August 23, 2024 • 16 mins
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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
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?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Has the push for gluten free hurt farms at all.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
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
(01:47):
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
(02:08):
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
(02:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Is this push to veganism hurting farms at all?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
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
(03:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
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
(03:47):
of mankind's existence for centuries.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
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
(04:12):
they must add hundreds of boxes and that was in
just one store.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:01):
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.
(05:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
What percent of the farms are done with the large
corporations as opposed to the individual farmer.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
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,
(06:15):
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
(06:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It's traumatic, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
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.
(08:32):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
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
(10:10):
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,
(10:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
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?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
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
(11:23):
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
(11:46):
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
(12:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, they are strange creatures, aren't they. You know, tomatoes
is a great example.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It's a moth, isn't it when it starts?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
They kind of look right back at you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah they do, Yeah, they do. It feels like they
definitely know you're there.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
What about the suicide rate of farmers, Brian? Why is
that so high?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
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
(13:36):
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.
(13:57):
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
(14:21):
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
(14:41):
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
(15:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Really did he pull himself out of it on his
own or did he have to seek some professional help.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
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
(15:50):
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,
(16:12):
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
(16:32):
when he walked up in the site, it was so
singular to me.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
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?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Has the push for gluten free hurt farms at all.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
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
(01:47):
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
(02:08):
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
(02:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Is this push to veganism hurting farms at all?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
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
(03:18):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
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
(03:47):
of mankind's existence for centuries.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
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
(04:12):
they must add hundreds of boxes and that was in
just one store.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:01):
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.
(05:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
What percent of the farms are done with the large
corporations as opposed to the individual farmer.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
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,
(06:15):
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
(06:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It's traumatic, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
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.
(08:32):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
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
(10:10):
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,
(10:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
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?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
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
(11:23):
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
(11:46):
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
(12:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah, they are strange creatures, aren't they. You know, tomatoes
is a great example.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
It's a moth, isn't it when it starts?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
They kind of look right back at you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah they do, Yeah, they do. It feels like they
definitely know you're there.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
What about the suicide rate of farmers, Brian? Why is
that so high?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
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
(13:36):
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.
(13:57):
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
(14:21):
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
(14:41):
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
(15:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Really did he pull himself out of it on his
own or did he have to seek some professional help.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
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
(15:50):
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,
(16:12):
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
(16:32):
when he walked up in the site, it was so
singular to me.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
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