Latest / GO TEXAN THE Truly Significant / HOT TOPIC: Land Rich and Cash Poor author and farmer Brian Reisinger talks with Commissioner Sid Miller

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HOT TOPIC: Land Rich and Cash Poor author and farmer Brian Reisinger talks with Commissioner Sid Miller · GO TEXAN THE Truly Significant

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Truly Significant Texans in Agriculture, the podcast where
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Speaker 1: we spotlight the gripped built legends do helped shape Texas
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Speaker 1: farming and ranching.
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Speaker 2: These are the.
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Speaker 1: Stories of Texans who didn't just.
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Speaker 3: Work the land, they transformed it and how they lifted
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Speaker 3: others up.
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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Rick Tokenny with Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.
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Speaker 2: Now let's dig in.
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Speaker 3: Welcome back to Go Texan presents truly Significant Texans in Agriculture.
0:31
Speaker 4: We have a special guest that's outside of the state of.
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Speaker 3: Texas and he is Brian Reisinger and he is the
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Speaker 3: author of Land Rich.
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Speaker 4: Cash Poor, The Fight for the American Farmer.
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Speaker 3: You're on Brian with the Commissioner of Texas Agriculture. The
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Speaker 3: perfect person to talk to, the one and only Sid Miller.
0:54
Speaker 2: Sid, Meet Brian, Ryan. Good to have you on the
0:56
Speaker 2: show with us today.
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Speaker 5: It's good to be with you, Commissioner. A preciate all
1:00
Speaker 5: the attention you guys put on agg culture and you're
1:02
Speaker 5: a great state of Texas and it's great to be
1:04
Speaker 5: talking about these issues.
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Speaker 6: Well, our slogan around here is Texas Agriculture Matters, So
1:10
Speaker 6: that's we believe in that we walk that talk that
1:13
Speaker 6: every day.
1:15
Speaker 2: It's good to have you all.
1:17
Speaker 6: Now you've written a book and I want to ask
1:21
Speaker 6: you some questions about it.
1:22
Speaker 2: And this is a quote.
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Speaker 6: You call this the most detrimental and unexplained social economic
1:28
Speaker 6: crisis in America, and that is the disappearance of the
1:31
Speaker 6: American farmer.
1:33
Speaker 2: Is anybody telling this story? Do we tell it enough?
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Speaker 5: I tell you we absolutely don't tell it enough. I
1:39
Speaker 5: know that you guys are working to get the word
1:41
Speaker 5: out on these issues as best you can, and I'm
1:43
Speaker 5: doing the same thing. The reality is that as a country,
1:47
Speaker 5: we just don't face this issue often enough. Every now
1:50
Speaker 5: and then it'll happen. A lot of people remember in
1:53
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties and Willie Nelson and everybody started singing
1:56
Speaker 5: for farm aid. That was a moment where the country
1:58
Speaker 5: stopped and in the farm has thought about farmers. You know,
2:01
Speaker 5: there's differents in time, and there are people out there
2:04
Speaker 5: working to make sure we tell this story. But as
2:06
Speaker 5: far as the country realizing what's going on, here's what's happened.
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Speaker 5: We've been losing farms, family farms at threate of forty
2:12
Speaker 5: five thousand a year for the past century, forty five
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Speaker 5: thousand a year for one hundred years. And it happens
2:18
Speaker 5: in good times and bad times. It happens in times
2:20
Speaker 5: when people think the farmer's doing good, and it happens
2:22
Speaker 5: in times people think the farmer's doing bad. Our country
2:24
Speaker 5: does not understand what's been happening to our family farms
2:27
Speaker 5: and impact that has on everybody's food supply.
2:31
Speaker 6: You know, kind of interesting fact you said, You know,
2:33
Speaker 6: we've been doing this for generations, over one hundred years.
2:36
Speaker 6: When this country was founded, ninety five percent of the
2:39
Speaker 6: people were farmers and ranchers because if you didn't grow
2:42
Speaker 6: it or kill it, you didn't eat. But today it's
2:45
Speaker 6: astounding that less than one and a half percent of
2:48
Speaker 6: the population are farmers and ranchers. So you're you're exactly right.
2:53
Speaker 6: We know where are all the farmers going. How did
2:56
Speaker 6: your own full generation family.
3:00
Speaker 2: Shape? How you see this crisis? Apparently you've lived it.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, my dad is still farming, my sister's
3:06
Speaker 5: working to take it over, and growing up working with
3:08
Speaker 5: my dad. You know, how old do you have to
3:10
Speaker 5: be to get a wrench for your dad in the yard.
3:12
Speaker 5: You know, I was probably four years old working with
3:14
Speaker 5: my dad, and I can remember guys driving into the
3:17
Speaker 5: yard and to pick up I can hear the gravel
3:19
Speaker 5: popping underneath the tires to this day, and they'd roll
3:21
Speaker 5: the window down and they'd say, hey, Jim, you know,
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Speaker 5: do you hear about this this farm going under, this
3:25
Speaker 5: farm selling? And my Dad would would look at them
3:28
Speaker 5: and they'd just talk about what's going on. And I
3:31
Speaker 5: knew even at that age. I'm forty one now, so
3:33
Speaker 5: that's over thirty five years ago. I knew that, you know,
3:37
Speaker 5: guys like my dad and folks like the people you
3:40
Speaker 5: work with every day are are a dying breed. And
3:44
Speaker 5: I wanted to know why that was. And so as
3:47
Speaker 5: I got older, you know, I found it. I didn't
3:49
Speaker 5: have my dad's town for the cattle and crops, nor
3:52
Speaker 5: my sisters. And although I'm involved in our farm on
3:54
Speaker 5: the business side and they throw me in a tractor
3:56
Speaker 5: and I'm home, my real calling was to write and
3:59
Speaker 5: tell our story. So that's what I wanted to do,
4:02
Speaker 5: and I wanted to answer that question, why are farms disappearing?
4:04
Speaker 5: And that's what we decided to do with land rich,
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Speaker 5: cash poor, partially because I think it's an important issue.
4:10
Speaker 5: That affects everybody. It affects the price of our food,
4:12
Speaker 5: the health of our food, the secuit of our food.
4:14
Speaker 5: But for me, this issue is as personal as it gets,
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Speaker 5: going all the way back to those days with my dad.
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Speaker 4: You and I have talked about that before.
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Speaker 3: How do you get the next generation interested in farming
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Speaker 3: and ranching.
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Speaker 6: Well, it's a challenge because I said, we're down in
4:29
Speaker 6: less than one and a half percent of us.
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Speaker 2: You know, we have to you know, we have to
4:34
Speaker 2: do better. We do a lot of it here at the.
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Speaker 6: Department of Agriculture. We have you know, young farmer programs,
4:40
Speaker 6: we have grant programs. We work real close with every
4:44
Speaker 6: major stock show in the state raising scholarship money to
4:48
Speaker 6: get kids in college.
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Speaker 2: So, you know, run your.
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Speaker 6: Book touches on this. But people, I just got through
4:59
Speaker 6: give speech, and I've always tried to incorporate incorporate this in.
5:03
Speaker 6: I tell them, you know that the two highest rates
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Speaker 6: of suicide in the nation are our veterans and our farmers.
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Speaker 6: And the single highest rate of suicide in the nation
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Speaker 6: is a cotton farmer, surpasses even veterans.
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Speaker 2: So your book kind of touches on.
5:22
Speaker 6: Mental health of the farmer and suicides and even addiction.
5:28
Speaker 2: Explain that to us a little bit.
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Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much for raising that issue and
5:31
Speaker 5: for the work you guys do on the reason awareness
5:34
Speaker 5: around it. You know, we came by that issue about
5:39
Speaker 5: as honestly as you could, which is said. Growing up,
5:41
Speaker 5: I remember farmers that we would hear about who took
5:44
Speaker 5: their lives. There was actually a group called the Farmer
5:46
Speaker 5: Angel Network that started in my home county in southern Wisconsin.
5:50
Speaker 5: I grew up in the hills of southern Wisconsin, and
5:52
Speaker 5: the Farmer Angel Network started to try to provide mental
5:54
Speaker 5: health support farmers because of a local farmer near where
5:57
Speaker 5: I grew up who had taken his own life tragically,
6:00
Speaker 5: and so I knew about these issues. And our farm
6:05
Speaker 5: was going through a really big change that all of
6:08
Speaker 5: a sudden put it right in the middle of our lives.
6:11
Speaker 5: My dad, as I say, he's still farming, but he
6:14
Speaker 5: reached the point where he had to sell the milkork.
6:15
Speaker 5: We were a dairy farm for more one hundred years
6:17
Speaker 5: and we're still raising dairy cows for other farms were
6:21
Speaker 5: raising beef from raising cash cops, but selling that herd
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Speaker 5: of cows that we were milking. That's the closest thing
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Speaker 5: to a death in the family that a farmer can experience,
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Speaker 5: other than losing the loved one, and my dad admitted
6:34
Speaker 5: to me later that he fell into a deep depression.
6:36
Speaker 5: I remember standing on the porch of our cabin the
6:39
Speaker 5: day after it happened, and I remember thinking to myself, wondering, man,
6:44
Speaker 5: I wonder if he's thinking about that. I wonder if
6:46
Speaker 5: he's thinking about harmon himself, because we knew so many
6:49
Speaker 5: farmers who had and as I was interviewing him for
6:53
Speaker 5: the book, I learned out that he was. That very day.
6:56
Speaker 5: We were standing right next to each other, but we
6:58
Speaker 5: were a world apart where I was wondering if he
7:00
Speaker 5: was thinking it, and he was thinking it, and I
7:02
Speaker 5: couldn't ask him. I was too afraid to ask him.
7:05
Speaker 5: And so I'm grateful that he got through that talking
7:10
Speaker 5: with our family, talking to folks at the Farm Angel Network,
7:12
Speaker 5: thinking about his grandkids, and that in the course of
7:15
Speaker 5: the book, I asked him about that day and found
7:18
Speaker 5: out that, sure enough, he'd been having thoughts about leaving
7:22
Speaker 5: this earth by his own hand. And it just shows
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Speaker 5: how hard it is to talk about and it just
7:27
Speaker 5: shows how much we have to talk about it because
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Speaker 5: it's a silent crisis in that way.
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Speaker 6: Well, and farmers were kind of, you know, a little introverted,
7:36
Speaker 6: not all of them, but they'd spend twelve fourteen hours
7:38
Speaker 6: out on the tractor or in the milking parlor or
7:42
Speaker 6: you know, out riding the fences, and they don't socialize
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Speaker 6: a lot, and they're very proud breed. They won't ask
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Speaker 6: for help hardly ever, you know, they're too proud to
7:52
Speaker 6: ask for help. So we started something here called the
7:55
Speaker 6: Agri Stress Helpline, and it's a suicide outline for farmers.
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Speaker 6: It's been very successful. We've runned about three years now
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Speaker 6: and that we've saved over three hundred lives that we
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Speaker 6: can document. So it's I'm going to give you the
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Speaker 6: number here in a minute, just because I've taken, you know,
8:14
Speaker 6: the opportunity to bring it up. But we now have
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Speaker 6: this running in eleven states, so my goal is to
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Speaker 6: get it in every state in the Union so we
8:23
Speaker 6: can help those I'm gonna give you one. When we
8:26
Speaker 6: first launched this, I was going around to TV stations.
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Speaker 2: You know, and they would interview me about it.
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Speaker 6: We went to two at CBS and NBC here in Austin,
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Speaker 6: and they aired that night on the ten o'clock news. Well,
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Speaker 6: I got a call the next morning from a gentleman
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Speaker 6: I'd never met. He said, Commissioner, this is farmer, and
8:43
Speaker 6: I don't say his name. He said, I was sitting
8:49
Speaker 6: in front of the TV last night. I had my
8:50
Speaker 6: shotgun out and I was going to put it in
8:52
Speaker 6: my mouth and in my life because I had no hope.
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Speaker 6: You know, I'm losing the farm. And he said, you
9:01
Speaker 6: came on the TV and talked about this agristress helpline.
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Speaker 6: He said, I called it, and I just want you
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Speaker 6: to know I'm gonna be all right now.
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Speaker 2: So you know that's that's ith that.
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Speaker 5: Is so powerful right there. I'm so glad you guys
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Speaker 5: are doing that kind of intervention. And that's the thing
9:20
Speaker 5: you said that they're proud, they're hardworking. I mean, look,
9:22
Speaker 5: when you grew up on a farm or you grew
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Speaker 5: up ranch and you're taught to keep your head down
9:25
Speaker 5: and get the work done, and you don't get taught
9:29
Speaker 5: to raise your hand. And we always are trying to
9:31
Speaker 5: tell people that there's strength not shame and speaking up.
9:33
Speaker 5: Thank God that farmer saw that broadcast and called you,
9:38
Speaker 5: called that line and then later called you in the
9:41
Speaker 5: same way that I think God that my dad got
9:43
Speaker 5: through it talking to Farmer Angel Network and others. If
9:45
Speaker 5: we don't intervene and let people know their strength and
9:48
Speaker 5: speaking up, we're going to lose more hardware than people
9:50
Speaker 5: that are just trying to get by feeding this country.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, and if it's not suicide, they self medicate, over
9:58
Speaker 6: self medicate in some cases what be alcohol or you know,
10:01
Speaker 6: some other type of addiction.
10:04
Speaker 2: And uh, you know we're there where there.
10:07
Speaker 6: We can help with that too, and we can actually
10:08
Speaker 6: get them local help, locally mental health help.
10:12
Speaker 2: They don't have to drive into a metropolitan area.
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Speaker 5: So, you know, you mentioned your question and I didn't
10:17
Speaker 5: address it. I ought to. In my book, we tell
10:19
Speaker 5: the story throughout four generations of the way that economical
10:23
Speaker 5: peoples affect our farm families. And we tell stories from
10:26
Speaker 5: my family all throughout those generations. Our second grand naration,
10:29
Speaker 5: my grandpa, he self medicated for most of his life,
10:33
Speaker 5: and we tell that story honestly. We did it respectfully,
10:36
Speaker 5: but we told in an honest, raw way. You know,
10:38
Speaker 5: he grew up in the depression in a very hard time.
10:41
Speaker 5: Two years or to excuse me, two decades of poverty
10:44
Speaker 5: before he climbed in the middle class and he was
10:46
Speaker 5: able to give a better life to his son and
10:47
Speaker 5: then a better life to me his grandson. But the
10:50
Speaker 5: thing that he did to get through that was drink.
10:53
Speaker 5: And he was a kind and gentleman, thank God for that.
10:55
Speaker 5: And he was a good man, and he brought our
10:57
Speaker 5: family in the middle class. But I just think about
10:59
Speaker 5: him carrying that monkey on his vac all the way
11:01
Speaker 5: out of the depression, and the way he got through
11:03
Speaker 5: that was by drinking. And so whether it's whether it's
11:07
Speaker 5: people think about harming themselves, whether it's people self medicating,
11:11
Speaker 5: the strain of the way life. It's a beautiful way
11:12
Speaker 5: of life, but the strain of trying to make it
11:15
Speaker 5: really does take a toll on people that we have
11:17
Speaker 5: to be honest about.
11:19
Speaker 3: Sure, well, Commissioner, we need to put the telephone number
11:24
Speaker 3: on the screen, okay for people to connect. And also, Brian,
11:29
Speaker 3: if you could provide the number for the Farmer Angel Network,
11:33
Speaker 3: that would be great before the end of the show,
11:36
Speaker 3: if you could mention that, that would be fantastic.
11:39
Speaker 6: Absolutely absolutely, let me give you and you can just
11:43
Speaker 6: put you know agri Stress Helpline in your phone, It'll
11:45
Speaker 6: pop right up. I mean it's not hard to find
11:47
Speaker 6: it's it just put it on a search on the
11:49
Speaker 6: internet will get it. But the number if we want
11:53
Speaker 6: to put it up on the screen is eight three
11:55
Speaker 6: three eight nine seven two four seven four eight three
12:00
Speaker 6: three eight nine seven twenty four seventy four.
12:05
Speaker 5: And an additional resource secondary to that crisis line. That
12:08
Speaker 5: christline is so important. If you're looking to connect for
12:12
Speaker 5: another resource, you can call or text nine to eight eight,
12:18
Speaker 5: just the simple numbers nine eight eight and the farm
12:22
Speaker 5: Angel Network. They're at farmeranngel network dot com. And those
12:26
Speaker 5: are additional secondary resources for people who are looking for
12:29
Speaker 5: various kinds of help with these issues.
12:32
Speaker 6: Yeah, the nine eight eight is a suicide hotline. The
12:34
Speaker 6: difference between the Agristriss Helpline. In the suicide hotline, we
12:40
Speaker 6: have specifically trained people that can point you towards programs
12:44
Speaker 6: at the USDA or the Texas Department of Agriculture. Are
12:48
Speaker 6: mental health in your community not. You know, it's not
12:51
Speaker 6: some call center in India. You know that you're talking
12:54
Speaker 6: to you, You're talking to somebody that most of the
12:56
Speaker 6: time have been in your shoes and know what you're
12:58
Speaker 6: going through.
12:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, saw Gorton.
13:01
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that's moving on. We kind of got buried
13:06
Speaker 6: down in that one.
13:06
Speaker 2: That's that's that's going a little little light lighter note.
13:12
Speaker 6: Why is the cultural understanding between urban and rule uh deteriorating?
13:18
Speaker 6: How did we we? It seems like the divide gets
13:20
Speaker 6: farther than farther. You know, I was at the stock
13:22
Speaker 6: show and had a bunch of elementary kids in front
13:25
Speaker 6: of me, and uh, I said, all right, kiddos, who
13:29
Speaker 6: can tell me where your hamburger comes from? And in
13:32
Speaker 6: Unison they all said McDonald's.
13:37
Speaker 2: Yeah enough. That wasn't what I was. That wasn't what
13:41
Speaker 2: I was looking for it.
13:42
Speaker 6: But that's the mentality. That's that's the divide I'm talking about.
13:46
Speaker 2: It really is.
13:47
Speaker 5: You know, it goes back to what you said at
13:48
Speaker 5: the beginning, Commissioner, where you know, Daniel, one hundred percent
13:51
Speaker 5: of Americans were farmers on some level back at our
13:53
Speaker 5: country's founding, and now it is a very very small percentage.
13:57
Speaker 5: And so you know, naturally people have gotten further and
14:00
Speaker 5: further away from their food supply. And that has happened
14:04
Speaker 5: partially because our economy moved from rural to urban. We
14:07
Speaker 5: had farming and other you know things in our royal
14:10
Speaker 5: communities that were the core of our economy. And as
14:12
Speaker 5: we industrialized and as technology and other things took over,
14:15
Speaker 5: there were some good things that happened and some bad
14:17
Speaker 5: things happened. Good things are we didn't have to have
14:19
Speaker 5: everybody breaking their back to grow food for this country.
14:22
Speaker 5: Some people could go do other things, work in other
14:24
Speaker 5: fields because there was an ability for you know, one
14:27
Speaker 5: farmer to feed more people. But that went so far,
14:30
Speaker 5: and it went so quickly alongside of the decline of
14:34
Speaker 5: our farms. You know, we didn't just advance technologically, but
14:36
Speaker 5: we started losing family farms were going bankrupt or going
14:40
Speaker 5: under or having to sell under distress sales to a neighbor,
14:42
Speaker 5: whatever it was. And it just never it started in
14:45
Speaker 5: the depression, never stopped again. Forty five thousand farms a
14:48
Speaker 5: year for a century. So when you do that and
14:50
Speaker 5: you have our economy shifting from rural to urban, what
14:53
Speaker 5: you have is you have farms getting wiped out, and
14:55
Speaker 5: you have rural communities that are getting emptied out. You know,
14:58
Speaker 5: you got our farms going under, you got people leaving
15:01
Speaker 5: to go find jobs in the city. You got jobs disappearing,
15:04
Speaker 5: economic activity disappearing, and so our rural community starts shrinking.
15:07
Speaker 5: And so you get more and more where there's more
15:10
Speaker 5: and more money and people and concentration in cities, and
15:12
Speaker 5: more and more people being left behind in rural areas.
15:15
Speaker 5: And then you add to that, you know, partisanship and
15:17
Speaker 5: other things going on in our country. Next thing, you know,
15:19
Speaker 5: you got people on completely different ends of the spectrum.
15:22
Speaker 5: You got people that are growing the food that feel
15:24
Speaker 5: so far away from the people that are trying to feed,
15:26
Speaker 5: and you got people who are eating the food who
15:28
Speaker 5: many of them don't many of them don't have a
15:30
Speaker 5: way to know where their food's coming from because we're
15:33
Speaker 5: all so disconnected now, and it keeps us from solving problems.
15:36
Speaker 2: It doesn't a little caveat on that.
15:38
Speaker 6: And I've noticed this, and after I mentioned that, you
15:41
Speaker 6: may agree with me, you may not, but we've kind
15:44
Speaker 6: of come back, not all the way back, and not
15:46
Speaker 6: even clothes to come back.
15:48
Speaker 2: But I call them COVID moms.
15:51
Speaker 6: After COVID, these young mothers, they wanted to know where
15:56
Speaker 6: their food come from.
15:57
Speaker 2: They want to know what was going in their bodies.
15:59
Speaker 2: So I'm they would you.
16:01
Speaker 6: Know, we we bordered for eggs, you know, and they
16:05
Speaker 6: you know, people started, you know, can we buy a
16:08
Speaker 6: locker b from you?
16:10
Speaker 2: Can?
16:10
Speaker 6: We you know, we're you know, we're you know, I
16:12
Speaker 6: want uh, I don't want these ultra processed foods. And
16:15
Speaker 6: now we've got uh Kennedy in the MAHA movement. You know,
16:18
Speaker 6: we're trying to eat better, and uh, I think we're
16:21
Speaker 6: doing better.
16:21
Speaker 2: Is a nation.
16:22
Speaker 6: We're more conscious now a pre COVID not so much.
16:26
Speaker 6: You know, we were just you know, I hadn't had
16:29
Speaker 6: a soda pop or donut.
16:30
Speaker 2: I don't even know when. I mean, I just quit.
16:32
Speaker 2: I mean, I just.
16:33
Speaker 6: Don't do that anymore. And uh, before you know, it's
16:37
Speaker 6: well five each a day.
16:38
Speaker 4: You know, sugar became eating during COVID.
16:41
Speaker 2: Yeah it did.
16:42
Speaker 6: But if there anything good come out of COVID, uh
16:46
Speaker 6: we started planting on gardens again, that's right. We got
16:49
Speaker 6: some backyard chickens. Anyway, I just thought, I don't know
16:55
Speaker 6: if you had observed that or it's just something up
16:57
Speaker 6: that that kind of you know, that sticks out to me.
17:02
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you said that, because you're absolute right.
17:04
Speaker 5: We've got all these great big trends that have shifted
17:06
Speaker 5: us away from our rural roots and have pulled the
17:09
Speaker 5: rural and urban apart. And COVID was a terrible situation
17:14
Speaker 5: economically and otherwise. But one thing that people learned is
17:18
Speaker 5: that they wanted to know where their food has come from.
17:20
Speaker 5: You know, it was getting more expensive. They weren't sure
17:24
Speaker 5: what was going on with the health of it all that,
17:26
Speaker 5: and so people, I do think more than ever people
17:29
Speaker 5: care about where the food comes from. We need to
17:31
Speaker 5: build on it. You know, it's a beginning of taking
17:34
Speaker 5: it back in the other direction. And I think you're right,
17:36
Speaker 5: and we just have to keep going because what we
17:39
Speaker 5: need is enough people care about where the food comes
17:41
Speaker 5: from to create new entrepreneur opportunity for our family farms
17:44
Speaker 5: out there.
17:45
Speaker 3: Exactly, We're going to take a commercial break here and
17:49
Speaker 3: throw it to you.
17:50
Speaker 4: Tell us and our audience where we can purchase your.
17:52
Speaker 3: Book and maybe even see you in person or get
17:56
Speaker 3: an autograph copy.
17:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely so. My book is available on Amazon anywhere
18:02
Speaker 5: else you buy online that's land rich, cash poor. It's
18:05
Speaker 5: also available in addition to online, in bookstores nationwide. And
18:10
Speaker 5: if you want more information on any of that or
18:12
Speaker 5: on me. I'm at my website www dot Briandashriisinger dot com.
18:17
Speaker 5: That's b R I A N dash R E I
18:21
Speaker 5: s I n g e R dot com. All the
18:23
Speaker 5: ways you can buy the book or there you can
18:25
Speaker 5: also get in touch with me, sign up with newsletters
18:27
Speaker 5: and everything else you might want to be able to
18:29
Speaker 5: learn about myself, my family and our book, or just
18:32
Speaker 5: these issues. If you want to try to help spread awareness.
18:37
Speaker 2: That's great.
18:39
Speaker 3: What is since you wrote that book and it's been
18:41
Speaker 3: out now for a little bit at a time, what
18:45
Speaker 3: has surprised you the sort of surprise responses have you received,
18:48
Speaker 3: other than getting to.
18:49
Speaker 4: Talk to the commission Sidmiller about these issues.
18:52
Speaker 5: Well, that's a mighty good surprise to get to talk
18:54
Speaker 5: with the Commissioner and yourself Rick about this today. I
18:57
Speaker 5: will say that the biggest thing that surprised me. She
19:00
Speaker 5: goes back to something the commissioner said. I have been
19:02
Speaker 5: amazed and so grateful for the response we get from
19:06
Speaker 5: our farm families that usually don't talk about their business,
19:09
Speaker 5: you know. I mean I was when I thought about
19:11
Speaker 5: talking to my dad and my sister, and my mom
19:13
Speaker 5: and my grandma and great aunts, different people from different generations.
19:17
Speaker 5: It helped me reconstruct what happened to our families through
19:19
Speaker 5: the years. I was worried, you know, when I asked
19:22
Speaker 5: a question, when I take it too far where they
19:23
Speaker 5: didn't want to talk about it because it's a tight
19:25
Speaker 5: lit bunch. You're taught to get the work done, keep
19:27
Speaker 5: your head down. And my family, I found that they
19:30
Speaker 5: were appreciative that I would ask, and we found a
19:35
Speaker 5: way to tell some of our most honest, raw stories
19:37
Speaker 5: in a way that was respectful but unvarnished. And I
19:41
Speaker 5: was so grateful for that. But even when I got
19:43
Speaker 5: up to that point, I said, Okay, my family's good
19:45
Speaker 5: one of all the rest of the farm families in
19:46
Speaker 5: southern Wisconsin. And I think, what are they going to
19:48
Speaker 5: think in Texas? When I think in Florida everywhere that
19:49
Speaker 5: you got hard work and people that don't talk about
19:51
Speaker 5: the problems because they're out there getting the job done
19:54
Speaker 5: and feeding our country. And I didn't know what all
19:57
Speaker 5: the other farm families would think of us raising our
19:59
Speaker 5: he to talk about these issues. And I'll tell you what,
20:02
Speaker 5: I have not had one single farm family come to
20:05
Speaker 5: me and say, you shouldn't be talking about this. You
20:07
Speaker 5: shouldn't be talking about that, whether it's the beauty of
20:09
Speaker 5: the lifestyle, whether it's the economic up people, whether it's
20:12
Speaker 5: the mental health issue. I have had farm families across
20:15
Speaker 5: the country come up to me and events, sometimes the
20:17
Speaker 5: tears in their eyes, saying, we're glad you're doing this.
20:20
Speaker 5: You know, maybe they're trying to tell the story in
20:21
Speaker 5: some way that hasn't been heard. Maybe they would never
20:23
Speaker 5: do it, but they're glad somebody else did. And I'm
20:25
Speaker 5: so grateful for that, because I would never want farm
20:28
Speaker 5: families like the one I grew up on, thinking that
20:29
Speaker 5: we were trying to get their business out there or
20:32
Speaker 5: exploit the situation. We are just trying to tell an
20:34
Speaker 5: honest story to raise awareness. And I'm so grateful that
20:38
Speaker 5: that's what the farm families have thought of the story
20:40
Speaker 5: when they've read it.
20:42
Speaker 6: Well, you know, when I've heard the tide of your book,
20:45
Speaker 6: you know, land rich and cash port, it would remind
20:47
Speaker 6: me of something my dad would always say. He'd say, son,
20:50
Speaker 6: farmers are the richest paupers in the county. Basically what
20:56
Speaker 6: he was saying, we're land rich, but you know, we're
20:58
Speaker 6: cash poor. He was a saying exactly what the title
21:01
Speaker 6: of your book that farmers are the richest paupers in
21:03
Speaker 6: the county. You know, we got we got lots of assets,
21:05
Speaker 6: but we don't have any money. That's that's that's the problem.
21:08
Speaker 6: And you know that four fifth, sixth, seven, eight generations
21:12
Speaker 6: you pass that down and uh, it just you know,
21:15
Speaker 6: at some point, and a friend of mine often says this,
21:19
Speaker 6: he said, at some point, you no longer own the land.
21:23
Speaker 2: The land owns you. Yes, you've become part of It's.
21:27
Speaker 5: So so look, I mean, we got all these farm
21:29
Speaker 5: families that have this land that is worth something monetarily, absolutely,
21:33
Speaker 5: but it's worth so much more what you can do
21:35
Speaker 5: on it, what it means to you know, you got
21:38
Speaker 5: farm families trying to find a way to make it.
21:40
Speaker 5: Every year. It's getting tougher and tougher each year, and
21:43
Speaker 5: they want to hold on to it. They want to
21:44
Speaker 5: keep going. They want to help feed our country, and
21:47
Speaker 5: they want to make a living. And they're facing that
21:49
Speaker 5: day where it gets tough and tough for each cheer.
21:51
Speaker 5: They're going to have to possibly tell their kids that
21:53
Speaker 5: we can't make it if we don't sell this land.
21:55
Speaker 5: And then if they turn around and sell it, you
21:57
Speaker 5: lose everything. Else, because it's your home, it's your community,
22:00
Speaker 5: it's your heritage, you know. And so you know the
22:03
Speaker 5: people who think that the farmers because they see a
22:06
Speaker 5: good sized tractor on the road, or they see a
22:07
Speaker 5: big piece of land. You know, that's what it takes
22:10
Speaker 5: to make a living on it, and making a living
22:12
Speaker 5: on it is getting tougher and tougher every year. So
22:14
Speaker 5: sure you could sell it and put all the money
22:15
Speaker 5: in your pocket, but you lose everything, or you can
22:18
Speaker 5: try to hold on to it. And it's it's harder
22:19
Speaker 5: and harder each here if we don't do something about it.
22:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want Michael, I want you to tell Brian
22:26
Speaker 3: what she told me a couple of months ago about
22:29
Speaker 3: that Texas is now in a deficit. We can't we
22:32
Speaker 3: don't even raise enough food to feed ourselves.
22:36
Speaker 6: Well, the problem is the nation as a whole. We
22:39
Speaker 6: have an agriculture trade deficit. We've we've always been met exports.
22:43
Speaker 6: As a matter of fact, our largest export usually is agriculture goods.
22:47
Speaker 6: We you know, we were going up to feed ourselves
22:50
Speaker 6: in half the world normally, but under the last administration,
22:56
Speaker 6: our foreign Agriculture Service, my marketing service, we didn't sign
22:59
Speaker 6: one con.
23:00
Speaker 2: Track, not one none zero.
23:02
Speaker 6: So not only did we not find new customers for
23:05
Speaker 6: ourgen culture product, we lost our old ones. We had
23:08
Speaker 6: a great deal with China. We didn't hold them, you know,
23:12
Speaker 6: to the deal. We let them off the hook. So
23:16
Speaker 6: we now have a fifty billion billion dollar trade depsit.
23:20
Speaker 6: That means we're buying fifty billion dollars more food than
23:24
Speaker 6: we're exporting. So we've been working really really hard to
23:27
Speaker 6: turn that around. We made you know, my agency, Alan,
23:32
Speaker 6: we have forty eight international trade missions planned for this
23:34
Speaker 6: year about through about half of them some of them outbound,
23:37
Speaker 6: some of them inbound, but you know, about half outbound.
23:40
Speaker 2: So that's you know, twenty four countries. We'll take ten to.
23:43
Speaker 6: Thirty companies, farmers corporations with us, you know, set up
23:49
Speaker 6: meetings kind of like speed dating.
23:51
Speaker 2: You know, we get over there and go go to
23:54
Speaker 2: international trade shows, food shows, and it's working. We're getting
23:59
Speaker 2: it back.
24:00
Speaker 6: Taiwan is now buying committed to buy an extra ten
24:03
Speaker 6: billion dollars agriculture goods from US. We got six billion
24:07
Speaker 6: commitment out of Japan last fall. We got twenty five
24:11
Speaker 6: billion commitment from China on soy beans. This last week,
24:13
Speaker 6: we got another seventeen billion out of China, so we're
24:16
Speaker 6: almost back to zero. But zero's not our goal. We
24:20
Speaker 6: want to be you know, one hundred billion dollars net
24:23
Speaker 6: export of agriculture goods. So that makes it tough, and
24:26
Speaker 6: that's why we've got so many farmers you know, taking
24:30
Speaker 6: their lives that they're just no profit in it.
24:32
Speaker 2: Other than the Kalkapra operator.
24:33
Speaker 6: Right now, there's really not any crofts that's making the
24:38
Speaker 6: making the you know payments, especially after the high diesel
24:41
Speaker 6: and fertilizer prices that we're receiving right now.
24:46
Speaker 3: Brian, before you address that, the infrastructure that you have
24:51
Speaker 3: succeeded with though, isn't the same state to state, so
24:56
Speaker 3: that's we're not doing.
24:57
Speaker 5: We don't have that same level of productivity.
25:00
Speaker 3: So the poor farmers in the states that don't have
25:03
Speaker 3: the infrastructure, those the.
25:04
Speaker 4: Ones that are going down faster.
25:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's true, they don't have the resources. Now.
25:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you're so right about I mean, things that
25:14
Speaker 5: can be done in state to state that can make
25:15
Speaker 5: a difference in how that compares to the bigger picture.
25:18
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you mentioned that fifty billion dollar egg
25:21
Speaker 5: trade deficit. One of the things that I was shocked
25:25
Speaker 5: when I wrote the book and as I've talked to
25:26
Speaker 5: people across country, is you know, we don't realize that
25:29
Speaker 5: having that egg trade deficit where we're buying more food
25:32
Speaker 5: than we're selling happening alongside of the loss of farms.
25:36
Speaker 5: It almost reads like the the script of a horror movie,
25:40
Speaker 5: you know, or a thriller, where it's like, okay, we're
25:43
Speaker 5: going to take If you're going to take a country
25:45
Speaker 5: and you're going to make them more dependent on other
25:46
Speaker 5: countries for their food and wipe out their domestic food supply,
25:49
Speaker 5: that's how you'd want to take that country down, if
25:51
Speaker 5: you think about it. And so fighting to make sure
25:54
Speaker 5: that we have the ability of our farmers to make
25:56
Speaker 5: a living and get this right side up, right right
26:00
Speaker 5: means we're growing enough food to feed our country, and
26:02
Speaker 5: we're selling our access to the rest of the country
26:04
Speaker 5: to improve the price excuse me, to the rest of
26:06
Speaker 5: the world, to improve the lot of our farmers. If
26:08
Speaker 5: they can supply our food here and sell their access
26:11
Speaker 5: abroad to help their price be better, wonderful, But right
26:14
Speaker 5: now we got that upside down. We're buying our food
26:16
Speaker 5: from other countries and we are wiping out our domestic
26:21
Speaker 5: food supply. We got to have trade that's more in
26:23
Speaker 5: line with what you're talking about here, where there's opportunity
26:26
Speaker 5: for our farmers and we aren't wiping them out while
26:28
Speaker 5: becoming more and more dependent on other countries.
26:31
Speaker 6: Well, and it's you know, the problem is, it's not
26:33
Speaker 6: that we started buying a whole bunch more other food
26:35
Speaker 6: and bring it in.
26:36
Speaker 2: It's kind of the same amount we always bought. We
26:38
Speaker 2: don't you know, we don't grow.
26:40
Speaker 6: Mangoes and papayas and bananas and you know, coconuts and
26:46
Speaker 6: you know all that other stuff. It's that we weren't
26:48
Speaker 6: selling what we produced. It was stockpiling, and that's why
26:50
Speaker 6: the process got so depressed.
26:52
Speaker 2: There was oversupply.
26:53
Speaker 6: It wouldn't really if we'd kelp our customers, there wouldn't
26:56
Speaker 6: have been an oversupply. And it wasn't that we had
26:57
Speaker 6: bumper crops because we've been going through a dry actually, yeah,
27:01
Speaker 6: it's just that we weren't selling the surplus.
27:03
Speaker 2: And it was piling up on us.
27:05
Speaker 6: Based on your research in your findings, what structural reforms
27:09
Speaker 6: do we need to implement?
27:10
Speaker 2: What needs to happen?
27:12
Speaker 5: We looked at all the areas of history where we
27:14
Speaker 5: lost more farms than we needed to and tried to
27:16
Speaker 5: look at what choice did we make that we didn't
27:19
Speaker 5: have to make, or that with hindsight we do differently.
27:22
Speaker 5: And there's a couple key categories. The first one is
27:25
Speaker 5: we need American innovation to extend to all of our farms.
27:28
Speaker 5: Technology has moved agriculture forward, but one thing that we've
27:31
Speaker 5: got is we've got so much technology that is leaving
27:34
Speaker 5: our small, mid sized farms behind. We need technology that's
27:36
Speaker 5: what they call scale neutral, where you've got a tractor
27:39
Speaker 5: and our implement or whatever kind of machinery. We needed
27:42
Speaker 5: to be able to have variations where you can afford
27:44
Speaker 5: it and you can use it on a small and
27:46
Speaker 5: mid sized farm as well as a large farm. Just
27:48
Speaker 5: have technology that's available and usable by all different sizes
27:52
Speaker 5: and types of farm. A lot of our technology has
27:54
Speaker 5: been moving folks behind where that farmer can't afford to
27:56
Speaker 5: buy that tractor or get that tractor fixed, or if
27:59
Speaker 5: you can to get fixed, you know who can do
28:01
Speaker 5: it because it's a type of technology that's surpassed where
28:04
Speaker 5: he's at. So we need that technology accessible to everybody.
28:08
Speaker 5: The other big thing is we need fair markets. We
28:10
Speaker 5: need to make sure that our farmers, who are the
28:11
Speaker 5: little guy, have the ability to compete on fair markets
28:13
Speaker 5: domestically and internationally. That gets back to that trade issue, Commissioner,
28:16
Speaker 5: you're right about opening up more markets and making sure
28:20
Speaker 5: that we do with good, fair, tough trade deals where
28:22
Speaker 5: countries like China have to stick to what they commit
28:24
Speaker 5: to and that kind of thing. Third big area is
28:27
Speaker 5: focusing on consumer demand helping to rise us out of
28:32
Speaker 5: this problem. We talked about this a little bit, the
28:34
Speaker 5: idea that more people care about where the food comes
28:36
Speaker 5: from than ever. We need more and more of that.
28:38
Speaker 5: People who are willing to buy their food from farmers' markets,
28:40
Speaker 5: local butcher shops, online marketplaces, farmers down the road, whatever
28:44
Speaker 5: it is where in addition to buying off that national
28:47
Speaker 5: food supply chain, find a way to support farmers that
28:50
Speaker 5: you can get connected with directly and create more opportunities.
28:52
Speaker 5: So you got farmers whom maybe growing corn and soybeans
28:54
Speaker 5: and other things, but it also is worth it for
28:56
Speaker 5: them to raise pasture raised chickens or raise artisan tomatoes.
29:00
Speaker 5: You know, new permonal opportunity can be fueled by those
29:03
Speaker 5: consumers So if we get American innovations spreading across all farms,
29:06
Speaker 5: if we get fair markets, and we get consumer demand,
29:11
Speaker 5: create a new entrepreneur opportunity for our farmers, we can
29:13
Speaker 5: begin to change this big picture.
29:15
Speaker 3: And are you aware of a commissioner's program that's influenced
29:19
Speaker 3: the consumption of fresh food at school systems?
29:24
Speaker 2: Oh? I'm not.
29:24
Speaker 5: That sounds great though.
29:26
Speaker 6: So in Texas we run the nutrition program for the
29:31
Speaker 6: state and federal government, so we're in charge of.
29:34
Speaker 2: The school lauge school breakfast.
29:36
Speaker 6: So I instituted a farm to school program basically, and
29:42
Speaker 6: we had zero local products going into our schools when
29:44
Speaker 6: I took over as commissioner, and today our schools last
29:49
Speaker 6: year about three hundred million dollars worth of locally grown
29:51
Speaker 6: products fed fresh, cooked from scratch, you know, to our kids.
29:55
Speaker 6: So it's been a very successful program. We're kind of
29:58
Speaker 6: the model for the the nation. But it's it's it's
30:02
Speaker 6: been good. We start out farm fresh Friday, as we
30:05
Speaker 6: challenge at least on Friday, serve something local, you know,
30:08
Speaker 6: and meet the farmer Friday.
30:10
Speaker 2: Bring the farmer in.
30:11
Speaker 6: Let them, let them tell the kids how that you
30:14
Speaker 6: know tomato or steake or whatever it has got you know, hamburger,
30:18
Speaker 6: patty got it got on their plate, and where it
30:19
Speaker 6: came from, or how the milk got in the cart,
30:21
Speaker 6: and you.
30:21
Speaker 2: Know that kind of stuff.
30:23
Speaker 6: Well, you know, those what you had mentioned earlier were
30:25
Speaker 6: reconnecting people back to the farm.
30:28
Speaker 5: I was going to say, you know, I think that's
30:30
Speaker 5: so amazing because it's the kind of thing that can
30:32
Speaker 5: create that opportunity for farmers. We talk about trying to
30:35
Speaker 5: have more people care about whether the food comes from,
30:37
Speaker 5: leading to additional places for farmers to sell new types
30:41
Speaker 5: of crops. That kind of a program is exactly the
30:44
Speaker 5: sort of thing that does that. And then along the
30:46
Speaker 5: way you're, as you say, you're educating those kids so
30:49
Speaker 5: they don't think their food comes from McDonald's, are from
30:51
Speaker 5: a store. They know that it comes from a farmer,
30:53
Speaker 5: you know, and changing mindset of young people who are
30:56
Speaker 5: going to lead our country in the future is such
30:58
Speaker 5: a huge part of this.
31:00
Speaker 6: Well, and then you know, we we have we send
31:02
Speaker 6: out gardening kits. Recently we partnered with Scott's Miracle Grow
31:06
Speaker 6: and we send out something called an arrow garden, but
31:08
Speaker 6: they can actually grow vegetables in the classroom.
31:11
Speaker 2: And it's this huge hit, huge hit.
31:13
Speaker 6: We've got tremendous demand for to get out more of those,
31:17
Speaker 6: So we're we're letting the younger kids get a little
31:19
Speaker 6: dirt under the fingernails and figure out where the food
31:21
Speaker 6: comes from.
31:22
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a good program. We're very proud of it.
31:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, that doesn't hurt them any to learn that that's outstanding.
31:28
Speaker 3: Yes, at the at the end of one's career, one
31:31
Speaker 3: would hope you can stand in front of kits and
31:33
Speaker 3: say where does beef come from?
31:36
Speaker 4: And they don't say Burger came McDonald's.
31:38
Speaker 5: What a vision happened?
31:40
Speaker 3: Okay, final question for you, and it's if your great
31:44
Speaker 3: grandchildren read land Ridge Cash.
31:48
Speaker 4: For what do you hope has changed by then?
31:52
Speaker 5: Oh?
31:52
Speaker 6: Man?
31:53
Speaker 5: Uh. I hope they got farm land that they have
31:56
Speaker 5: a chance to stand on. Uh. And I hope that
32:00
Speaker 5: what has changed is that maybe they or the next
32:03
Speaker 5: generation can look forward and say, you know, there's more opportunity.
32:06
Speaker 5: There's a way for us to carry this forward. Because
32:09
Speaker 5: each generation of our family so far has seen it
32:12
Speaker 5: get more difficult. And although we have comforts, my great
32:14
Speaker 5: grandfather didn't have, and my grandfather didn't have. The reality
32:19
Speaker 5: is that there was more new opportunity for farmers one
32:22
Speaker 5: hundred years ago because of the way that the American
32:25
Speaker 5: in culture industry was expanding. So I would love it.
32:29
Speaker 5: I mean, if they are reading my book and they
32:30
Speaker 5: can think of us and they can remember us, at
32:32
Speaker 5: least we're sticking around in that way. But I would
32:34
Speaker 5: love it if they're able to say, boy, look at
32:36
Speaker 5: what our family got through, and aren't we lucky that
32:39
Speaker 5: America started looking at where its food comes from enough
32:42
Speaker 5: to change things for our farmers. That would be an incredible,
32:45
Speaker 5: an incredible thing to have happened.
32:47
Speaker 2: I guess we'll probably need to wrap up any last.
32:51
Speaker 6: Comments from you you and get in there before we
32:54
Speaker 6: sign off.
32:55
Speaker 5: The only thing I'll say is that the resilience of
32:57
Speaker 5: the American farm family is there. I know you see it, Missioner.
33:00
Speaker 5: Each day I think about my dad stepping up the
33:03
Speaker 5: age of eight. We tell us story in the book
33:05
Speaker 5: after my grandpa slipped off a corn crib, broke his back.
33:07
Speaker 5: He got back up on his feet, but not before
33:08
Speaker 5: my dad started doing the work of a man. That's
33:11
Speaker 5: a hardship for a child, but he also grew up
33:12
Speaker 5: loving it. And if he's not on the back of
33:14
Speaker 5: a tractor right now he's running to get two to
33:16
Speaker 5: one on his double replaced knees, and the beauty goes
33:20
Speaker 5: along with the hardship. And I hope people know that
33:23
Speaker 5: even though these are hard issues, it's the resilience of
33:25
Speaker 5: those farm families and the way they love their way
33:28
Speaker 5: of life that is going to pull us out of
33:30
Speaker 5: this if we just get behind them.
33:32
Speaker 6: Well, folks, that's going to do it for us today. Thanks,
33:35
Speaker 6: thanks for joining in until our next show. Remember, folks,
33:39
Speaker 6: Texas agriculture matters and eat more, beat.
34:04
Speaker 7: Be cotton Texas found across our state. Ride It's how
34:10
Speaker 7: our look is brisk, it is on our play boots.
34:14
Speaker 7: It's what we're wearing horses. If we may ride farm
34:19
Speaker 7: it is so rewarding branch and we do it rides
34:23
Speaker 7: and we.
34:25
Speaker 2: Jay sub sat. What's not is just a dena.
34:34
Speaker 8: It's not what you b say. It's no true sign.
34:42
Speaker 8: Play cares mean.
34:45
Speaker 7: It's what we'll read Godly big supplies, Oh Sweey Texas grapes,
34:52
Speaker 7: juicy and wild faith. It's our learning, grace.
34:57
Speaker 2: A gift the s free sir, this.
35:00
Speaker 7: To each other, love our cursie.
35:04
Speaker 8: And we did Chase success.
35:09
Speaker 2: Big Deal is just empty day.
35:14
Speaker 9: It's not what you PA said, but finding dru sing
35:22
Speaker 9: bat Big Cottage, Texas found across the steam right.
35:30
Speaker 7: It is Howard's up kid risk.
35:32
Speaker 5: It is out of place.