Brian Reisinger's “Land Rich Cash Poor” begins as a paean to the American family farm, portraying a romanticized version of the farm that was rare in the last century, despite the never-ending work even in good times.
The book follows a string of efforts by other authors to explain the hardships of farming in America, but few are written so lyrically or in such deeply personal detail.
Reisinger seemed destined to become a fourth-generation farmer until he went to college and decided his true calling lay beyond the cows and fields of his family's Wisconsin farm.
Since the first machines began revolutionizing agriculture, farmers have been increasingly driven to expand or sell their land, find niche products to produce, take on side jobs in town, or simply diversify their farm. For example, one farmer in Irvine, California, built an events center on his land and now hosts weddings and other gatherings. Without diversifying their income, farmers would be land-rich but cash-poor.
The book is rich in sources and only gets bogged down in the opening section, where Reisinger laments the loss of “our way of life” at least five times.
But this is only a minor blemish in a book that neatly outlines what's wrong with American agriculture in the eyes of most consumers who see only the end result of farmers' toil: full grocery shelves. And despite recent inflationary pressures, the book points out that Americans spent just 10% of their income on food in 2020, down from 40% in 1910.
The book also links the decline of the American family farm to the rift between urban and rural America: the small towns that supported groups of family farms often shrink as land-rich farmers sell off their land to escape cash crunch.
Here are some steps Reisinger recommends to pull American agriculture out of its perpetual cycle of crisis.
Launch a research and development revolution Reshape government policies around competition Reorganize farms around new market opportunities Revitalize rural communities
While Reisinger refrains from delving into the politics of agriculture, politics have clearly taken their toll on American farmers. For example, the Nixon administration's negotiations to open up American grain sales to the Soviet Union turned into new punishments for farmers when President Jimmy Carter banned sales to the Soviet Union after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Reisinger's argument that the decline of family farms is destroying our ability to feed ourselves is less persuasive: while modern corporate agriculture in America lacks the image of the happy family farm, it is clear that large corporate farms produce vast amounts of food.
Still, the agricultural challenges that Reisinger documents remain serious and worthy of our elected officials' attention. But given the plethora of other challenges we face, I don't expect much in the upcoming election.
What Reisinger doesn't mention is the potential for agricultural chaos if Donald Trump were elected and went through with his plan to deport millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally, leaving American farmers without enough labor to harvest their crops.
This will leave even more farmers land-rich but cash-poor.
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