October 22, 2025 • 28 mins
Tudor Dixon sits down with journalist and farmer Brian Reisinger to reveal how political dysfunction in D.C. is taking a toll on America’s farms. From disrupted trade and supply chains to labor challenges and media misrepresentations of rural life, Reisinger breaks down what’s really at stake for agriculture—and why policymakers need to start listening to the heartland. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. As you've likely heard,
the federal government is shut down, and what you may
not know is that that affects many people's lives. Obviously,
we know it affects everybody who's working in Washington, DC
and at our airports, but it also affects our farmers.
So we have Brian Risinger here with us today to
(00:20):
share the behind the scenes, to get us a little
bit smarter about what the shutdown does and who's actually responsible. Brian,
you may remember he's a journalist, a farmer, and an author,
and we talked to him a little while back about
his book Land Rich, Cash Poor. Brian, Welcome back to
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's good to be with you. Thanks so much for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Absolutely so you have some insight into what this is
doing to our farmers. I know there's some question about
farm aid. I think a lot of people in America
have heard about this shutdown, but they don't exactly know
how it affects all these different industries. So share a
little bit about what's going on with our farmers right now.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, Well, here's how the congressional squabbling affects farmers. Form
the most part, farmer like a lot of hard working
families in America, you know, don't have a whole lot
of use for government every single day. They're not, you know,
in a lot of ways. They are just trying to
grow something to be able to sell it to people
and make a dollar to keep their farm going. It's
as simple as that. However, agriculture and government are very
wound up together, whether we like it or not. And
(01:18):
what has happened is the government shut down has placed
all kinds of limitations and problems on farmers. There's things
like local county offices where they need to go register
their crops and things that they're required to do that
they're not able to do, and that's kind of a frustration.
But the big thing is the way the congressional squabbling
has stalled talks around President Trump's tariff package or any
(01:40):
kind of a solution around tariff issues. So we're getting
tough with other countries, we're negotiating, we're using tariffs where
we need to to try to drive better deals. That's
something that a lot of farmers think we need to do.
At the same time, farmers can be affected if a
country like China, which we're seeing decides to snow America's farmers, says,
we don't want to negotiate with America. We're going to
(02:01):
make it tough on America's farmers. Those are the things
that farmers live with. And so when we have the
shutdown stopping things like discussion on terifaid, that's a real problem.
People can decide whether they agree or don't agree with
all the things that we're doing around trade, but the
reality is that farmers know we need to get tougher,
and along with getting tougher can be a little bit
(02:21):
of pain. And the problem is that the shutdown is
stopping Washington's ability to do anything to help our farmers
who are making sacrifices to try to make sure that
we have better trade policies for farmers, for workers, for
all of our industries.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So, I mean, what does this mean. We're hearing that
September was the first month that China said that they
weren't bringing any American soybeans into China. We know that
the President is scheduled to go to Asia later this week.
There's obviously some concern about these tariffs. I just saw
a commercial this morning for the first time, which was
somewhat stunning that was President Reagan's voice saying tariffs are bad,
(02:57):
we shouldn't have tariffs all this stuff. You know, we're
coming up to the midterms. The Democrats are holding this,
holding the government hostage right now. Essentially they are the
one They're the reason that this shutdown has occurred. They
won't vote for this continuing your resolution that's clean, it's
the same thing they voted on four years. They won't
vote for that. What does this mean when we see
(03:19):
Trump going over there, is he going to do you
believe he'll go back and forth on some of these tariffs.
Do you think that the tariffs are bad? Should the
president be the one taking the heat for this?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Here's the reality the media, in addition to not covering
the shutdown properly and not in leating the American people
understand what's actually driving the shutdown, and you're referring to
a lot of it. They're not covering the Terrificshue properly.
They want to say that, you know, all all farmers
are against tariffs and they're scared to death and all
of this stuff. I mean, here's the reality. Farmers deal
with the reality of both impacts by China snubbing us
(03:54):
and being upset with our tariffs. They deal with that,
but they also do with thirty years of having unfaired
trade practice keep prices down, so China for the nineties
and two thousands. A lot of the ways that this
affected other industries that you talk about on your show
a lot China and other adversars, but mainly China has
been buying a massive amount of American agricultural products, and
then they'll do things like dump those products so they'll
(04:15):
build the price up and then they'll crash the price.
They also cheat on their currency, they use unfair trade standards,
so the American farmer doesn't have to have an economic
degree to know that they they're getting screwed by China
for thirty years. And so a lot of farmers, including
those who are impacted when China or other countries get
upset over tariffs and don't buy our soybeans or whatever
(04:36):
else it is, also know that we need to get
tougher in order to get better trade deals. So these
farmers are saying, hey, let's get tougher. Yes, let's make
a deal with China and other countries, but it's got
to be a fair deal. It's got to be a
tougher deal. It can't be just the wide open trade
of the nineties and two thousands that allowed us to
get ripped off. So the media is not covering the
fact that for farmers it's complex. They may be in
(04:57):
an industry such as soybeans, are farm gross soybeans, the
crops that are affected by the trade dispute, but they're
not covering the fact that these farmers have also been
affected by China artificially keeping prices low and screwing the
American farmer for decades. So farmers want trade, but they
want it to be fair trade, and they want to
see a strategy through that can force China and other
(05:17):
countries to deal with us more fairly. And that's why
this shutdown is such terrible, incredibly calamitous timing, because farmers
who are willing to make the short term pain, long
term gain sacrifice that we need to to fight for
more fair trade standards aren't getting the tariff support that
they ought to get if Congress was doing its job.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Do they feel like they're being ignored because obviously, if
we look at I mean taking Michigan for example, if
you look at the farmland that's read. They're not voting
for Democrats, They're voting for Republicans. Do you feel like
farmers are saying Democrats don't care about us because they
don't get our vote anyway, so they don't mind keeping
the government shut down.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah. I think that they feel like what's going on
in Washington is very far off from what's going on
in our farm fields. And I don't speak for all farmers. Well,
I think about my dad who's still farming, my sister
who's work going to take over our farm, and the
work that our family does to try to keep it going.
We all know that every single day people families like
ours are toiling, and people in Washington don't know what's
(06:17):
going on on the ground on our farms, let alone
how it's connected with their debates, let alone how it's
connected with the food supply of every American, because that's
the other thing is it's not just about our farms,
but the food of all Americans.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And maybe the Democrats actually don't understand the connection between
farms and food because we're hearing here on the ground
that they are desperately trying to take over farms for
wind and for solar In fact, I know a man
who runs a solar company in the area and he said,
we're having trouble getting some of the farms between ground
(06:48):
rapids and lansing. But the government's going to step in
and help us. And I thought, what does that even mean?
What is the future of farms with the Demo if
the Democrat Party gets into control, because we know that
they're going for this green energy, all of this climate
change stuff, and that if essentially is taking over family farms.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And one of the problems that we have is that
really our government policies for decades now have not accounted
for what's going on the farms on the ground. We
saw this during the farm crisis the nineteen eighties. We
tell the story in my book. My parents were born
or excuse me, were married in nineteen seventy six. That
year was a drought. They almost didn't make it through
that year, and they were able to do it through
(07:28):
hard work and banding together with neighbors. If they hadn't
been able to do that, they had to take out
a whole lot of debt just to survive the year.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And they'll need those neighbors.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That's right, that's right, And the nineteen eighties farm crisis
wiped out farms that took on a lot of debt.
So if my parents hadn't been able to avoid that
debt just before that economic storm hit, there'd have been
huge trouble. And our government for a very long time
has failed to understand. And what I'll say is the
Democrats have generally decided that this government program or that
program is going to solve things, and something that for
a while the Republicans forgotten. I think that this is changing,
(07:58):
but for a while, the books forgot that the farmer
is the little guy. And then we have to stand
up for small independent farmers and small independent businesses in
this country too, And a lot of that is changing now,
but the reality is that farmers have felt left behind
for a very long time in many ways.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. It's interesting that you said that
about Republicans. I was at a meeting just over the
weekend where we you know, it was one of the
GOP dinners where everybody comes and they they give their
shpiels to why they should be elected, and over and
over again I heard Republicans get up and say government
(08:34):
needs to help step into the family farm and take
over and give money and give and be involved in
the details of the family farm. And I thought, I
am not hearing that from farmers. Get out of our
family farm. The government in Michigan is so heavily involved
in the family farm. You've got the environmentalists that are
(08:55):
in there all the time constantly, Oh, we don't like
the way you're getting rid of waste, we don't like
the way you're dealing with water, we don't like the
way you're washing your machinery. They are telling me on
a regular basis, get off our land. How did this
happen that Republicans started to get the wrong idea about
how government reacts to business.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Here's what happened in the case of farms, going back
to the Depression, there was this huge government intervention right
into our farms, into our agriculture, and agriculture government got
all wound up together, and whether that was right or wrong,
a lot of it people thought was going to be emergency,
and after the Depression it really wasn't. It just continued
and what our government did under both parties, the establishment
(09:36):
of the Republican Party as well as the Democrats just
kind of kept piling government programs on top of government programs. Right.
So now we have the current farm program and I
think that people inside farming, outside farming, all over the
political spectrum, none of them like what we have with
our farm programs. Everyone has something to criticize about farm subsidies, right.
And the reason that it's so bad is because we've
(09:57):
got just program after program pile on top one another.
We which ones are working. We don't know which ones
are contradictory because a lot of them do run into
one another, and we don't know which ones have become
prone to favoritims and abuse. And that's even before you
get into the way that increasing regulations, in increasing tax
has caused problems for farmers every single day. So we
need a bipartisan family farm moonshot where we go through
(10:17):
all these programs, figure out which ones are working and
which ones aren't, get rid of the ones that aren't,
make sure the ones that are there are doing what
they're supposed to do. Because it is true in this country, Tutor,
that farmers are both able to say, hey, where are
my taxpayers going? Mirror my taxpayer dollars going, and where's
that support that was supposed to become over the family farm.
Both things are true. Taxpayers and farmers both deserve to
(10:39):
be frustrated because our government isn't working right and it's
just standing in the way.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
How much danger are we in, though, to really have
a food availability problem here in the United States? Because
we are seeing farms close. It seems like, I mean,
as I'm reading about what's going on, it's like, Okay,
meat and dairy farms are closing. It's not a necessarily
affecting the amount of meat and dairy that we have.
But now we've got these powerful conglomerates and the family
(11:06):
farm is no longer there. What does that mean for
the future of the country.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, what we're seeing is the warning shots of an
incredibly unsustainable, incredibly insecure food supply. We saw it during COVID.
We also see it with bird flu. What I mean
by that is, people remember during COVID you couldn't find
the food you need on the grocery store shelves. If
you could, the price is way through the roof. That
was the same time that farmers were struggling to sell
their goods. The problem wasn't farmers willing to sell and
(11:31):
customers wanting to buy. The problem was our vulnerable supply chain.
So as we lose farms that we've been losing farms
at the rate of forty five thousand a year for
the past see forty five thousand a year for the
past century on average.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
How is that possible that the supply has not gone
dramatically down. I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And that's what's happened is we have roughly it's less
land somewhat but roughly the same on the land, roughly
the same amount of food being produced by just far
fewer and your companies. And it's not just farms, all
the companies that are in between the farms and the
dinner table. And so what happens when you have these
really consolidated industries is if you have one great, big
(12:11):
distribution center go down, that affects the supply of whatever
that food is. So we saw it across all kinds
of food with COVID during bird flu. We saw it
with chicken and eggs. If you had one big distribution
center go down, or one, you know, whatever the case
may be. A logistical thing with trucks, something happens. It
has a massive impact on our supply chain. The price
of food goes up, and so what we're seeing with
(12:32):
COVID bird flu, this stuff happens all the time. The
reason that the price of food has gone up so
much faster than that runaway inflation that we had a
couple of years ago is because we have a vulnerable
supply chain that is constantly facing these shocks, and so
we're seeing kind of the warning shots of a deeply
vulnerable food supply every day.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
How has lobbying hurt farming? We had John Stossel on
here a few weeks ago and he was talking about
how lobbying. The Humane Society has this huge lobby that
was going into states and getting stores that sell puppies
shut down because they had that power, They had so
much money that they had created this narrative that they
were unsafe and that these dogs were from puppy mills,
(13:12):
and there was this whole hullabaloo. We can't have these
puppy mills out there, so we're going to shut it down.
The truth was those stores were not unsafe, The dogs
were not coming from unsafe places. They had to actually
be cared for. It was actually more controls when you
knew where these dogs were coming from. But that's how
this lobbying works. And it's not unlike what I've heard
from farmers where slaughterhouses have been shut down. Family slaughterhouses.
(13:37):
You have to go to these big corporations. And I mean,
I know that Thomas Massey doesn't have a great reputation
right now in Washington, but I remember years ago he
had the Prime Act, which was going to say, hey,
we've got to be allowed allowing these family slaughterhouses to
open back up, because you're shutting down the family farm.
They're not unhealthy, they're not unsafe. This was just a
(13:59):
massive amount of money from these big corporations that went
to government and bought essentially the right to shut down
the family slaughterhouse.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah. You know, here's what happens with government power. It
accumulates and it keeps building. And so once you have
an interest of one kind or another that gets a
whole bunch of power, they just keep on growing it
because they're able to write the policies. And also it's
the biggest players in any industry that not only are
able to pay the lobbyists, but they're also able to
pay the armies of lawyers and accountants that it takes
(14:26):
to navigate government. And so what happens is even let's
just say for a second that there's like a well
intentioned regulation of some kind, right, even the well intentioned
regulations at which many are not. But even a well
intentioned one goes across an entire industry, and it's the
biggest players that are best able to deal with it,
navigate it. They have the money and they have the
(14:46):
resources and the professionals to help them navigate through those
stormy waters of government. And so it's always the mom
and pop shops of any industry that get affected. In
the case of farms, what has really happened is farms
have been forced to get bigger or get out. I mean,
you know where I grew up, we still have some
small farms, got some medium farms, some larger farms. And
I'll be honest with you. You know, you look down
the road and whatever size the farm is these days,
(15:08):
we're happy that the farms are surviving, and we hope
that we can have more farms of all sizes, including
small farms. We're happy farms are surviving because they've been
forced to get bigger, get out, and it's really been
done by other bigger industries and government officials who haven't
understood what's going on, and farms of any size right now,
even the bigger ones in many cases are the little
guy relative to the folks that they're dealing with in
(15:29):
the global economy.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Let me ask you about work on the farm, because
we've heard from Democrats that if there's a closed border
that there won't be anybody to work on the farms.
We have migrant workers in Michigan that go all over
the country. They go from farm to farm. They're not
illegal immigrants, they are legal, and they go from state
to state to farm. What is your impression of what
(15:53):
they're saying? Is that accurate that if the border is
closed will struggle? I mean, and if it were accurate,
I would say, okay, there are way to solve that
without having an open a border obviously, But what are
you hearing from the farming industry.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah? Absolutely, you know, this is another issue where our
farms are caught in cross cutting political winds because many
farmers from rural America, I mean a lot of President
Trump's support came from rural America and many farmers that
included support from making sure that we secure our border,
and that's from families that field that that's important, while
at the same time they may have immigrant labor people
(16:26):
that they work with. About half of our labor for
farms comes from immigrant labor in this country. Here's the reality.
What you said is exactly right. We can both secure
the border and have a legally secured workforce. The H
two A Farm Visa Worker program is a program that
can be used you can secure legal workforce. I mean,
what we really need to be doing is focusing on
(16:46):
things that we can all agree on, like crack down
on the cartels that don't only traffic drugs, they also
traffic people, and they make it harder for farms and
other businesses to know whether the people that they're employing
have a legal status or don't have a legal status. Right,
So we can have this world where we secure the
border and where we are able to secure the workforce
that we need through legal forms such as the farm program.
(17:08):
And you see that across Michigan where I'm from, our
farmer was a little small to have immigrant labor, but
you know, farms that weren't much bigger than ours did.
And you know, we can walk and chew gum at
the same time. I think the American people do that
kind of thing all day. Only Congress would leave us
in this place where they we are forced by the
politicians and the media to feel like we have to
(17:29):
choose between, you know, a legal workforce or a secure border.
We don't have to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Such an interesting point. I mean, in the manufacturing world,
I think that we cross paths quite a bit. When
I would go and talk to our farmers and talk
about some of the challenges that we faced in manufacturing
at the steel foundry, they would say, it's amazing how
much that overlaps with the challenges that we face. And
it was the same I was talking to a friend
I had worked with years ago the other day, and
(17:58):
he was just going on and on about how could
Trump do this, this whole idea of though they're kidnapping
people off the streets. I said, you worked at the
shop with me. You don't remember Ice coming in and
rating the shop and taking people out because we didn't know.
I mean, they had they had papers that seemed that
they were legit. They weren't legit. Do you did you
(18:18):
consider that kidnapping them? Oh, they're not even committing crimes.
I said, by your standard, these people didn't either. They
were they stole someone's identity, they were making money, but
they you know, that wasn't a crime. That was like,
you know, you weren't killing someone, so under your theory,
that's not a crime. But it was always happening. How
(18:40):
did the Democrats effectively turn this narrative when Obama was
the deporter in chief, like I said, coming in rating
and he was raiding farms, he was raiding manufacturing facilities.
I'm sure he was also raiding slaughterhouses at that time.
It was never reported on. There was never a report
in Michigan when we were rated. How did they how
did they flipped this narrative. Is it just that they
(19:01):
don't have they're not able to get rural America, and
so they've decided they're going to try to come up
with some narrative that will get people out to vote.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
You know, I think there's a lot of politics that
get played and that factor into that kind of thing.
The other thing I think that's going on is there's
these big structural changes, like as we have more of
rural America voting Republican, more of urban America voting Democrat,
and our cities really become like islands of like deep
deep blue. That's happening at the same time that we've
lost a lot of media outlets. You've lost a lot
(19:32):
of local, hometown newspapers that didn't care about one on
in New York City. They cared about what was going
on with the local basketball game, you know, And we've
lost a lot of papers like that and other news
outlets like that. And so what happens is you have
so much of the media narrative is dominated by people
who are in really big cities who either their media
(19:53):
outlets are the ones that reach these areas, or there's
media outlets own the media outlets in those areas. And
so that's another form of anschio consolidation. We have this
world where we don't have rural and urban really talking,
and we don't have media that is showing people information
that we can all agree on, like basic facts. It's
just gotten worse and worse. And so I think that's
a big part of it too, is just the way
(20:14):
that our media has gradually gotten out of touch with
what's going on in our small towns, on our rural areas,
and even our medium sized cities. You know, anything that
isn't a big, major urban center. They're kind of out
of touch with.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. You make such a great point
that I think people don't necessarily understand. I mean, as
we're talking about farms getting bigger and fewer and fewer
people owning farms, they just are getting bigger and becoming
big corporations. It's the same thing with the local newspaper.
(20:45):
It's the same thing with your local news station. Your
news station is a part of news stations across the country.
You've seen those those videos where you see fifty different
news stations all having the same report. It's true. It
literally they're being bought up by one side or the other,
one political side or the other. And behind the scenes,
I mean, you and I have probably heard the same thing.
(21:07):
It's like, Okay, if we can get all of these
local newspapers, it will seem very organic that this is
the message that is being put out, when it is
actually a political message that is being put out.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, that's part of the problem, and things just get
further and further out of touch with every day people
now there are really good people at companies of all kinds,
and there are good people at you know that are
trying to fight these kinds of forces anywhere everywhere, right,
But it's individual people against a bigger system that is
really just disconnecting people from one another, you know. And
(21:38):
that's you know, you said the word community. I thought
that was so important because where I'm from, where I
grew up, and I know that it's similar where your
folks are from. You know, you've got that individualism that
it takes to deal with whatever your problem is, you know,
out on the farm, out on the factory floor, whatever
it is. And you've also got that sense of community,
come running when a neighbor's in trouble, and those two things.
You can be individualistic and you can also care about
(22:00):
your community. And I think a lot of people, especially
in our media narrative. Maybe isn't true in our day
to day lives as much, but especially in the media
and invent and the social media narrative, it feels like
we're all just so disconnected and that sense of local
community is so important.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I think you make a good point because right now
we're seeing this return to church, We're seeing young men
returning to the church. The churches is very powerful in
the rural areas, and as I've been researching, I think
I've mentioned on the podcast, there's been evidence even in
Afrikatrina that the areas that had higher church membership, they
were able to return to normal faster and in fact
(22:37):
even grow because of that support system and always knowing
there was a home base that had the supplies you needed.
I think that that has threatened Democrats coming up in
this election, because obviously we saw what happened with Charlie
Kirk and then instead of rioting and people arguing and
screaming and yelling, we ended up having the largest church
service we've ever seen, and kind of this revival of
(22:58):
we're going to rely on each other, we're gonna forgive,
we're going to move on, we're going to love one another.
That's something that we haven't seen coming out of their party.
In fact, you look at what's happening in New York
right now, and they're all kind of fractured. You see
Hakim Jeffries is still being asked, are you going to
endorse mom? Donnie? Nobody knows what he's going to do.
He's in a real bat He's in a pretty rough
(23:19):
situation because you're talking about someone who's socialist. He's saying
he's a socialist. A lot of the things that he's
promoting are actually communists. The city of New York. We
don't know what will happen to it. Democrats have this
kind of fractured message right now of the far left
and then trying to pull toward the middle. And those
who are trying to pull toward the middle are still
(23:40):
absolutely struggling with that. This is hard for them in
the midterms. But they did the same thing with the
government shut down in twenty eighteen. They believe that this
hurts the president. It's interesting. I have a friend who
is my age. She's not a conservative. I noticed a
post on Facebook about the government shut down because her
Snap benefits are under threat. She's disabled, she gets Snap benefits,
(24:03):
and the end of her post was very interesting to me.
Someone who, like I said, not a conservative. She's signed
off with this by saying thanks a lot, Dems. Now,
I thought, wow, that must really be painful for the
Democrats because this is non political, non conservative person who
is recognizing, probably for one of the first times, that
(24:23):
it is the Democrats who chose to shut down the government,
and they are harming the people that need to help
the most. What does this do? Does this have the
same effect as twenty eighteen? Or does this shutdown hurt
the Democrats?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, you know, it's really hard to say, partially because
your narrative is going to go and what people are
going to be told. And there's also the fact that
you know, midterms can always naturally be challenging for the
party that has the White House, right, like, just that
situation that can occur irregardless. But I do think that
when you think about what's going on with the shutdown
(24:57):
and with any of these other issues, I think that people,
especially in rural areas. And I don't speak for all
farmers or everybody, but in rural areas, I think what
people are interested in it is who's going to upset
the economic status quo to try to make things better
for me? And I think it's similar you know, in
Still Country and other places, because these are places that
have been seeing economic decline for decades. You know, it's
(25:19):
not just like whatever has happened in the economy the
last couple of years or whatever. You know, it's really about, Hey,
you know, we've been losing our farms, we've been losing
our other resource industries. We've been losing population in small towns,
we've been losing industrial jobs in more recent decades, and
so people have been seeing their economy decline. Even if
the unemployment number or the stock market is going up
(25:40):
or down, there's still an overall decline going on in
a lot of rural and small town America. And so
I think people are interested in hearing who's going to
do something to make my life better economically, who's going
to change and shake things up? And the problem with
the shutdown is what they're hearing is just more games
in Washington, shutting things down for political reasons, more getting
filled by more politicians who've been out of touch with
(26:01):
them for decades.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Anyway, how do people feel about the Secretary of Agriculture?
We have Brick Rowlins now as the Secretary of ag
We a lot of us learned for the first time
that she has She went to school for this, she
was in four age, she was a farmer. She grew
up in the world of agriculture. But she has been
(26:22):
hit by the media so many times as just this
pretty face that doesn't know anything about this industry, which
is a total lie. How do farmers feel about what
she's been doing.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
I think farmers have felt as I've talked with honestly, farmers,
rank and file, egg groups, people really from different parts
of the political spectrum. They say that they feel that
she listens. They feel that there's an ear at the
USDA to hear what they're saying, talk about it and
try to balance these things. For example, you know, and
she's talked about, you know the fact that with tariffs,
(26:51):
you know, you can use tariffs to get tougher negotiations,
create morefare trade, you know, drive harder bargains with countries,
but we have to be aware there's an impact on
our farmers. In the meantime, she talked about those things,
you know, when we talk about trying to find a
way to make America healthy again and do that in
a way that makes sure that farming doesn't get hit
with government mandates and get what, you know, take the
good of make America healthy again, and make sure also
(27:13):
that we're helping farms that are small businesses not deal
with heavy handed government. I think they feel like Secretary
Rollins is stopping and listening and trying to balance some
very very difficult things well.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Good, and I hope that we see some relief for
our farmers soon. I hope that this shutdown ends. We'll
see what the Democrats decide. I kind of wonder if
they're trying to get through the election in November and
see what happens in Virginia, what happens in New Jersey,
what happens in New York. Obviously those are big elections
for everybody, and they right now seem to have the
(27:45):
upper hand in those states. But we'll see what happens.
So I appreciate you being here. Brian Riisinger, Thank you
so much for joining the podcast today.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Thanks so much for being with me. I appreciate I
think we can find a way forward where we can
get this government opened up and we can find a
way to negotiate family first trade deals, you know, tough
deals that are fair to our farmers and our workers.
It's just a matter of the politicians understand what's going
on the ground and trying to get some work done.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Well. Hopefully that helps having a Secretary of Agriculture who
understands and Secretary Rollins is able to take that back
and I hope that she's able to communicate that to Congress,
although it seems like they're being stubborn at the moment.
But every day is a new day, and we wait
to hear if they've decided that they're going to push
forward and open back up the government. So we'll see,
(28:30):
thank you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
We'll see.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Thanks very much, absolutely, and thank you all for joining
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. As you know, you can subscribe
at Tutor dixonpodcast dot com, go to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you
can always watch at Rumble or YouTube at Tutor Dixon
and join us next time. Have a blessed day.
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. As you've likely heard,
the federal government is shut down, and what you may
not know is that that affects many people's lives. Obviously,
we know it affects everybody who's working in Washington, DC
and at our airports, but it also affects our farmers.
So we have Brian Risinger here with us today to
(00:20):
share the behind the scenes, to get us a little
bit smarter about what the shutdown does and who's actually responsible. Brian,
you may remember he's a journalist, a farmer, and an author,
and we talked to him a little while back about
his book Land Rich, Cash Poor. Brian, Welcome back to
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's good to be with you. Thanks so much for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Absolutely so you have some insight into what this is
doing to our farmers. I know there's some question about
farm aid. I think a lot of people in America
have heard about this shutdown, but they don't exactly know
how it affects all these different industries. So share a
little bit about what's going on with our farmers right now.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, Well, here's how the congressional squabbling affects farmers. Form
the most part, farmer like a lot of hard working
families in America, you know, don't have a whole lot
of use for government every single day. They're not, you know,
in a lot of ways. They are just trying to
grow something to be able to sell it to people
and make a dollar to keep their farm going. It's
as simple as that. However, agriculture and government are very
wound up together, whether we like it or not. And
(01:18):
what has happened is the government shut down has placed
all kinds of limitations and problems on farmers. There's things
like local county offices where they need to go register
their crops and things that they're required to do that
they're not able to do, and that's kind of a frustration.
But the big thing is the way the congressional squabbling
has stalled talks around President Trump's tariff package or any
(01:40):
kind of a solution around tariff issues. So we're getting
tough with other countries, we're negotiating, we're using tariffs where
we need to to try to drive better deals. That's
something that a lot of farmers think we need to do.
At the same time, farmers can be affected if a
country like China, which we're seeing decides to snow America's farmers, says,
we don't want to negotiate with America. We're going to
(02:01):
make it tough on America's farmers. Those are the things
that farmers live with. And so when we have the
shutdown stopping things like discussion on terifaid, that's a real problem.
People can decide whether they agree or don't agree with
all the things that we're doing around trade, but the
reality is that farmers know we need to get tougher,
and along with getting tougher can be a little bit
(02:21):
of pain. And the problem is that the shutdown is
stopping Washington's ability to do anything to help our farmers
who are making sacrifices to try to make sure that
we have better trade policies for farmers, for workers, for
all of our industries.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
So, I mean, what does this mean. We're hearing that
September was the first month that China said that they
weren't bringing any American soybeans into China. We know that
the President is scheduled to go to Asia later this week.
There's obviously some concern about these tariffs. I just saw
a commercial this morning for the first time, which was
somewhat stunning that was President Reagan's voice saying tariffs are bad,
(02:57):
we shouldn't have tariffs all this stuff. You know, we're
coming up to the midterms. The Democrats are holding this,
holding the government hostage right now. Essentially they are the
one They're the reason that this shutdown has occurred. They
won't vote for this continuing your resolution that's clean, it's
the same thing they voted on four years. They won't
vote for that. What does this mean when we see
(03:19):
Trump going over there, is he going to do you
believe he'll go back and forth on some of these tariffs.
Do you think that the tariffs are bad? Should the
president be the one taking the heat for this?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Here's the reality the media, in addition to not covering
the shutdown properly and not in leating the American people
understand what's actually driving the shutdown, and you're referring to
a lot of it. They're not covering the Terrificshue properly.
They want to say that, you know, all all farmers
are against tariffs and they're scared to death and all
of this stuff. I mean, here's the reality. Farmers deal
with the reality of both impacts by China snubbing us
(03:54):
and being upset with our tariffs. They deal with that,
but they also do with thirty years of having unfaired
trade practice keep prices down, so China for the nineties
and two thousands. A lot of the ways that this
affected other industries that you talk about on your show
a lot China and other adversars, but mainly China has
been buying a massive amount of American agricultural products, and
then they'll do things like dump those products so they'll
(04:15):
build the price up and then they'll crash the price.
They also cheat on their currency, they use unfair trade standards,
so the American farmer doesn't have to have an economic
degree to know that they they're getting screwed by China
for thirty years. And so a lot of farmers, including
those who are impacted when China or other countries get
upset over tariffs and don't buy our soybeans or whatever
(04:36):
else it is, also know that we need to get
tougher in order to get better trade deals. So these
farmers are saying, hey, let's get tougher. Yes, let's make
a deal with China and other countries, but it's got
to be a fair deal. It's got to be a
tougher deal. It can't be just the wide open trade
of the nineties and two thousands that allowed us to
get ripped off. So the media is not covering the
fact that for farmers it's complex. They may be in
(04:57):
an industry such as soybeans, are farm gross soybeans, the
crops that are affected by the trade dispute, but they're
not covering the fact that these farmers have also been
affected by China artificially keeping prices low and screwing the
American farmer for decades. So farmers want trade, but they
want it to be fair trade, and they want to
see a strategy through that can force China and other
(05:17):
countries to deal with us more fairly. And that's why
this shutdown is such terrible, incredibly calamitous timing, because farmers
who are willing to make the short term pain, long
term gain sacrifice that we need to to fight for
more fair trade standards aren't getting the tariff support that
they ought to get if Congress was doing its job.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Do they feel like they're being ignored because obviously, if
we look at I mean taking Michigan for example, if
you look at the farmland that's read. They're not voting
for Democrats, They're voting for Republicans. Do you feel like
farmers are saying Democrats don't care about us because they
don't get our vote anyway, so they don't mind keeping
the government shut down.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah. I think that they feel like what's going on
in Washington is very far off from what's going on
in our farm fields. And I don't speak for all farmers. Well,
I think about my dad who's still farming, my sister
who's work going to take over our farm, and the
work that our family does to try to keep it going.
We all know that every single day people families like
ours are toiling, and people in Washington don't know what's
(06:17):
going on on the ground on our farms, let alone
how it's connected with their debates, let alone how it's
connected with the food supply of every American, because that's
the other thing is it's not just about our farms,
but the food of all Americans.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And maybe the Democrats actually don't understand the connection between
farms and food because we're hearing here on the ground
that they are desperately trying to take over farms for
wind and for solar In fact, I know a man
who runs a solar company in the area and he said,
we're having trouble getting some of the farms between ground
(06:48):
rapids and lansing. But the government's going to step in
and help us. And I thought, what does that even mean?
What is the future of farms with the Demo if
the Democrat Party gets into control, because we know that
they're going for this green energy, all of this climate
change stuff, and that if essentially is taking over family farms.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And one of the problems that we have is that
really our government policies for decades now have not accounted
for what's going on the farms on the ground. We
saw this during the farm crisis the nineteen eighties. We
tell the story in my book. My parents were born
or excuse me, were married in nineteen seventy six. That
year was a drought. They almost didn't make it through
that year, and they were able to do it through
(07:28):
hard work and banding together with neighbors. If they hadn't
been able to do that, they had to take out
a whole lot of debt just to survive the year.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And they'll need those neighbors.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That's right, that's right, And the nineteen eighties farm crisis
wiped out farms that took on a lot of debt.
So if my parents hadn't been able to avoid that
debt just before that economic storm hit, there'd have been
huge trouble. And our government for a very long time
has failed to understand. And what I'll say is the
Democrats have generally decided that this government program or that
program is going to solve things, and something that for
a while the Republicans forgotten. I think that this is changing,
(07:58):
but for a while, the books forgot that the farmer
is the little guy. And then we have to stand
up for small independent farmers and small independent businesses in
this country too, And a lot of that is changing now,
but the reality is that farmers have felt left behind
for a very long time in many ways.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. It's interesting that you said that
about Republicans. I was at a meeting just over the
weekend where we you know, it was one of the
GOP dinners where everybody comes and they they give their
shpiels to why they should be elected, and over and
over again I heard Republicans get up and say government
(08:34):
needs to help step into the family farm and take
over and give money and give and be involved in
the details of the family farm. And I thought, I
am not hearing that from farmers. Get out of our
family farm. The government in Michigan is so heavily involved
in the family farm. You've got the environmentalists that are
(08:55):
in there all the time constantly, Oh, we don't like
the way you're getting rid of waste, we don't like
the way you're dealing with water, we don't like the
way you're washing your machinery. They are telling me on
a regular basis, get off our land. How did this
happen that Republicans started to get the wrong idea about
how government reacts to business.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Here's what happened in the case of farms, going back
to the Depression, there was this huge government intervention right
into our farms, into our agriculture, and agriculture government got
all wound up together, and whether that was right or wrong,
a lot of it people thought was going to be emergency,
and after the Depression it really wasn't. It just continued
and what our government did under both parties, the establishment
(09:36):
of the Republican Party as well as the Democrats just
kind of kept piling government programs on top of government programs. Right.
So now we have the current farm program and I
think that people inside farming, outside farming, all over the
political spectrum, none of them like what we have with
our farm programs. Everyone has something to criticize about farm subsidies, right.
And the reason that it's so bad is because we've
(09:57):
got just program after program pile on top one another.
We which ones are working. We don't know which ones
are contradictory because a lot of them do run into
one another, and we don't know which ones have become
prone to favoritims and abuse. And that's even before you
get into the way that increasing regulations, in increasing tax
has caused problems for farmers every single day. So we
need a bipartisan family farm moonshot where we go through
(10:17):
all these programs, figure out which ones are working and
which ones aren't, get rid of the ones that aren't,
make sure the ones that are there are doing what
they're supposed to do. Because it is true in this country, Tutor,
that farmers are both able to say, hey, where are
my taxpayers going? Mirror my taxpayer dollars going, and where's
that support that was supposed to become over the family farm.
Both things are true. Taxpayers and farmers both deserve to
(10:39):
be frustrated because our government isn't working right and it's
just standing in the way.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
How much danger are we in, though, to really have
a food availability problem here in the United States? Because
we are seeing farms close. It seems like, I mean,
as I'm reading about what's going on, it's like, Okay,
meat and dairy farms are closing. It's not a necessarily
affecting the amount of meat and dairy that we have.
But now we've got these powerful conglomerates and the family
(11:06):
farm is no longer there. What does that mean for
the future of the country.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, what we're seeing is the warning shots of an
incredibly unsustainable, incredibly insecure food supply. We saw it during COVID.
We also see it with bird flu. What I mean
by that is, people remember during COVID you couldn't find
the food you need on the grocery store shelves. If
you could, the price is way through the roof. That
was the same time that farmers were struggling to sell
their goods. The problem wasn't farmers willing to sell and
(11:31):
customers wanting to buy. The problem was our vulnerable supply chain.
So as we lose farms that we've been losing farms
at the rate of forty five thousand a year for
the past see forty five thousand a year for the
past century on average.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
How is that possible that the supply has not gone
dramatically down. I don't understand.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And that's what's happened is we have roughly it's less
land somewhat but roughly the same on the land, roughly
the same amount of food being produced by just far
fewer and your companies. And it's not just farms, all
the companies that are in between the farms and the
dinner table. And so what happens when you have these
really consolidated industries is if you have one great, big
(12:11):
distribution center go down, that affects the supply of whatever
that food is. So we saw it across all kinds
of food with COVID during bird flu. We saw it
with chicken and eggs. If you had one big distribution
center go down, or one, you know, whatever the case
may be. A logistical thing with trucks, something happens. It
has a massive impact on our supply chain. The price
of food goes up, and so what we're seeing with
(12:32):
COVID bird flu, this stuff happens all the time. The
reason that the price of food has gone up so
much faster than that runaway inflation that we had a
couple of years ago is because we have a vulnerable
supply chain that is constantly facing these shocks, and so
we're seeing kind of the warning shots of a deeply
vulnerable food supply every day.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
How has lobbying hurt farming? We had John Stossel on
here a few weeks ago and he was talking about
how lobbying. The Humane Society has this huge lobby that
was going into states and getting stores that sell puppies
shut down because they had that power, They had so
much money that they had created this narrative that they
were unsafe and that these dogs were from puppy mills,
(13:12):
and there was this whole hullabaloo. We can't have these
puppy mills out there, so we're going to shut it down.
The truth was those stores were not unsafe, The dogs
were not coming from unsafe places. They had to actually
be cared for. It was actually more controls when you
knew where these dogs were coming from. But that's how
this lobbying works. And it's not unlike what I've heard
from farmers where slaughterhouses have been shut down. Family slaughterhouses.
(13:37):
You have to go to these big corporations. And I mean,
I know that Thomas Massey doesn't have a great reputation
right now in Washington, but I remember years ago he
had the Prime Act, which was going to say, hey,
we've got to be allowed allowing these family slaughterhouses to
open back up, because you're shutting down the family farm.
They're not unhealthy, they're not unsafe. This was just a
(13:59):
massive amount of money from these big corporations that went
to government and bought essentially the right to shut down
the family slaughterhouse.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah. You know, here's what happens with government power. It
accumulates and it keeps building. And so once you have
an interest of one kind or another that gets a
whole bunch of power, they just keep on growing it
because they're able to write the policies. And also it's
the biggest players in any industry that not only are
able to pay the lobbyists, but they're also able to
pay the armies of lawyers and accountants that it takes
(14:26):
to navigate government. And so what happens is even let's
just say for a second that there's like a well
intentioned regulation of some kind, right, even the well intentioned
regulations at which many are not. But even a well
intentioned one goes across an entire industry, and it's the
biggest players that are best able to deal with it,
navigate it. They have the money and they have the
(14:46):
resources and the professionals to help them navigate through those
stormy waters of government. And so it's always the mom
and pop shops of any industry that get affected. In
the case of farms, what has really happened is farms
have been forced to get bigger or get out. I mean,
you know where I grew up, we still have some
small farms, got some medium farms, some larger farms. And
I'll be honest with you. You know, you look down
the road and whatever size the farm is these days,
(15:08):
we're happy that the farms are surviving, and we hope
that we can have more farms of all sizes, including
small farms. We're happy farms are surviving because they've been
forced to get bigger, get out, and it's really been
done by other bigger industries and government officials who haven't
understood what's going on, and farms of any size right now,
even the bigger ones in many cases are the little
guy relative to the folks that they're dealing with in
(15:29):
the global economy.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Let me ask you about work on the farm, because
we've heard from Democrats that if there's a closed border
that there won't be anybody to work on the farms.
We have migrant workers in Michigan that go all over
the country. They go from farm to farm. They're not
illegal immigrants, they are legal, and they go from state
to state to farm. What is your impression of what
(15:53):
they're saying? Is that accurate that if the border is
closed will struggle? I mean, and if it were accurate,
I would say, okay, there are way to solve that
without having an open a border obviously, But what are
you hearing from the farming industry.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah? Absolutely, you know, this is another issue where our
farms are caught in cross cutting political winds because many
farmers from rural America, I mean a lot of President
Trump's support came from rural America and many farmers that
included support from making sure that we secure our border,
and that's from families that field that that's important, while
at the same time they may have immigrant labor people
(16:26):
that they work with. About half of our labor for
farms comes from immigrant labor in this country. Here's the reality.
What you said is exactly right. We can both secure
the border and have a legally secured workforce. The H
two A Farm Visa Worker program is a program that
can be used you can secure legal workforce. I mean,
what we really need to be doing is focusing on
(16:46):
things that we can all agree on, like crack down
on the cartels that don't only traffic drugs, they also
traffic people, and they make it harder for farms and
other businesses to know whether the people that they're employing
have a legal status or don't have a legal status. Right,
So we can have this world where we secure the
border and where we are able to secure the workforce
that we need through legal forms such as the farm program.
(17:08):
And you see that across Michigan where I'm from, our
farmer was a little small to have immigrant labor, but
you know, farms that weren't much bigger than ours did.
And you know, we can walk and chew gum at
the same time. I think the American people do that
kind of thing all day. Only Congress would leave us
in this place where they we are forced by the
politicians and the media to feel like we have to
(17:29):
choose between, you know, a legal workforce or a secure border.
We don't have to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Such an interesting point. I mean, in the manufacturing world,
I think that we cross paths quite a bit. When
I would go and talk to our farmers and talk
about some of the challenges that we faced in manufacturing
at the steel foundry, they would say, it's amazing how
much that overlaps with the challenges that we face. And
it was the same I was talking to a friend
I had worked with years ago the other day, and
(17:58):
he was just going on and on about how could
Trump do this, this whole idea of though they're kidnapping
people off the streets. I said, you worked at the
shop with me. You don't remember Ice coming in and
rating the shop and taking people out because we didn't know.
I mean, they had they had papers that seemed that
they were legit. They weren't legit. Do you did you
(18:18):
consider that kidnapping them? Oh, they're not even committing crimes.
I said, by your standard, these people didn't either. They
were they stole someone's identity, they were making money, but
they you know, that wasn't a crime. That was like,
you know, you weren't killing someone, so under your theory,
that's not a crime. But it was always happening. How
(18:40):
did the Democrats effectively turn this narrative when Obama was
the deporter in chief, like I said, coming in rating
and he was raiding farms, he was raiding manufacturing facilities.
I'm sure he was also raiding slaughterhouses at that time.
It was never reported on. There was never a report
in Michigan when we were rated. How did they how
did they flipped this narrative. Is it just that they
(19:01):
don't have they're not able to get rural America, and
so they've decided they're going to try to come up
with some narrative that will get people out to vote.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
You know, I think there's a lot of politics that
get played and that factor into that kind of thing.
The other thing I think that's going on is there's
these big structural changes, like as we have more of
rural America voting Republican, more of urban America voting Democrat,
and our cities really become like islands of like deep
deep blue. That's happening at the same time that we've
lost a lot of media outlets. You've lost a lot
(19:32):
of local, hometown newspapers that didn't care about one on
in New York City. They cared about what was going
on with the local basketball game, you know, And we've
lost a lot of papers like that and other news
outlets like that. And so what happens is you have
so much of the media narrative is dominated by people
who are in really big cities who either their media
(19:53):
outlets are the ones that reach these areas, or there's
media outlets own the media outlets in those areas. And
so that's another form of anschio consolidation. We have this
world where we don't have rural and urban really talking,
and we don't have media that is showing people information
that we can all agree on, like basic facts. It's
just gotten worse and worse. And so I think that's
a big part of it too, is just the way
(20:14):
that our media has gradually gotten out of touch with
what's going on in our small towns, on our rural areas,
and even our medium sized cities. You know, anything that
isn't a big, major urban center. They're kind of out
of touch with.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. You make such a great point
that I think people don't necessarily understand. I mean, as
we're talking about farms getting bigger and fewer and fewer
people owning farms, they just are getting bigger and becoming
big corporations. It's the same thing with the local newspaper.
(20:45):
It's the same thing with your local news station. Your
news station is a part of news stations across the country.
You've seen those those videos where you see fifty different
news stations all having the same report. It's true. It
literally they're being bought up by one side or the other,
one political side or the other. And behind the scenes,
I mean, you and I have probably heard the same thing.
(21:07):
It's like, Okay, if we can get all of these
local newspapers, it will seem very organic that this is
the message that is being put out, when it is
actually a political message that is being put out.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, that's part of the problem, and things just get
further and further out of touch with every day people
now there are really good people at companies of all kinds,
and there are good people at you know that are
trying to fight these kinds of forces anywhere everywhere, right,
But it's individual people against a bigger system that is
really just disconnecting people from one another, you know. And
(21:38):
that's you know, you said the word community. I thought
that was so important because where I'm from, where I
grew up, and I know that it's similar where your
folks are from. You know, you've got that individualism that
it takes to deal with whatever your problem is, you know,
out on the farm, out on the factory floor, whatever
it is. And you've also got that sense of community,
come running when a neighbor's in trouble, and those two things.
You can be individualistic and you can also care about
(22:00):
your community. And I think a lot of people, especially
in our media narrative. Maybe isn't true in our day
to day lives as much, but especially in the media
and invent and the social media narrative, it feels like
we're all just so disconnected and that sense of local
community is so important.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I think you make a good point because right now
we're seeing this return to church, We're seeing young men
returning to the church. The churches is very powerful in
the rural areas, and as I've been researching, I think
I've mentioned on the podcast, there's been evidence even in
Afrikatrina that the areas that had higher church membership, they
were able to return to normal faster and in fact
(22:37):
even grow because of that support system and always knowing
there was a home base that had the supplies you needed.
I think that that has threatened Democrats coming up in
this election, because obviously we saw what happened with Charlie
Kirk and then instead of rioting and people arguing and
screaming and yelling, we ended up having the largest church
service we've ever seen, and kind of this revival of
(22:58):
we're going to rely on each other, we're gonna forgive,
we're going to move on, we're going to love one another.
That's something that we haven't seen coming out of their party.
In fact, you look at what's happening in New York
right now, and they're all kind of fractured. You see
Hakim Jeffries is still being asked, are you going to
endorse mom? Donnie? Nobody knows what he's going to do.
He's in a real bat He's in a pretty rough
(23:19):
situation because you're talking about someone who's socialist. He's saying
he's a socialist. A lot of the things that he's
promoting are actually communists. The city of New York. We
don't know what will happen to it. Democrats have this
kind of fractured message right now of the far left
and then trying to pull toward the middle. And those
who are trying to pull toward the middle are still
(23:40):
absolutely struggling with that. This is hard for them in
the midterms. But they did the same thing with the
government shut down in twenty eighteen. They believe that this
hurts the president. It's interesting. I have a friend who
is my age. She's not a conservative. I noticed a
post on Facebook about the government shut down because her
Snap benefits are under threat. She's disabled, she gets Snap benefits,
(24:03):
and the end of her post was very interesting to me.
Someone who, like I said, not a conservative. She's signed
off with this by saying thanks a lot, Dems. Now,
I thought, wow, that must really be painful for the
Democrats because this is non political, non conservative person who
is recognizing, probably for one of the first times, that
(24:23):
it is the Democrats who chose to shut down the government,
and they are harming the people that need to help
the most. What does this do? Does this have the
same effect as twenty eighteen? Or does this shutdown hurt
the Democrats?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, you know, it's really hard to say, partially because
your narrative is going to go and what people are
going to be told. And there's also the fact that
you know, midterms can always naturally be challenging for the
party that has the White House, right, like, just that
situation that can occur irregardless. But I do think that
when you think about what's going on with the shutdown
(24:57):
and with any of these other issues, I think that people,
especially in rural areas. And I don't speak for all
farmers or everybody, but in rural areas, I think what
people are interested in it is who's going to upset
the economic status quo to try to make things better
for me? And I think it's similar you know, in
Still Country and other places, because these are places that
have been seeing economic decline for decades. You know, it's
(25:19):
not just like whatever has happened in the economy the
last couple of years or whatever. You know, it's really about, Hey,
you know, we've been losing our farms, we've been losing
our other resource industries. We've been losing population in small towns,
we've been losing industrial jobs in more recent decades, and
so people have been seeing their economy decline. Even if
the unemployment number or the stock market is going up
(25:40):
or down, there's still an overall decline going on in
a lot of rural and small town America. And so
I think people are interested in hearing who's going to
do something to make my life better economically, who's going
to change and shake things up? And the problem with
the shutdown is what they're hearing is just more games
in Washington, shutting things down for political reasons, more getting
filled by more politicians who've been out of touch with
(26:01):
them for decades.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Anyway, how do people feel about the Secretary of Agriculture?
We have Brick Rowlins now as the Secretary of ag
We a lot of us learned for the first time
that she has She went to school for this, she
was in four age, she was a farmer. She grew
up in the world of agriculture. But she has been
(26:22):
hit by the media so many times as just this
pretty face that doesn't know anything about this industry, which
is a total lie. How do farmers feel about what
she's been doing.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
I think farmers have felt as I've talked with honestly, farmers,
rank and file, egg groups, people really from different parts
of the political spectrum. They say that they feel that
she listens. They feel that there's an ear at the
USDA to hear what they're saying, talk about it and
try to balance these things. For example, you know, and
she's talked about, you know the fact that with tariffs,
(26:51):
you know, you can use tariffs to get tougher negotiations,
create morefare trade, you know, drive harder bargains with countries,
but we have to be aware there's an impact on
our farmers. In the meantime, she talked about those things,
you know, when we talk about trying to find a
way to make America healthy again and do that in
a way that makes sure that farming doesn't get hit
with government mandates and get what, you know, take the
good of make America healthy again, and make sure also
(27:13):
that we're helping farms that are small businesses not deal
with heavy handed government. I think they feel like Secretary
Rollins is stopping and listening and trying to balance some
very very difficult things well.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Good, and I hope that we see some relief for
our farmers soon. I hope that this shutdown ends. We'll
see what the Democrats decide. I kind of wonder if
they're trying to get through the election in November and
see what happens in Virginia, what happens in New Jersey,
what happens in New York. Obviously those are big elections
for everybody, and they right now seem to have the
(27:45):
upper hand in those states. But we'll see what happens.
So I appreciate you being here. Brian Riisinger, Thank you
so much for joining the podcast today.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Thanks so much for being with me. I appreciate I
think we can find a way forward where we can
get this government opened up and we can find a
way to negotiate family first trade deals, you know, tough
deals that are fair to our farmers and our workers.
It's just a matter of the politicians understand what's going
on the ground and trying to get some work done.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Well. Hopefully that helps having a Secretary of Agriculture who
understands and Secretary Rollins is able to take that back
and I hope that she's able to communicate that to Congress,
although it seems like they're being stubborn at the moment.
But every day is a new day, and we wait
to hear if they've decided that they're going to push
forward and open back up the government. So we'll see,
(28:30):
thank you.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
We'll see.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Thanks very much, absolutely, and thank you all for joining
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. As you know, you can subscribe
at Tutor dixonpodcast dot com, go to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you
can always watch at Rumble or YouTube at Tutor Dixon
and join us next time. Have a blessed day.
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