures, aren't they. You know, tomatoes is a great example.
You know.
You think about a tomato that you buy from the store or that you get in the restaurant, unless they get it from a local farmer, and then you compare that to a tomato that you bite off the vine, and the taste is just it's just a revolution. When it's a tomato that was grown in the ground by someone that you know, the flavor to it is so different.
It's a moth, isn't it when it starts?
Yeah, yes it is. And the transformation those animals go through is an incredible thing. I remember when I was a little kid, I was shorter than the tomato plants and I used to walk up to those things that I level and just be in awe of them.
They kind of look right back at you.
Yeah they do, Yeah, they do. It feels like they definitely know you're there.
What about the suicide rate of farmers, Brian? Why is that so high?
Yeah?
I appreciate you asking about that. Georgia, and it's a very personal issue for so many of us. Farming is consistently ranked as one of the top professions in suicide, and the reason for it is this. The pressures that farm space, where if you keep your land you can't make a living and if you sell it you lose everything else is really an unanswerable choice. And when you combine that with the way farm families are raised, you know, you're raised to get up and get the work done and keep your head down. And it's not a cool upbringing. You know, my dad had us picking rock by hand in the fields because the rocks need to be picked up, because he was cruel. He was a kind, supportive father. But when you're doing that as a kid, you learn to putting rocks in the bucket moving forward, and you don't talk about your problems. And so when you combine the economic devastation going on in that unanswerable choice of you know, continuing to fail to make a living to support your family or selling everything in return, when you face that choice and you're raised to just keep working and not complain, there's an incredible way of failure that people feel. And the reason that I say it's a personal thing. If you don't mind. My saying is, you know, this is actually something my dad talking about in the book. We start the book in the opening pages after we had sold our dairy herd and we're still farming. We changed our farm operation to be able to continue to farm in another fashion, but we sold our dairy herd, and that's like a death in the family for farm families. And my dad was having those dark thoughts, and I'll be so grateful that he came out of that, but we did talk about that, and I could feel that looming over us, and he walked off into the sunlight and he began thinking of his grandkids and the fact that he had teaching things and he repeated him to himself over and over, and it brought him out of that dark place. But I could feel that specter. And we know farmers just right down the road who's succumbed to that. And it's a really tragic thing that's happening in farm country, and it's contributing toward our countries, you know, I think a national mental health epidemic.
Really did he pull himself out of it on his own or did he have to seek some professional help.
That's a great question in our case, there was a support system that he had. He didn't end up going to counseling, although I always recommend people do it. I myself have gone to counseling and therapy for other issues, and I know many people who have. Unless you start talking about it, you realize how many people are out there who do. In my dad's case, there was an organization called the Farmer Angel Network, and they actually began right down the road from us, because there was a farmer who unfortunately his problems were so deep that he lost hope and he took his own life, and he inspired in his death the formation of the Farmer Angel Network right down the road in Sauf County, Wisconsin, where I'm from, and so rarely we are the epicenter in some ways of the farmer's suicide crisis. Well, we had some family friends who were part of that Farmer Angel Network, and when we were preparing to sell our cows, they were coming out and they were talking to my dad sitting there discussing with them both during and after the sale of the cows, and so my dad had talked with them, felt that peer to peer farmer support it had also helped us and the depth of the farmer down the road helped us understand how important it was that we all talking. And that's why at that moment when he walked up in the site, it was so singular to me.
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