About this show:
On this week’s show…
Something like “being tough on immigration” can so easily become political capital, and, of course no one wants unfettered streams of people, unchecked, moving through one’s country’s borders. But what happens, when a hard-line policy ignores nuance, ignores affected industries and is also hard on human rights while implementing policy?
Enter this week’s show guest, Brian Reisinger, author of Land Rich Cash Poor, from a multi-generation farm, a journalist, author and ex White House agricultural policy adviser, who works on building bipartisan support for improving the lives of farmers and the stability of the food system – from access to consumer pricing.
We need to think more profoundly and go wider in our search to understand a subject, garnering more perspectives on issues before we ‘know them’. Big tech profits from polarisation and sensationalisation. I feel lucky to bring these considered, intelligent deep dives to the show with experts who can explore all aspects of an issue – not just what they want to promote or politicise.
So we talk about:
- How the farm seems to have been the way of the past, not the future and how that feels for small and medium farms (across the world)
- How the evaporation of the middle class promise affects city and rural people TOGETHER – not as adversaries.
- How immigration policy affects small/medium farms and policy often fails farms.
- How foreign and billionaire farm ownership is something to ensure more transparency over before allowing buy-ups.
- How “bigger is better” is failing us all
- How many small hands can come together to effect change to benefit the farmer and the eater.
I hope you love this conversation as much as I enjoyed hosting it.
Alexx Stuart
Founder of Low Tox Life and the Low Tox movement
Join me on Insta @lowtoxlife
Want to support the show?
Free option: Leave a 5 star review wherever you listen to Low Tox Life – thanks SO much!
Paid + Member PERKS: Join the Low Tox Club – monthly practitioner live masterclasses, a suite of low tox store discounts from around the world and the most supportive and lovely chat group on all low tox topics on the internet: Check it out and join here for just the price of a coffee per month! https://www.lowtoxlifecourses.com/offers/YzLXThRQ/checkout
***
Thank you to this month’s show sponsors for helping you make your low tox swaps easier:
@ausclimate gives you 10% off their range for the whole of 2024, with brilliant Winix Air Purifiers, the best Dehumidifiers I’ve ever used and their new energy-efficient heating range. code LOWTOXLIFE https://bit.ly/ShopAusclimate
@biofirstofficial is back + offering a big saving to celebrate their new Blemish Ban range (including Blemish Bundles) – 20% off! It’s a beautifully formulated, backed-by-research power range, to support hormonal skin changes in women (but – PSA: So good your teen might steal it as I’ve discovered!) code LOWTOXLIFE.
Be sure to join me on Instagram @lowtoxlife and tag me with your shares and AHAs of this week’s episode.
***
About Brian Reisinger
Brian Reisinger is an award-winning writer and rural policy expert who grew up on a family farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin. His book “Land Rich, Cash Poor” weaves the hidden history driving the disappearance of America’s family farms with his own family’s four-generation fight on their land from the Depression to today. Reisinger worked with his dad from the time he could walk, before entering the worlds of business journalism and public policy, then going on to work as a columnist and consultant. His writing has appeared in USA Today, PBS/Wisconsin Public Radio, Newsweek, Yahoo News, and many other publications. Reisinger’s writing has won awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, first place in the Seven Hills Literary Contest, a Solas Award, and more. He lives with his wife and young daughter, splitting time between Sacramento, Calif. — America’s “farm-to-fork capital,” near his wife’s family — and the family farm in Wisconsin.
X: @BrianJReisinger
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561679438759
Website: www.brian-reisinger.com
Booktopia: https://bit.ly/42Z2fe3
More about this month’s sponsors:
Thank you to this month’s sponsors for partnering with our show and helping you make your swaps with their special offer:
Ausclimate’s highly recommended range of WINIX Air Purifiers is the ideal solution for cleaner, healthier indoor air. Easy to use, reactive features and settings with a truly comprehensive 4-5 stages of purification, including Hospital Grade True HEPA Filtration and Winix’s unique PlasmaWave® technology. Perfect for smoke, dust, pets, viruses, bacteria, household odours, and allergies (covering a variety of allergens). Breathe easier, sleep better, and feel better. Winix; is the most complete air purifier on the market!
Offer: Ausclimate is now giving all Low Tox Life followers an EXTRA 10% OFF their already discounted prices. Simply enter the discount code of LOWTOXLIFE on check out via: https://www.ausclimate.com.au/
This discount can also be redeemed for over-the-phone orders verbally.
Website: www.ausclimate.com.au
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Ausclimate
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ausclimate
About Bio-First?
Genuine, natural products that actually work. Non-toxic skin care products, specifically formulated to help with a wide range of skin issues: skin prone to Eczema, Psoriasis, Acne or Blemishes, Rosacea, chronic skin distress and visible upset. Hundreds of real customer reviews for all types of use cases.
The No1 thing you’ll see in a sea of five-star reviews on their website is this:
“I had tried so many creams, medications, diets, cleaning products in the house… we tried everything to address our eczema… finally, something that works.” I’ve heard from lots of low tox community members, too. So good. Skin challenges can really bring you down and cause so much stress and pain, I get it.
20% off Blemish Ban range, including Blemish Ban bundles with your code, LOWTOXLIFE and if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.
Alexx x
***
Title show track, by LIOR.
Love the podcast music? You will hear excerpts from Lior’s track “Caught Up” – go check it out on iTunes or Spotify if you want to hear the whole song or album, Scattered Reflections. Co-written with Cameron Deyell, it’s a great song and I love the reflective energy of it – perfect for the show, right? Enjoy. Lior is always touring, so do check out his website. It is wonderful to hear him sing live, trust me.
Low Tox Club – The place to bring your low tox life to life.
Want to join a community of like minds and enjoy all the perks of being in the Low Tox Life inner circle such as an online membership platform, 50% off all our Low Tox courses, an awesome chat group, my monthly Q&A, and special guest star interviews for just $49AUD ($29USD/28EUR/23pounds) per YEAR? We have created a special place and set of resources to help you achieve your goals and it’s a wonderful place to be – MORE DETAILS AND REGISTRATION HERE.
***
If you would love reading like me or you just simply want to go through the full transcript, you can check below.
[Alexx Stuart] (0:00 – 10:16)All eaters deserve access to nutritious and local food and all farmers deserve to prosper, who are doing the right thing by people and planet and today that is what we’re talking about with Brian. Hello and welcome to the Low Tox Life podcast. I’m Alexx Stuart, your host, founder of the Low Tox Movement and here is show 423 where we are bridging divides and carving a new path for small and medium-sized farms in the wake of a lot of policies over the past decade from both sides of the political spectrum that have threatened farms.
We talk today with Brian Reisinger who is the son of a farmer, a journalist, an ex-White House Capitol Hill policymaker and he has worked across, more and more actually as he said, he’s worked more and more towards bipartisan conversations that help us drive farm ownership and prosperity forward for the better of everybody and I just really love this kind of conversation where it is not about cult leadership and following gurus with empty promises, it is actually about who is on the ground, what do they need, what are the good ideas that we can summon, how can we rally local elected officials to actually start moving needles forward and we talk today about hardline immigration policy and how the black and white approach actually can threaten farm ownership, especially small and medium farm ownership and while of course we do not want a whole bunch of people unfettered coming through our country borders no matter what country we are, at the same time we have to explore rather than going all in on something, what is this going to do to affect some of the things that also matter to us. It’s really, really important that we all become much better, bigger, deeper thinkers. Social media is killing it for everybody people, if that is where most people are getting their news from, most people aren’t even listening to whole podcasts anymore, they’re just watching the tiny clip that’s going to get the most amount of reaction from the polarisation is profitable landscape that is big tech and not going any deeper than that and we have to as this community rally together for deep, tough thinking if we really want to have comments about things and explore things and hold space for each other in our political differences while also recognising that if we find where we overlap we can actually move forward.
That is what I do and that is why I don’t speak about politics much online because I know that when I speak to show guests where we can explore, we can see each other’s facial expressions, we can hear each other’s pain, we can dive into different areas that either of us might not yet have considered before, we are going to have a productive conversation. I can see it with my friends that I have some disagreements with politically and might vote differently too, we can have amazing conversations in person but if my friend was all of a sudden anonymous and we were online we might not be able to have the same, in fact I can see that not many people can have honest conversations in multi-perspective thinking online because the entire model has skewed us all against each other and made us choose camps and it’s awful and so I hope from this conversation you can see what it looks like to go, oh wow, okay, these two people know a lot about what they’re talking about. One of them, Brian in this case, is a specialist and has lived experience in this space and look at the city chick and the farm boy overlapping in ways we didn’t even realise we would until we started talking and you can see us both almost cry at one point.
I literally had tears down my face twice in this episode and Brian once, so I just want more like this, more of the same please, this is the kind of stuff that makes me feel like we can move forward through really polarised times and I can’t wait to hear what you guys have to think about this. Now, Brian also wrote a book, Land Rich Cash Poor, I urge everybody to read it, it’s very, very well written and interesting and unpacks a lot of the issues and a lot of the failings of policy from, in the US’s case as a two-party system, from both sides of the political divide and how can we look at that in Australia? I’ve had the wonderful Tammy Jonas PhD, a local farmer and activist who works with politicians to get policy brought to tables and have discussions that are going to benefit small holder farmers, localised farming, these are the kinds of people I want to talk to when it comes to health and access and equitability of land stewardship and farming because they’re actually doing it, right?
They’re not some, you know, person on the internet talking about things with very little substance underneath once you start digging, so I hope you enjoy what Brian has to say today and read his book. Now, of course, we can’t put this show on every week without our wonderful podcast sponsors, we have the, I love these guys, Bio First are amazing, they’re a local Australian family business but this offer is international and they have just launched the new Blemish Band Range, which is a toner and gel as a duo or you can use either or, the gel is fantastic, I’ve used that on a little ovulation pimple that I had a couple of months ago but I’ve actually then since had a couple of months of nothing, so lo and behold when they disappeared out of my bathroom, the Blemish Band toner and gel were found in my 15 and a half year old teenager’s bathroom, despite the fact that Dr Jude created this particular range for women and the hormonal changes we experience in life through pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, menopause, I chose not to share that focus with my son so he wouldn’t be mortified, mind you, he’s a good dude, he’s definitely a women’s ally, that’s for sure, but I just thought he’d go, oh cringe mum, so I didn’t tell him but I’m just letting you know that he’s found it very effective, but yes, so hormone changes, shifts in stress, sleep and as they pertain to hormones can wreak havoc on our skin, anyone who’s been there knows, I was there a few years ago myself as perimenopause started to kick in and it just feels awful to be transported back to this place where you don’t know how to control your skin again, I remember saying to my husband, I was like what, I thought I was done with this in my teens and here we are again, so I’m thrilled that the Blemish Band range is here, 20% off with the code LOTOXLIFE, also works not just on the individual products, the toner and the gel from the range, but on the bundles and one bundle also includes the Manuka Skin Saver which is definitely in my top 10 LOTOX products of all time, it is incredibly healing, soothing, when your skin is feeling angry, a little bit hivy, when it’s sunburnt accidentally, Manuka Skin Saver is brilliant, it’s brilliant for people who’ve been through radiotherapy and they’re treating their skin and soothing it and healing it after those treatments, as well as a beautiful light healing moisturizer for people who experience acne, so 20% off LOTOXLIFE is your code, get amongst it, the Blemish Band range and the Blemish Band bundles, enjoy and also of course ongoing our major podcast partner is Oz Climate and this one is just for the Aussies, 10% off LOTOXLIFE again is your code and they have everything now, my gosh their range has exploded, so you now have that off the air circulators which are better than fans by the way, if you’ve never heard of these they’re incredible, really great for moving air through if you live in a particularly still air kind of climate or heavy thick humid air, they have their dehumidifiers, the Winix air purifiers and the heating range as we now head towards autumn, enjoy those sponsor offers and now let’s talk about a big problem, how we can save our small and medium family farms, enjoy the show. Hello Brian, how are you? I’m great, it’s good to be with you.
Before we unpack your story, there was a line at the start of your book Land Rich Cash Poor, back when family farming was the future not the past and it just like jumped out, like I get goosebumps even thinking of it now when I read it and with everything going on now it actually makes me almost well up, so I’m sorry but it was such a powerful line for me and I want you to speak to that first.
[Brian Reisinger] (10:16 – 11:57)Yeah, well I really appreciate it and it’s always interesting to hear what resonates with people and you picked out something that resonates really deeply with me now, I wrote the book and so maybe people would say well wouldn’t every line resonate? Sure, but you picked something that was really a pivotal thing because I felt like we lived it from my dad’s generation to mine, when I think about my dad working to pass the farm on to our generation, my sister’s working to take over as anybody who reads the book knows and that generation of that kind of 70s and 80s generation in the 90s, 2000s, we’ve been losing farms for a long time and a lot of things have been happening before that, but that really encapsulates what happened in the time that my dad’s generation tried to pass the torch to my generation because we went from this place where although farms have been facing challenges for a long time and have been disappearing for a long time, it was still a building block for the future, like I grew up, I was lucky to grow up the middle class living, I worked through college, newspapers, which doesn’t pay all that much even when it’s your full-time job, so when you’re a part-time journalist in college, but I was able to work and I helped pay my way through college and also my parents helped and so I was the first generation in my dad’s family that was able to go to college and my dad helped pay for that and at the same time, a farm our size couldn’t do that for a family anymore, it’s a farm our size is no longer full-time income, size is now supplemental income where you got people working two, three jobs, one of which is keeping the farm going on the side and so we saw that slip away. [Alexx Stuart] (11:57 – 12:53)
I can’t agree more, yeah, in the city it’s the same, like you could have a person, one of the parents working a good job and the kids could go to even private schools if you wanted to, I grew up middle class as well and we could go and visit my family every single year, we’re French on my mum’s side and now my husband and I both have to have high-paying jobs to send one child, whereas just one generation ago, one parent could do that for two children and that is how fast the middle class is evaporating and I just really don’t think we are getting the memo on what to do about it, there’s a lot of noise but there’s not much action and I feel like we’ve got a May 68 kind of brewing again because people are starting to get that we actually have to make the right kind of noise. [Brian Reisinger] (12:53 – 13:34)
Yeah, you know, and the thing is when it, I mean there are so many walks of life where working families, farmers, small business owners, people of all kinds of different backgrounds, their dollar doesn’t get them what it used to, you know, what they do for a vocation for a living doesn’t accomplish for their family what it used to and in the case of farms, there’s a unique additional element that goes back to your original premise here, which is as we hollow out rural America, as we take families that were once able to be middle-class full-time farm families and have them working two, three jobs, as we do that we are also affecting the food supply of every single person, whether they set foot in a barn or not. [Alexx Stuart] (13:34 – 13:40)
Yes, so can you unpack exactly how that’s affecting the food system and what the risks are? [Brian Reisinger] (13:40 – 15:54)
Yeah, so at this point, the loss of farms in the United States began in the 1920s around the depression and it never stopped. That’s the thing that’s crazy, even during good times, you know, it never stopped and sometimes it was even faster decline during the good times because of industry consolidation and all kinds of other things and so we’ve lost 45,000 farms per year on average for the past century, rain or shine, good economic times, bad economic times, 45,000 a year on average and what that means is that we went from a world where we had farms all around us and people could buy food locally, regionally, nationally and there were different choices for consumers and farmers had a lot of different types of markets and it was an entrepreneurial thing to a world where we have this very large national supply chain.
It really supplies, in some ways, modern miracles, food from any corner of the globe at any time of year, right, oranges in December in Wisconsin, but at the same time, there’s a lot of highly processed food, there’s a lot of food that has been needlessly manipulated and there aren’t as many local and regional or specialty food sources there once were, partially because our farms are disappearing and so we have the large integrated industries, highly concentrated industries that are supplying our food and that means that during times of crisis, like during COVID, our supply chains are easily disrupted. We’re seeing this with bird food right now as well where the price of eggs is through the roof and the availability of eggs and chicken is constricted and there’s many reasons for that, but one of the reasons is we have these really highly integrated industries that you could have one big distribution center go down, whether you like government or private sector or big business, small business, whatever you think of all those issues, the fact that we could have one big distribution center go down and that can have a huge impact on the supply of our food.
It’s supply chain vulnerability and so that’s one of the reasons that our food is so much more expensive and why it increased far faster than the rate of inflation. It’s one of the reasons that we have challenges with access to fresh food and healthy food. It’s one of the reasons we have real food security issues all across the country, food deserts, including in places where they could grow a lot of food if we had local farms still surviving to do it and so it affects the cost, the health and the security of our food to be wiping out our farms at such rapid pace for so long.
[Alexx Stuart] (15:55 – 16:21)Oh gosh, there is just so much to unpack there. I don’t even know where to start. Okay, so are you saying that the bigger and more consolidated farms got in terms of like big ag, the less secure our food system, even though it would have us believe that it would be, the bigger the better, like the saying goes? [Brian Reisinger] (16:22 – 17:32)
That is what I’m saying, but I’m also saying it goes beyond farms and what I mean by that is this is a systemic issue across the economy. Every industry is dominant, right? And so you’ve got the food industry keeping up with the rest of the American economy.
You got the ag industry and agribusiness keeping up with the food industry. You got the farmers keeping up with the agribusiness and food industry. So the farmers, when people, one of the focus on quote unquote factory farms, they have to account for the fact that those are in many cases family farms that got bigger trying to do the same thing every other farmer is trying to do, which is make it.
And some farms got bigger and some farms got out and others have been squeezed or wiped out. And so the big farms got that way trying to keep up with agribusiness, trying to keep up with food industry, trying to keep up with the rest of the American economy. So it’s keeping up with the Joneses and the supply chain vulnerability, that number one allows for some nuance around our discussion around farms, what’s good, what’s bad, how do we, it’s complicated.
We wrestle with it. And then also it gets to a deeper issue where it’s not only about having fewer larger farms, but it’s also about food processing facilities. It’s about distribution centers.
It’s about that whole chain, which is affected by this systemic issue.
[Alexx Stuart] (17:33 – 18:13)So as the middle class has been hollowed out and we kind of started talking about a city version and a rural version, I’m really glad that we’re doing that because I think it just speaks to how, as you said, across the economy, this is playing out. So do we have a situation where we can re-empower that middle piece? Because I feel like in farming conversations, we have the small holder chat and we have the big ag chat, everything in the middle.
It’s like that’s evaporating even more from what you’re saying. So what do we do there?
[Brian Reisinger] (18:13 – 19:50)We can do something about it. You’re absolutely right. The hollowing out of the middle was one of the biggest losses.
It went from the part of our agriculture industry that was powering our food economy to the part that was most decimated. And many of those small farms that you’re talking about are really, really, really small. They’re kind of a different model.
Many of them are some of those mid-sized farms or small farms that were similar to those that got wiped out over the past several decades. And they’re still holding on. And the way that they’re holding on is, again, by working two to three jobs.
You’ve got people working construction sites or pulling factory shifts and operating a farm. And here’s the amazing thing. Although we’ve lost 70% of our farms in the past century, since the disappearing American farmer, that crisis was born, we’ve still got nearly 2 million farms.
And this shocks people. In the United States, we have nearly 2 million farms left, and 88% of them are small farms. And people say, well, how can that be?
Well, it’s because they are working multiple jobs. It’s no longer full-time income. And the people who tried to hold on to it being full-time income were wiped out, or they had to get bigger.
But so many people are like, well, I’m going to keep on farming even if it doesn’t pay my whole way. And they might get 15% or 20% of their income working their land. And then they also are working in a factory, or carpentry, or on concrete, or whatever they’re doing.
Imagine we have nearly 2 million farms families holding on, continuing to farm, even though we’ve made it not work for them. Imagine what they could accomplish if we made it work. Imagine if we’re growing entrepreneurial small businesses again.
What could they accomplish for our entire global food supply chain?
[Alexx Stuart] (19:51 – 20:04)And so how do we organize at a grassroots level to make this, let’s make the system work for them, happen? How do we get that off the ground? [Brian Reisinger] (20:05 – 21:30)
Yeah. In my mind, we need to have an organizing principle that cuts through right and left, and cuts through takeover industry, and all these different things. And the organizing principle is, what are you doing to create new entrepreneurial opportunity for our farmers?
So it’s very easy to get a politician from one political persuasion or another to raise their hand when you say, do you support the farmer? What do you do to support the farmer? And they’ll give you a vote they’ve taken, or a program they supported, or whatever the case may be.
But when you ask someone, ask a policymaker, what are you doing to create new entrepreneurial opportunity for our farmers? That requires a deeper level of thought, that requires a more focused understanding of what’s going on on the ground in our farms, and how that affects our food supply. And so we really need to be focused around that.
And that allows us to have people who are various different political persuasions come together around this issue. Because some of those people might think that government action is an important part. Some of those people might think that we need to get government out of the way, and enable more private sector innovation.
You can actually have all of those things in a mix of those different types of solutions, if you’re organized not by, I want more government or less government, or I want bigger farms or smaller farms, but I want more entrepreneurial opportunity for our farms. That can be something that can unify a lot of people from a lot of different viewpoints and a lot of different debates to move us forward.
[Alexx Stuart] (21:31 – 22:12)Absolutely. And one of the things I saw that your wonderful assistant sent through that you were passionate about people understanding more was the ICE issue and immigrants and the role that they play in the food system. Can you talk to me, I know you have a Republican background, and I think this is why I was like, oh, yes, like a multi perspective thinker.
I can’t wait to chat to this guy, because we need more of us to carve a unifying path forward on these massive issues that affect us all. Could you speak about what you’ve seen play out and what concerns you have in that space?
[Brian Reisinger] (22:12 – 24:29)Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll just say, when I look at these issues, and when I decided to write the book, you know, I decided I was going to let the facts fall where they may. And that situation that farmers are in is the realities of farming are so difficult and complicated and affected by so many things that there is that no one side’s ideology fits everything that the farmer needs, you know, and I always sort of knew that.
But I found it really important as I got through the book to be able to be willing to call balls and strikes on people from any political persuasion, both political parties, just go issue by issue and look at the policies. Yes. That’s what I try to do.
I try to give a nonpartisan perspective to it from the standpoint of like, neither major political party in America has really been able to solve this issue of how do we help our farms. And in fact, both parties, including the Republican Party, have made mistakes for decades going back. And we could get in all kinds of stories of that that we uncovered in the book.
But in any case, when it comes to immigration, it is one of many examples of an issue where farmers are subject to crosscutting forces. What I mean by that is just being straightforward about this from different perspectives. There are a lot of farmers and a lot of people who live in rural America who do find it important to have a secure border.
And there are elements of the Republican platform that may appeal to them as a result of that, whether they agree with all of it or not, and whether people agree with that or happy about that or not. That is something that is a common viewpoint. It’s also true that farmers very much work with immigrant labor and in many cases have deep personal relationships with a lot of people who work for them.
Sometimes it’s with people who they don’t necessarily know or have a way of knowing what their status may be, because there’s an entire industry that is designed to help people be able to be here and work. And sometimes your average small farmer isn’t really aware of the circumstances or doesn’t know. Or maybe they know and really value their relationships with the immigrant families that they work with, and they do something a lot of us do in this world.
They don’t necessarily connect that with the people that they hear about on the national news.
[Alexx Stuart] (24:30 – 24:33)Like the criminals pouring in and those sorts of messages. [Brian Reisinger] (24:34 – 25:32)
We all have ways that we don’t necessarily connect issues to realities in our lives. And so that’s why I say that it’s a very complicated picture, because there are a lot of farmers who would say, yeah, we do need to secure our border. But also there are a lot of farmers who would say, but we’ve got a workforce here that’s important.
And I know this person that’s worked for me, and they’re hard working. They’re here to advance their family, and they’re helping me and my family able to continue feeding the country. And so those things are true all at once.
And I think what we need to recognize as we’re navigating this time is that about half of the farm labor in America, and I’m sure it’s the case in various other countries to a degree as well, but half the farm labor in America is immigrant labor. And so if we’re going to have changes to our immigration policies and changes to enforcement, we have to recognize that if we execute that the wrong way, it will have a major impact on agriculture.
[Alexx Stuart] (25:32 – 25:47)And on human rights in a lot of ways. Yeah. Wow.
Okay. And so what happens if all of those immigrants are all of a sudden taken off the farms?
[Brian Reisinger] (25:48 – 26:12)Yeah. So let’s say that scenario occurs and suddenly that labor is gone. We’ll have farms that can’t make it because they literally…
Now, let me just say this. There are large farms that have large amounts of immigrant labor that might have the money temporarily for a time to ship in other labor. A bit of cash flow.
Yeah.
[Alexx Stuart] (26:12 – 26:15)That’s not a luxury afforded to all farms. [Brian Reisinger] (26:16 – 27:12)
No, it’s not. Exactly. And the farm I grew up on, we didn’t have immigrant labor, but there are farms that are not much bigger than ours that did.
And many farms that would be considered medium or small size family farms that still do have immigrant labor. Those places can’t just swap in other labor. In many cases, they’re working alongside of the immigrant laborers or work with them.
It’s the owner and it’s his son or daughter working. And then they’ve also got two or three employees who are helping and they’re still a very small business and they’re working alongside their labor. But if suddenly their labor force is gone, they don’t have anywhere they’re going to get that from.
If they could get it from somewhere, it’d be way more expensive to a level that they couldn’t afford. And so the reality is that there’s a lot of farms that would cease operation. Other farms, if they were able to figure out a way to do it and increase the cost of their production.
And so this affects, ultimately that fans out to our whole food supply in terms of the availability, the ability of American agriculture to keep moving forward and feeding us.
[Alexx Stuart] (27:13 – 27:19)And in the cessation of operation of those farms, who wins? [Brian Reisinger] (27:20 – 28:11)
Well, that’s a great question. And I honestly, my honest argument would be no one. And that includes some of the additional beneficiaries that people would think would be beneficiaries of these things.
I actually think that we’re reaching a point, and this is an argument that I make to people at all parts of our ag and food industries. I think we’re reaching a point where we have diminishing returns on bigger being better. And we’ve been there for a long time, but even the point that it impacts some of the larger players in other industries.
I think there’s value for a food processing company to be able to have farms of all sizes and types to be able to have be suppliers to them because their own supply chains get more vulnerable. If one gets too big to fail, I mean, that truly is an existential problem for any player in any industry of any size related to our food supply.
[Alexx Stuart] (28:11 – 28:29)A hundred percent. And in the too big to fail, you also have the concentration of wealth piece. And with, you know, unfettered donation money flowing to any candidate who wants to accept it in a political race that raises so many massive ethical questions. [Brian Reisinger] (28:29 – 30:21)
Yeah. You know, when I think about this too, I mean, I, America had such a proud and still has such a proud tradition of small land ownership, entrepreneurship. And, you know, I think about this, if I put on the political lens hat and really think about it from that perspective, you know, for me, I grew up on a, I grew up a farmer’s son.
I grew up in a world where neither party really had the answers for us. I worked for 10 years in journalism and I worked for five years in politics on Capitol Hill and on other parts of the country. And then since then for the last six years, I’ve worked in bipartisan, nonpartisan kind of issue based consulting and on my own writing.
And as I think about all of that, I spent a period of time in the Republican party focused on, you know, what policy solutions can this particular party bring to some of the issues faced by people like where I’m from. And what I found is that, you know, the Republican party as well as the democratic party are imperfect on these issues. And, but one thing that I think is really interesting is that like people of most political persuasions actually really do find it important to have small entrepreneurship, main small businesses, people who can, you know, if you save up a little bit of money and you have a good idea and you’re willing to work hard, you can start your own business.
And there are different answers for how to protect that or get back to that from both the right and the left, but it’s something that really people care about. And I think a lot of people, whether they’re farm families or small business owners in other industries or working families in a wide range of industries that, you know, they’re working for the local hospital and they’d love to be able to go out and start their own company, you know, give an in-home care, you know, whatever the case may be. There are so many people of so many persuasions that wish there was more economic agency for people to be able to start another building block in our economy, go start that small business.
And so many of them, whether they’re farms or others are being wiped out or stifled by a range of policies from the right and the left that have failed to understand what it takes to have a little guy able to make it in the economy.
[Alexx Stuart] (30:22 – 32:54)A hundred percent. I had a boss once who said, just ask yourself why, why, why, why 10 times before you make any conclusion on anything. And, and it was just the best advice I would, I would recommend everybody did this at these crazy polarized times, because it helps you realize it’s not about the label you’ve decided to jump ship for on your single issue or, you know, all the things that make people treat political leaders like gods and gurus very unjustly.
Might I add, they’re just humans like the rest of us. And, you know, fallible ones at that. And I think with this, these conversations, I keep coming back to unfettered corporate money influencing public service.
Like it just, for me, it just keeps going back to this very dark, hazy area. Like we have a lot of, you can see on, there are some fantastic websites. I’ve just lost the name of the one I refer to often on donations and where they go to.
Like, you know, the other day I was looking at PFAS, because I was really interested in some of the rollbacks on clean water that have just happened this last month. And I was like, hang on, what, can’t we at least all agree that clean water is like, and it’s really interesting because this particular administration’s gone all in on health in one sense. And so I was like, well, where has that come from?
And then you see petroleum industry donations, $6 to the one Republican to Democrat. And I’m like, that’s interesting. So, you know, I think we don’t realize how much influence corporates and now private billionaires, as we’ve seen, we see it here too, by the way, it’s like, it’s quite ugly, are really owning the political discourse and making a climate for even less agency of grassroots movement.
We almost feel less empowered, I think, because we think, oh, well, I don’t have $200 billion. So what can I do? You know, like it’s become so gross that we feel so distant from action and influence.
And I think that’s actually hurting our ability to realize there’s still a heck ton more of us who believe in coming together for where we overlap, not our differences. And we need to believe we can organize and be heard.
[Brian Reisinger] (32:55 – 34:32)Well, and when I think about, you know, I could look at foreign policy from both the right and the left and point to areas where it just isn’t, hasn’t been responsive to what people really want. And so one good example is like on the right. You can believe in low taxes and less regulation, and it doesn’t have to mean that you believe in antitrust policy that is so lax that companies can get so big they can restrict their own competition.
Because if you want to be charitable to conservatives, you can see what they believe in competition. And they believe that lower tax, less regulation puts more money in the pocket of that economic actor and able to pursue their own destiny. But that doesn’t mean that you have to believe in such lax antitrust enforcement that a company can get so big that it can squeeze out its own competition.
That’s not competitive, right? And on the left, you know, you can look at policies of the Democratic Party and programs that were designed for one reason or another. And maybe they even had small farms in mind.
But over time, the programs became so large and became so layered on top of one another that the only folks who can really influence the implementation of those policies and navigate it are the folks who have the money and the lobbyists and the tax accountants and the lawyers to navigate. So many of the regulations or government programs, even when they’re designed to help small farms, end up hurting small farms because they can’t afford it. It’s too complicated.
Yeah. And so you can look at both. And the examples are endless.
A hundred percent. All these ways that the way we’re developing our policies aren’t responsive to the needs of the folks on the ground because of one barrier to that or another.
[Alexx Stuart] (34:33 – 34:56)On top of that, I want to ask you a question about foreign farm ownership. And to a certain extent, what you think about, you know, what we see, like the Bill Gates situation where there’s a lot of private farm ownership in the billionaire class now. What are these foreign farm and hyper-wealthy ownerships doing to the farming landscape? [Brian Reisinger] (34:57 – 35:01)
Great question. I’ll take the foreign part first and then… Okay.
Sorry.
[Alexx Stuart] (35:02 – 35:04)Yeah. It’s a big one. It’s like a three-day seminar kind of question. [Brian Reisinger] (35:04 – 38:03)
Yeah, totally. But it’s all related. There’s different internals to it.
So on the issue of foreign ownership, there are farmers and industries here in America that will say that friendly investment from foreign allies can be an important, helpful source of capital in the agriculture industry, just like it could be for any industry. There are other farmers who would never dream of having anyone from another country own a part of their land. That is an individual landowner decision.
But the issue of foreign adversaries purchasing American farmland is a deeply problematic one. And the amount of ownership of farmland went up by about 15% in just two years. The amount of ownership of American farmland by the Chinese is north of 300,000 acres.
These are still relatively speaking small portions of American farmland, but it is increasing so rapidly that it’s a real concern. Now we have an issue of who’s an adversary anymore happening. Yeah, that’s true too.
That’s true too. It’s constantly changing in that way. So I think there are very legitimate conversations around how do we make sure that the Chinas and the Irans and those that are maybe pretty consistent foreign adversaries aren’t able to purchase American farmland.
And then there’s also concern about some of that farmland being purchased near military installations. So not only is it the land- It’s slightly problematic. Not only is it the farmland that is our food supply, but it is also military installations and other things.
And so the question I think around the policy debate on that is how do we limit that kind of hostile land ownership without shutting off the spigot of legitimate investment from friendly countries and the ability of landowners to make their own individual decisions. That’s the debate that is being kind of roiled within American agriculture right now. On the issue of Bill Gates and others owning farmland, I will say that, again, it’s a small amount, but if he isn’t the biggest, he’s becoming the biggest single landowner.
And look, if that land is going to be eventually moved in a direction where we can have many small landowners owning it again and working it from the ground up with regenerative agriculture, that would be a wonderful thing. If that land is going to be held by wealthy people who then, if they ever get rid of it, it’s to move it to other wealthy people, and it’s essentially going to be a tax haven or other things like that. And it’s going to be held by people who don’t believe in the concept of having good, natural, homegrown domestic food supply, we’re going to have a really big problem.
I mean, at the end of the day, I like to say to people, whether they are vegetarian or vegan, whether they’re meat eaters, whatever they are, we can all agree that what’s natural and what’s grown out of the ground is good for us. And what’s grown in a lab might not be.
[Alexx Stuart] (38:04 – 38:18)I would like to hope we can come together there. I agree. My second book was literally about, I don’t care how you eat, but these three things we know for sure, let’s work on it, because we’ve got to come together on what’s basically true for everyone. [Brian Reisinger] (38:19 – 38:56)
We have to, but if we have people who are owning American farmland increasingly, who don’t believe in the notion of American agriculture, it’s going to be very, very problematic. And there’s a lot of folks, for instance, on the environmental front, a lot of people who care about our environment as well, they should, who, you know, you can find all kinds of really environmentally sustainable foods that were not grown naturally in the ground that comes at the expense of natural and fresh. And so we need to find a way to have agriculture and environmentalism be moving in the same direction again in this country.
That’s one of the problems, I think.
[Alexx Stuart] (38:56 – 40:28)Yes. It has absolutely created a very strange divide for me. And I often think culturally, farmers get stuck in the middle.
I was speaking to the wonderful journalist, author, Stephanie Anderson, recently on the show, who wrote that beautiful piece on women in the regen ag movement and what they’re doing to restore local food systems. And it was such a like, oh, thank gosh, this is happening out there. It was a real story of hope.
But she was, we were talking about how farmers get stuck in the middle, because climate is changing. We are getting rain bombs instead of steady rain. Then we have the issue of topsoil being hard often and then runoff and floods instead of soaking through and good water systems.
Like, so there’s that part. But then there is this entrenched view that small government, less red tape, good for farmer. But because that’s now gotten complicated and climate change discussions have been corporatized, the farmers kind of stuck in the middle, pretty confused about who to root for now.
Are you seeing that like, because I feel like on socials we see very definitive, like, you know, I’ve put my stake here and this is what I believe, and I’m just going to fight people online who say anything other than that. You don’t see multi-perspective chat online. Are you seeing multi-perspective chat on the ground?
[Brian Reisinger] (40:28 – 41:28)I am when you have a conversation with someone that starts from a different spot. So many times, I think what we see online is people may or may not be expressing their entirety of their viewpoint. What they’re expressing is their reaction to someone else.
It can happen in real life for sure, but there’s a lot more nuance and I’ll just speak to the farming perspective. Yeah, please. So often farm families will end up feeling that the effort to address environmental concerns ends up being at their own expense.
The same thing has happened throughout history with coal miners and like all kinds of other people. Now, the amazing thing is farming does not have to be tied to pollution in the same way that mining was, right? But the dynamic is similar where it feels like a way of life is under attack when there are solutions to environmental concerns that do increase the cost of operating for a small family farm.
[Alexx Stuart] (41:29 – 41:32)Without any kind of just transitional support either. [Brian Reisinger] (41:32 – 42:44)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and like when we hear about like, well, we need to eliminate all cows and you know what I mean? Some of this stuff like really, and even though that’s not necessarily what the everybody who wants to address the environment is saying, the point is people begin reacting to the most extreme version of the opposing point.
And so there are a lot of farmers who are worried about their way of life getting made even more expensive and being wiped out even more egregiously than it already has. And it gets in the way of having a real conversation about the environment because I always say, and this is true, if you start a conversation with a farmer and someone who cares about the environment about clean water or about healthy soil, you could have a really interesting conversation. Nobody cares more about the soil and the water than a farmer.
You can have an interesting conversation on how to do that. And there are a lot of farmers who are open to and are planting cover crops and different types of things that can help with that. So if we start with having that conversation about the realities on the ground, you can have a much more nuanced conversation.
And they may find at the end that they agree on most things or they may find, you know what, we disagree on this particular solution to the climate issue. But boy, meantime, we agreed on all this other stuff. Meantime, let’s get to work on that.
[Alexx Stuart] (42:44 – 42:50)Yes. Well, the problem is, is because we’re not agreeing perfectly, we’re not doing anything. [Brian Reisinger] (42:50 – 43:07)
Right. Right. Exactly.
Exactly. So yeah, I mean, you know, people who farm and people who care about our environment could do a ton of great work on soil health. You know, there’s really practical work that doesn’t have to have a political tinge to it from the left or the right that we could be doing together.
[Alexx Stuart] (43:08 – 43:17)Yes. And so can you give us a little behind the scenes look see at conversations of hope that are happening in that area? [Brian Reisinger] (43:18 – 45:01)
Yeah. So there are a lot of conversations about in American agriculture, medium and small sized farms that we’re sort of having to keep up with that have been for a very long time using pesticides, herbicides, some of it normal run of the mill stuff that wouldn’t freak anybody out. Some of it stuff that’s increasingly on the end of the spectrum used by industrial agriculture just because they had to do something to try to keep up with yields and they couldn’t get bigger or they were getting a little bigger, but, you know, they weren’t becoming a mega farm and they had to do something to be able to continue to get the kind of yields and grow the kinds of crops that the bigger farms could. So they’re getting squeezed in that direction. A lot of those farms are also now having conversations about like, hey, you know, what kind of organic type materials can be used on our land instead?
Where can we use, like a good example is like in Wisconsin, whey from cheese factories. So the cheese factories buy the milk and one of the products they have of the cheese they produce, and we have a proud tradition of all kinds of small artisan cheese makers all over the state, is whey. And that whey can be used to turn around and fertilize fields.
And that’s a much more natural product, right? And so there are farmers who are looking at doing that. We’ve done that on our farm.
There are farmers that are interested in looking at cover crops. There’s a lot of really good conversations around how can you plant tree lines and other things that can restore soil health. So all those things are happening, but they’re not happening as part of a political conversation.
They’re happening as part of a practical, where’s a new source of fertilizer? Where’s a new practice here? Something that will help with, it has to help with the yield and the productivity of the land, as well as the sustainability of the land.
There’s a lot of great conversations going on around that.
[Alexx Stuart] (45:02 – 45:14)Oh, fantastic. And do you feel like if those conversations get nurtured and grow, that organizing and advocacy and activism is kind of the next step along from there? [Brian Reisinger] (45:15 – 46:04)
Yeah, I think so. And I think that in the case of the United States, at least, there’s also real value in having what I’ve called a bipartisan moonshot on family farms. And that is to say, let’s look at all of the government programs that we have, which ones are working, which ones are not.
Those that aren’t, let’s reform them or get rid of them. Those that are, let’s build upon them. And it’s such a massive tangled morass that what ends up happening is we legitimately have farmers who are sitting here wondering why the assistance never came and taxpayers who are saying, well, where’s my money going?
And both those things are true. And so I think we need to be able to cut through issues like that to get people from different walks of life able to get behind something. Because right now there are just so many people that think the farmers are doing great and they’re not.
[Alexx Stuart] (46:05 – 47:10)They’re really not. Yeah. And so you mentioned the word bipartisan and something I remember growing up with as a little girl was like it was big news when someone crossed the line and came together and formed a task force.
We see so much less crossing the aisle now. It’s almost like it’s so frowned upon. You are then shamed by your party.
I’ve seen that here in Australia. We’ve had prime ministers go down for thinking differently to the party line, wanting to try and carve something a little bit more overlappy out to bring people together. It’s almost like politics has forgotten how to function crossing the aisle.
Do you have any thoughts on that? I know you speak about it a little in the book, and I think it’s really important for regular people, because we’ve been pitched against each other and everyone’s getting their news from socials, to have these chats to explain how we can rebuild that and why it’s important to.
[Brian Reisinger] (47:11 – 47:22)Yeah. You know, one of the best things that we can do is we can pick new issue sets and come at them from new perspectives that fit the right left thing. That’s so powerful. [Alexx Stuart] (47:23 – 47:23)
Yeah. [Brian Reisinger] (47:23 – 48:04)
And there are some people who do that. The reality is that elected officials, especially in a two party system, but even a multi-party system, elected officials have to be able to satisfy their base of support to some degree, but they also have the freedom to be able to go out on a limb. And the best way to do that is to bring new ideas into politics, because there are so many ideas and issues where the ground has been staked out.
It’s like, well, you cross the line, you’re going to get hit. So I think we need new ideas and new people in politics. And honestly, one of the best things we could do is have as high a quality of individuals as possible running.
[Alexx Stuart] (48:04 – 48:19)Because I know I much prefer to talk to someone like yourself who has a journalism background and can appreciate research, multi-perspective thinking. And we just don’t see those conversations very often in politics anymore. [Brian Reisinger] (48:19 – 49:01)
A lot of people who ought to be running for office aren’t because they see how ugly the process is. We need leaders from business and from local government and from all kinds of corners and walks who want to get in there and just do the right thing. We need to see more of those types of folks.
And we need to understand, it used to be also that elected officials understood that, like, okay, I’m a Democrat and he’s a Republican. He needs to be able to satisfy some of what his supporters are going to want here. And finding a way to find that kind of a give and take is really, really crucial.
And we see so much less of that these days.
[Alexx Stuart] (49:01 – 49:53)Yeah. And I often think politicians need to be able to explain why they’ve gone a certain way, really. And take people on an education journey.
If it is quite complicated and there were multiple factors and it is in your best interest and here are the 10 reasons why I’m doing this, because we’re not hearing that either. Right. Absolutely true.
So I want to talk about something that’s really serious as well. I mean, it’s all serious, but the mental health piece for farmers is especially serious because if we don’t have mentally healthy farmers, we have farmers quitting and giving up. And obviously, support is one of the best ways you can help a farmer feel mentally well.
What is the mental health status of farmers today in America?
[Brian Reisinger] (49:53 – 51:28)It’s very, very difficult. Farming is consistently one of the highest risk for suicides and very, very high on the level of stress, emotional problems, mental health challenges, it can be tied at times to substance use disorders, whether it’s alcohol, drugs, etc. It’s a very, very, very high stress, high strain situation.
And in the case, I think that we have a mental health crisis in many walks of life. But in the case of rural areas, it’s often a silent crisis because your resources, there’s less discussion of it. And also farm families are taught to kind of keep your head down.
And I think about this, the way I learned about this issue really more fully was through our family’s own experience. So in the book, we talk about the hidden areas of history driving the disappearance of our farms in this country, but also we weave that with my family’s story from the depression today. And I look at my great-grandfather who escaped pre-World War I Europe to dig a better living out of the dirt in America.
I look at my grandpa who grew up in two decades of poverty and climbed out of the depression into the middle class and emerged with a lifelong challenge with alcohol as a result of that. I look at my dad who at the age of eight, stepped up to do the work of a man on the farm because my grandpa had slipped and fell off a corn crib and broke his back. Those are generations of different types of mental and emotional trauma that people have had.
And it’s never really had the kind of discussion and recognition of it, let alone the treatment that it needs.
[Alexx Stuart] (51:29 – 51:38)Do you think it’s the macho piece as well? Like you suck it up and you got to be a man like that whole, that’s a big hangover of that. [Brian Reisinger] (51:39 – 54:10)
Yeah, I think so. And I think honestly, in the case of farm families, we’ve got the male and the female and all versions of that. And the reason for it, when you’re a farm family, you are each year for decades now, finding it harder and harder to make a living.
And you either have to face the day when you may not be able to make ends meet for your family anymore, or you have to turn around and sell the farm, which is to lose everything else. Because your farm is not only your mom or dad’s job, it’s your home, your community, it’s your heritage. So choosing between that unthinkable choice of not being able to provide for your family or having to sell everything of meaning to your family, that’s an immense amount of pressure.
And then when you layer onto that generation after generation, it’s like, well, grandpa survived the depression, boy, mom and dad survived the farm crisis, why can’t I make it? And you’re raised with just this sense of put your head down and get the work done. And I remember, my dad got sick when I was 14.
And it wasn’t in a, although there is all kinds of macho elements to this, it wasn’t in a macho way that I was confronted with this. My mom sat me down, my dad had internal bleeding and all kinds of digestive issues. They had an operation, it turns out that he had cancer.
And while he was laid up, I had to shoulder the burden. And I remember my mom, I get emotional thinking about it a little bit. She sat me down and there was a local family friend who was a mechanic who’d grown up farming and he would come help when my dad needed an extra hand.
So he came to help and she said to me, she said, Ed has his own family. And he has to be able to do his job and feed his family. So you have to help.
And I’m so glad I did. I’m so proud of that time. But also that was a big burden for a kid of 14 to know that you have to do dad’s job now.
And it was my mom who said that to me in a very tenderhearted way, in a supportive way. There wasn’t any toxic masculinity to the conversation, but it was the same issue. And you grow up feeling that if you don’t get the work done today, the family’s not going to make it.
That’s embedded in who our farm families are. And there is incredible resilience and strength to that. And there is also incredible harm to that if we don’t talk about the toll that takes and learn to process those feelings.
[Alexx Stuart] (54:12 – 54:50)Wow, Brian, that’s intense. And it’s just such a win. Thank you for sharing that.
I saw how emotional you got and then I did. And I think we need to know this is happening. And we need to know that this is actually now starting to play out in city families as well.
Because of this change in the structure of class and that just total absence of an abundant, yeah, if I work hard, I can achieve these results. It’s not there anymore. If I work hard, what is the promise now?
There isn’t one.
[Brian Reisinger] (54:51 – 55:34)Right. Well, if economic hope and opportunity are disappearing, what are they replaced with? They’re hopelessness, loneliness, resentment.
And people talk, you can get into the male loneliness element of this. I mean, it’s just one dimension of it. But there are so many people from different walks of life who feel alone and powerless.
And they can’t do anything to move themselves or their families forward. And that’s an incredibly disheartening and frustrating thing. And it leads to all kinds of consequences for our society.
In the case of our farms, it makes it even harder to solve the issues of our food supply. But it impacts all kinds of people from all kinds of economic stations.
[Alexx Stuart] (55:35 – 56:20)A hundred percent. And have you seen a lot of farms like on socials? We see a lot of farmers now starting to reach out direct to consumer.
You see people like we have farmers here who are helping farmers transition to region and get their story out and go direct to market or joining CSA kind of co-ops and creating more localized networks as a backlash to this. Bigger is better is really not a situation. And are you seeing some hope in that direction where farmers are learning more social media and more direct communication and adapting to this new ability to actually reach people publicly?
[Brian Reisinger] (56:21 – 58:19)Yeah, I think so. I do see more of that. And I think that it also is wrapped up in a broader part of the solution, which is that more people than ever care about where their food comes from.
So as we have that grow, that’s market demand. And there’s an ability for farms that are maybe trapped into growing some traditional crops, probably in some broken markets that really, you know, they provide enough of an income that you kind of feel like you got to keep doing it, but it’s not a growing dynamic sector. And it just kind of leaves you stuck where you are.
There’s an opportunity for some of those farms to begin to put a few acres into specialty food that they know is going to sell locally. You know, what we need is more of that market demand. We need more people who have an impulse of caring where their food comes from to take steps to act on that and to be buying food in a way that, again, goes back to that principle we talked about earlier of what are you doing to create more entrepreneurial opportunity for our farmers?
So that’s part of the solution. Broadly, though, there are also some structural things that need to change in order for this shift to save enough of our farms. One is we need a research and development revolution in America and throughout much of the world.
Global productivity has been slowing for a long time. And we need research and development that is not only going to advance and help us figure out the next generation of agricultural crops and products, but it can also be what’s called scale neutral, where it’s not leaving behind small and midsize farms, which is what’s happened for the better part of the past half century. And then we need fair markets internationally and domestically.
We need to make sure that the farmer or the little guy can have a fair shot in those markets. So if we are to have a research and development revolution, if we’re going to have fair domestic international markets, and we’re going to have more and more farmers and people organizing themselves around that entrepreneurial principle of people care where their food comes from, how can the farmer find new opportunity in that? How can the consumer find new opportunity in that?
These are all things that if we can get them all moving in the same direction at the same time, we can begin to change what’s been a really a structural problem for a long time.
[Alexx Stuart] (58:20 – 58:30)Absolutely. And can you tell me, do you believe a fair market is a free market and a free market is a fair market? Because that feels like that’s crumbling now too. [Brian Reisinger] (58:31 – 59:38)
It’s a great question. My view of that is that it needs to be both and that we have viewed them as mutually exclusive for too long. I think quote unquote free market internationally meant that a lot of countries, America and Australia and all kinds of others, made all kinds of trade deals, some of which were good for them, some of which were not.
Many of them are really big and when you have big trade deals with many countries, there are a lot of trade-offs. And so there are some things that are good in the open new markets and some things that are unfair and flood your markets with with crops and products from places that are anti-competitive. Domestically, the free market going too unfettered, it goes back to that antitrust issue.
At some point, free market becomes unfree. If a company gets so big, they can restrict their own competition. That’s anti-competitive.
So we need markets that are free and fair. And those two things in my mind are not mutually exclusive. There is an important natural tension between the two.
And for the longest time, we have free markets that basically became unfree because it allowed for all of these anti-competitive things to occur.
[Alexx Stuart] (59:38 – 59:52)A hundred percent. And you really worry when they start buying media because then the free market, top of the free market then owns the message. And then it gets harder to actually understand what is true and what is not. [Brian Reisinger] (59:53 – 59:58)
We benefit in so many ways when the levers in our society are pulled by many small hands. [Alexx Stuart] (59:59 – 1:00:23)
I love that. We benefit in many ways when the levers of society are pulled by small hands. Brilliant.
So many farmers listen to this show and so many eaters listen to this show. Can I ask you to give us some kind of message that can help us know what to do from this point as the small hands?
[Brian Reisinger] (1:00:25 – 1:00:52)Yeah. It is one of those things where the challenge of it is we all have to hold hands and jump into the water together. And that’s a hard thing to do.
But I always say that people don’t have to completely revolutionize the way they buy their food. That would be great if they could. But some people can’t afford it and some people don’t have access to it.
Some people who would like don’t have those food sources locally and they have to go to the local dollar store to get packaged food because that’s what’s available. Right.
[Alexx Stuart] (1:00:52 – 1:01:00)A hundred percent. I think of mining towns and they’ve literally just got their giant supermarket chain person that’s there and that’s it. [Brian Reisinger] (1:01:00 – 1:02:48)
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, point being we can’t expect everyone to revolutionize the way they buy their food overnight.
But imagine if all of us took a half step, if every single person here listening decided that they were going to stop at a local butcher shop or they were going to shop for part of their produce at a local farmer’s market for whatever is in season, or they’re going to stop off at a fruit stand or they’re going to make sure that they’re patronizing local, small, independently owned businesses when they can. If everyone took a step like that, it would do so much to increase the market demand and do so much to allow farms to move in that direction.
And by the way, allow more farms to grow more fresh, local and specialty food and create more market access for those many people who don’t have it either because it’s not in their area or because if they if it is, it’s so scarce that it’s only something that the affluent can buy. So ironically, if we stop expecting each person to change all of their habits and we all change our habits a little, we can create that market demand that can ultimately help our farmers and can ultimately make more fresh, local, regional and specialty food available to more people. You know, I mean, ultimately, we bring it to scale.
It does bring the cost down some. And by the way, that could be happening at a time when our national and international global supply chains are more expensive than they’ve ever been. I mean, in some cases, getting a carton of eggs in the conventional way versus buying them farm fresh, the price isn’t that much different anymore.
You know, so if everyone’s willing to have a little bit of diversity to how they buy their food and yeah, maybe you pay a little bit more over here, but in some cases you don’t pay more over here and you’ve saved over here, just making some of those small incremental choices. If everybody did that, it would revolutionize the food system.
[Alexx Stuart] (1:02:49 – 1:03:47)Absolutely. And I often use the example of eggs and I’m not sure that it’s a great example anymore with what’s going on with bird flu and availability, but a lot of people say, but yeah, it’s like a dollar or $2 more expensive if I buy it at the farmer’s market. I’m like, but what if you bought three cartons and you said to your local farmer, if I grabbed three, would you knock a couple of bucks off?
You know, you can have those small town negotiations at the stall that you can’t have with a duopoly supermarket situation. The price is what the price is. And, you know, and I think when it’s not trying to shortchange your farmer, it’s actually trying to run them out of all the stock that they hold all the way to the city to be at that market that day.
And they’d be like, well, that’s like three less conversations or three, like, you know, sell more to less people. Most farmers are down for that. And it’s, I think to just actually have small hands mentality is what we need to cultivate.
[Brian Reisinger] (1:03:47 – 1:04:08)Yeah. Yep. No, totally.
It’s something where we can all move in that direction. We can all take those steps, you know, and it, you know, it can open up something that hasn’t been the case in American agriculture for a very long time, which is that farm families thinking of new things that they can grow and produce. So many of them have been trapped in old and broken markets for so long.
And that’s where a lot of the hopelessness comes from.
[Alexx Stuart] (1:04:08 – 1:05:18)A hundred percent, like haul out that grandma’s passata recipe. And, you know, with those tomatoes also make a line of pastes and passatas that you bring to market and you put on a CSA roster. And I agree.
I think there is always opportunity to innovate in hard times. And we all need to therefore innovate our thinking in that. So to a farmer who’s listening, Brian, to finish, what could they be starting to do?
We’re about to head into an election season and very gratefully ours is only just a few weeks of campaigning, not two years like you guys have to go through. And so that’s one good thing about our system. But farmers are going to be having these conversations about, do I choose left?
Do I choose right? Do I choose independent? Like what should they be asking instead?
Cause I feel like what’s resonated with me in everything that you’ve said is we need new labels for things that don’t have political attachments so that we can come together on what matters to all of us and move forward.
[Brian Reisinger] (1:05:19 – 1:06:14)Yeah, absolutely. I think the most important thing that they can do is ask them, you know, going back to that question of what are you doing to create new opportunity for our farmers? But also what are you doing to help support local, small, independent business?
What are you doing to support those local units of economic activity? And I think that’s so important because I think in the case of America, you’ll get farmers where I’m from who are, you know, they might be trending Republican, but they’re also willing to vote for a blue collar Democrat who they think is going to be responsive to their needs. You just need to figure out who’s really going to be fighting for you.
You know, I think political witness tests one direction or another don’t serve us as well anymore. And so it’s really trying to figure out who is going to be fighting for you, who’s going to solve problems in your local community. And one of those problems is, you know, where are we going to get new opportunity for our farmers?
And that requires, that requires some better answers than we’ve been given in the past, I think.
[Alexx Stuart] (1:06:14 – 1:06:51)Mm. And I always say to people who are really confused on voting, I’m like, just look for the person who’s just always making you scared of someone or something else versus the person who’s actually talking to you and listening and asking questions about solutions to move forward better. Right now, because that tells me everything I need to know.
And I don’t care who you are, what party you’re from, because that’s the kind of person that’s actually going to be doing good in the community, not the person whose whole campaign is built around just making you scared of other things.
[Brian Reisinger] (1:06:52 – 1:06:59)Yeah. We’ve got no shortage of political attacks in our society where, you know, where are the ideas, you know, 100 percent. [Alexx Stuart] (1:06:59 – 1:07:26)
What a great place to finish, Brian, literally earning the label of new favorite human. Thank you so much for this conversation from every aspect of the problems from middle class politics to farming. I think your book is incredible.
I really do hope people pick it up because for me, it’s the story of what’s wrong as well as the story of what it could be. And we need more stories like it. So thanks for joining me to talk about it.
[Brian Reisinger] (1:07:26 – 1:07:46)Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You know, my hope is that we tried to tell as honest of a story as we could about our family’s experience.
And my hope is that people can take away some of the resilience that’s out there with our farm families, not just ours. The only difference with us is we maybe decided to raise our hand and tell our story. And my hope is that people can find something and keep this conversation going.
[Alexx Stuart] (1:07:46 – 1:07:48)Yes. And good luck to your family. [Brian Reisinger] (1:07:49 – 1:07:49)
Thank you so much. [Alexx Stuart] (1:07:50 – 1:10:46)
I hope you loved today’s show as much as I loved bringing it to you. I want to remind you that if you are someone who craves a low-tox community that is judgment free, full of empowerment, has health professionals and building health professionals that can support you, as well as me in there answering questions multiple times a week, I want to invite you to join the low-tox club. For the price of less than a cup of coffee a month, you have an annual membership for $49 Australian.
So it’s about $30 US or Euro that allows you to have a member masterclass every single month with a health professional or global expert from the podcast where we have them to ourselves for an hour to ask questions and deep dive further. You have the beautiful supportive chat group. You have Q and A’s with me, me answering questions.
We read books and talk about them and a whole bunch more. You can head to lowtoxlife.com, hit the explore tab and join the club is the very first option on that list. Of course, we have over 10 evergreen courses that you can jump into any time, whether it’s navigating everyday low-tox swaps with our go low-tox signature course, whether you have kids and you’re wanting to know how to best support them with our low-tox kids course, whether you’re planning a family and looking at a healthy low-tox preconception journey, reducing inflammation, especially the chronic kind with our inflammation ninja course, many, many other courses. You can again, head to lowtoxlife.com, hit the courses tab, and you’ll see all of the options, which includes a business course, my low-tox method program. A lot of people don’t know, but I was doing a lot before starting low-tox life in 2009. And I was a business consultant across hospitality, health, retail and cosmetics. I have been in business consulting for a very long time.
So I absolutely adore helping people move into the low-tox space or develop their low-tox businesses. So that’s a way I can support you. And then of course, there’s our wonderful social media communities at lowtoxlife on Instagram.
And of course the website with over 250 gluten-free recipes, blogs, downloadable PDFs to help you navigate wanting to get rid of synthetic fragrances in your school or office. I could go on. So head to lowtoxlife.com, see what takes your interest or fancy. And thank you so much for being a part of our podcast community. I love, love, love reading your reviews. I appreciate every follow and subscribe.
And I want to just remind you to finish off that if there’s anything you heard that you found interesting from medical or scientific perspective, it is intended as education only. Please always chat to a health professional who knows you and your situation best. I’ll see you next week.
Bye.
