Take optimism, frustration, and family and combine that with experience in writing, politics, and public policy. And you get Brian Reisinger’s outlook on family farms like the one on which he grew up in southern Wisconsin.
“Land rich, cash poor.”
That could be a bumper sticker on vehicles across rural America, right? Reisinger thinks so. But there needs to be more of a national focus so that “land rich, cash poor” isn’t the reality for so many American families.
“There's a lot of proud industry in Wisconsin, Iowa…all these Midwestern states,” Reisinger told American Farmland Owner.
Brian Reisinger bio:
Family farmer – Sauk County, Wisconsin (Current)
President & Chief Content Officer – Platform Communications (Current)
Founder & President – Hilltop Strategies (Current)
Author – “Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer”
Former Senior Staff Reporter – Nashville Business Journal
Former Reporter – Wausau Daily Herald
Former Senior Advisor – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
Former Communications Director – Ron Johnson for U.S. senate in Wisconsin
Pride can be tested, though. “…It’s always been battered…you know…year after year, the good times aren't as good as they used to be, and the bad times are worse than they used to be.”
Patience can be tested, too. Reisinger is running out of it.
Politicians have been letting down the family farmers. “Both parties,” he said.
For two years, they couldn’t agree on a new Farm Bill to bring some certainty and resources to farmers. Very disappointing to someone like Reisinger who has spent time in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. working for and working with elected officials.
“New Census Shows Alarming Loss of Family Farms,” a headline from the American Farm Bureau Federation warned.
“The latest census numbers put in black and white the warnings our members have been expressing for years,” said America Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall in February.
The USDA had just announced that there were 141,733 fewer family farms compared to five years earlier.
“Increased regulations, rising supply costs, lack of available labor, and weather disasters have all squeezed farmers to the point that many of them find it impossible to remain economically sustainable,” Duvall said.
Reisinger’s family didn’t lose the farm. But his father, Jim, did part with a century of tradition on that farm. Three years ago, the decision came.
“He made the decision to sell the herd and diversify the farm just because of the way that dairy is changing,” Reisinger said.
Dairy farms have been disappearing in Wisconsin for years. Smaller producers can’t squeeze out enough profits like the bigger dairy operators thanks to their volume.
“And the challenges of doing it as a small family farm these days,” Reisinger lamented.
The strain, both economically and psychologically, was too much. The return was too little.
“There are more tears on our land than we want to admit,” Reisinger wrote in an op-ed piece for USA Today. “My dad and I were on sacred ground, back at the small cabin I own on a 40-acre parcel behind the farmhouse where we both grew up. This is land my great-grandpa first fought to get in the Great Depression. Land upon which my grandpa turned out milk cows to graze, and where my dad and I journeyed together. We sat there on the porch with the sun glowing across the honey-brown wood, and the trees whispered of those things we’d lost, and my father quietly broke into tears.”
Reisinger wrote that he tried to reassure his father, praising him for struggling for so long, and for coming up with a new plan to allow the farm to remain in the family for the future.
He wrote, “He had sold our dairy cows the day before. Like the rain that comes when the sun is still shining, my father’s tears showed us feeling more than one thing at once. Hope, because we still had our land as well as my sister’s plans to raise heifers for other farms, beef for consumers and cash crops. Sorrow over no longer milking and worrying whether the farm would make it.”
RELATED: Read Brian Reisinger’s full column for USA Today here titled, “U.S. farmers face a silent mental health crisis. What can we do?”
Writing was where Reisinger turned to share what happened to the family farm. His father’s new plan to raise beef for consumers, some heifers for others, and cash crops could give the farm a new purpose and a financial path.
But why did it have to come to this?
Tradition is important for this family. Reisinger wrote about the importance of continuing it, like when his grandfather gave him the cherished tree stand.
“Not long after I was old enough to carry on the tradition, Grandpa Ripp declared himself too old to handle the hardship of another winter deer hunt. He passed his stand to me, and I hunted it each year, carefully harvesting deer when I got the chance, missing enough to leave me wondering if I would ever shoot and track and regale others with stories as he had.”
Hunting connects Reisinger to the family’s land. It is another reason why he can’t stomach the thought of losing the land. He knows his family was fortunate in that his parents owned the land and that his father came up with a way to hopefully make the operations financially sustainable.
It also helped that Reisinger’s sister and her family were committed to plow ahead. And so was Reisinger in the way that he knew: writing a book about the family farm.
“Land Rich Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer” is Reisinger’s tribute to the American farm family’s determination, work ethic, and faith.
But it is also his warning to America that what is happening to the country’s small-town farmers can’t be allowed to continue.
It is time for action, Reisinger believes. It should be easier for farmers to support themselves, easier to find markets so they don’t have to rely solely on corn and beans (and the limited returns those crops may often bring), easier for relatives to buy into the older generations’ farm operations, and easier for others to afford to begin a farming career.
“It’s about the next generation,” Reisinger said, which describes both how his father decided not to give up and what the country’s leaders need to think more about.
He said, “Land rich, cash poor. You’ve got this valuable land, and you hold on to it. It's harder and harder each year to make a living on it. A lot of farmers are living that fear of facing their family, saying, ‘We can't make it.’”
That situation leads to painful realizations. “Keep going, or maybe risk not making ends meet one day. The flip side… you can sell that land. It's valuable. But you sell, you lose everything else, because it's your home, community…it’s heritage.”
And this fourth-generation Reisinger isn’t ready to give up on it. He is thinking about the fifth generation, his 9-month-old daughter, Ana.
