Ag Policy Blog

It's difficult to spend much time around a farmer before the term "land rich, cash poor" comes up.

Journalist Brian Reisinger, who grew up in south-central Wisconsin, just published his book "Land Rich, Cash Poor," which weaves a discussion about a century of economic forces, government policy and changes in America through the lens of his family's four generations on a Wisconsin dairy farm.

Reisinger explores how the country has gone from having 6.5 million farms a century ago to roughly 1.9 million farms now. With that decline of farmers, there also has been the hollowing out of mid-sized farmers. The decisions to either get big or get out have left more farmers land rich and cash poor as a result.

It's a scenario that continues to play out in states such as Wisconsin where 10,000 fewer farms milk and manage the same number of cows as 20 years ago. The number of milking cows has remained relatively constant -- 1.2 million or so. The number of dairy farms in the state has fallen from just under 16,900 in 2002 to 6,200 in 2022, according to the USDA Ag Census.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during the past couple of years has frequently talked about the country losing 544,000 farms since 1981. "Are we OK with losing that many farms?" Vilsack said when releasing the Ag Census data earlier this year. "Are we OK with losing that much farmland or is there a better way?"

Reisinger's book follows a longer narrative beginning with his great-grandparent Alois and Teresia Reisinger starting a dairy farm in the early 1900s and raising a family of 14 children.

"Over the years, as young couples like Alois and Teresia fought for their stake, Wisconsin would prove fertile ground also for some specialty crops, like potatoes, cranberries and ginseng. But none would direct the state's economic future, nor exemplify the plight of every American farmer, like Wisconsin's dairy industry. Milk was becoming Wisconsin's currency in the growing but tumultuous world of American agriculture."

Reisinger also spotlights tragic events on the family farm that left multiple family members with permanent injuries, expensive medical costs and precious labor lost that someone had to fill. There is the struggle of isolation, marriage, alcohol, raising and providing for a family, and childhood labor that shaped Reisinger's father, grandparents and great-grandparents.

His great-grandfather was also set in his ways, which made it difficult to transition the farm to one of the children. The oldest son, Albert, had bought another farm "up the hill," but then stepped in and bought the old farm. That exemplified a trend of one farm swallowing up another rather than a family becoming more prosperous across two farms, Reisinger noted.

Reisinger examines multiple times the debate about the role of government in agriculture and how to ensure there is competition for farmers economically. "Instead, the debate over agriculture would settle into a rut filled with unintended consequences. It's a rut that persists today but that our country dug in the 1950s," he wrote.

Less than halfway through the book so many of the challenges and policy debates that Reisinger brings up still resonate today. Historians and economists quoted by Reisinger debate whether the federal government provides too little or too much to American farmers. Sarah Vogel, for instance, who represented farmers during the 1980s farm crisis, said the country is always asking farmers to produce food below the costs of production. She is countered by a professor who points to the perverse incentives of farm subsidies while others note the corporate influence woven into farm programs that benefit large corporations over family farmers.

The Reisinger's farm story advances through the decades and generations right up to the peak of the pandemic with a father and daughter struggling to keep milking the cows.

I won't ruin a good book, but I think you know how it ends.

"Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer,"

https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

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