Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family's Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer by Brian Reisinger

Author:Brian Reisinger [Reisinger, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Agriculture & Food, Political Science, Public Policy, Agriculture & Food Policy, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, History, United States, 20th Century, State & Local, Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI), South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Drama, American, General, Sociology, Rural
ISBN: 9781510780408
Google: 5EfdEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2024-08-20T23:50:07.200024+00:00

Men and women like my parents experienced the 1990s feeling an odd disquiet. During the good years, farmers could put money away to guard against the bad years, or invest in their operations with extra cash or new debt. During the bad years, there was a growing sense not just of a rougher patch but also of the feeling that farms of a certain size just couldn’t make it anymore. Our farm was one of those putting away money when we could; in the good years, those taking out debt surpassed us, and in the bad years, they went broke trying to pay it off. Meanwhile, we persisted, life slowly getting harder in a world leaving us behind. Farming was becoming impossible for many, just beneath the surface of success.

The surge toward free trade offered both boom and bust. Stephanie Mercier worked for years as a top advisor in the Senate during the negotiation of major trade deals. Now an economist and rural policy historian working with the Farm Journal Foundation, she saw firsthand in those formative years the strategy and hours put into opening new markets to American farmers. While there were big trade deals in prior decades—such as President Nixon’s grain deal with the Soviet Union—Mercier said the United States had largely assumed the ability to sell American surpluses overseas. In the nineties, it became a broader economic and geopolitical strategy to improve American prosperity. This meant higher prices as American supply was met with greater demand for decades on end.115 The opportunity gave groups advocating for farms and many farmers themselves reason to be supporters of free trade—then and now.

“More open markets is always something that farmers like,” Mercier said. But there were trade-offs. While both political parties embraced free trade, Mercier said, organized labor warned that big trade deals gave advantages to countries that could produce more cheaply in part by casting aside workers’ rights. For farmers, opening foreign markets to American goods also meant opening American markets to foreign goods, which brought more goods into the United States and at times brought down the price American farmers could get for tomatoes, beef, or any number of other products.116 Farmers were competing with countries that had lower labor standards and lower costs. Many economists—including those arguing free trade remains worth it—acknowledge that global trade also favors some farms over others. Large farms can keep up with ever-bigger food processors, as our agriculture and food industries strive to keep up with global demand under massive trade deals.

On top of those trade-offs, there is always the possibility of a large foreign trading partner becoming an adversary—meaning that just when Americans depend upon another country the most, its leaders can begin to take advantage of us. That was a threat that would take root long before it was too late to stop.

Meanwhile, the global marketplace combined with additional industry pressures to completely transform America’s food system. Navigating the demands of large worldwide markets drove an even larger and more

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