Reality of Family Farms (Hour 3)

Transcript

Reality of Family Farms (Hour 3)

Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Wed Mar 4, 2026

Kathryn Lake

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Now back to more of Daybreak with Brian and

Jamie.

It's 8.06 right now.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning on the Civic Media.

network.

We hope that you are having a great start to your day.

Some beautiful weather across Wisconsin, or at least what we're hoping is going to be some beautiful weather.

Great start with a lot of sunshine in downtown Madison.

And hey, by the way, if you're listening on 93.5 The Tap in Eau Claire or on WRCE in Richland Center or WLCX in La Crosse, we are super glad that you're here.

And I do want to say too, I'm very excited for this hour.

We want you to stick with us because we're going to have a local author, Brian Reisinger, who's going

to join us.

We're going to talk about the farming industry and how these trade policies have affected farming in the state of Wisconsin.

what that looks like going forward for our farming families, Brian.

So I'm, I'm very excited to have that conversation.

Yeah, I've talked, we've both talked to Brian

before and

this will be, this will be very interesting because they're, boy, there's two schools of thoughts coming from farmers.

There's a lot to talk about, but first let's, oh, can we please turn

our attention to watching.

I'm very excited to have this conversation

today.

I am too.

And listen, I'm going to, I'm going to spoiler alert.

If you're a Christie Nome fan,

probably not the segment for you, because Christie Noem yesterday faced a lot of very tough, is an understatement, questioning from Democrats and Republicans.

There was a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing the senators questioned her on a number of things, not least of them, the deaths of two American citizens.

in Minneapolis, shot by ICE officers.

Administrative warrants, the advertising spending, oh the ubiquitous Christie Nome.

This is your, this runway is your future.

Shut up.

Her use of jets, they didn't bring up the alleged...

Jett Triss in the Mile High Club

between

Christie and Corey.

Do we want our legislatures really dabbling in that?

I feel like they have their own interests there and probably their own stories.

So we're going to let

that... We had a lot of, let's just, I'm going to use two words, blue dress, all right?

Yeah.

That's all I'm going to say.

There we go.

But it did, it did not go well for Christie.

And of course the usual suspects went after, Democratic senators, but to me, Jamie...

the Republican senators, that was the story of

the day.

It was the story of the day, and we're going to get there.

But I think one of the big moments from the Democrats is when Noam actually defended her early comments about the death of Alex Pretty, who we know was shot and killed by our own eyes and all the video that is circulated by the DHS officers.

Now, she said she did not call him a domestic terrorist

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and said

that his actions appeared to be domestic.

actions appeared.

I got to stress that a little bit more to be domestic terrorism.

This was the exchange that she had with Senator Klobuchar, obviously of Minnesota, so a little bit more closer to home on this one yesterday.

This is cut six, please.

After the killings of Renee Goode and Alex Pretty, when I spoke,

to Alex's parents, they told me that you calling him a domestic terrorist was directly from them the day after he was killed.

A nurse in our VA, Alex, one of the most hurtful things they could ever imagine was said by you about their son.

Do you have anything you want to say to Alex Pretty's parents?

We were relying in the hours after that incident that was so horrific on information we were getting from the ground of our agents.

If you had anything you wanted to say to the parents

or to the

family of Renee Good after you called them domestic terrorists.

I can't even imagine what they have gone through in the loss of their son, in the loss of their family members.

But how about specifically calling them domestic terrorists

without any evidence

of

that?

Ma'am, I did not.

call him a domestic terrorist.

I said it appeared to be an incident of.

Okay.

So that was what she said to Senator Klobuchar yesterday under oath in a hearing.

Okay.

So let's go back to January 24th and hear what Kristi Noem had to say about Alex Pretty.

This is cut seven.

When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism.

This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism, that's the facts.

kind of sounds like mental gymnastics in order to not say what you actually said or to cover up what you actually said in front of the press for all of us to hear the day that Alex Pretty was shot and killed.

And we're not we're not falling for it.

No.

Christie we know we you said what you said we got it.

This person came to commit an act of domestic terrorism is the same thing as saying they are a domestic terrorist.

It is unbelievable.

And she's sitting there in front of using, they love human props.

She had a bunch of families whose children had been killed by undocumented immigrants behind her, their holdings.

So she kept using that.

But yes, this goes back.

Everything is a lie.

And they are so, I don't know if they're willfully ignorant.

or if they're really that stupid to think, we have you on tape.

You said what you said.

We can hear it.

We can see it.

We are not... These aren't the days where there was no record of things.

We know everything you've said.

I think they're hoping we forget.

I think they're hoping that they throw so much at us so quickly and so often that our memories are short and we forget.

But we are not forgetting.

like you and I might forget, but there's millions of people who love digging up every old tweet or old, and that's only, this was only January.

So

it really, we can all

remember a month ago.

Yeah, it's still pretty fresh.

I mean, it feels like it was an eternity ago based on everything that's happened since that January 24th press conference, but it literally wasn't that long ago.

Now, video released,

later contradicted Noam's claims to that Pretty had brandished at a firearm before he was actually shot.

She also declined to retract comments about Renee Good in yesterday's hearing, which of course we know is another person killed by DHS officers in the Twin Cities.

Democratic senators pressed her to admit mistakes in the department's early descriptions of the incidents.

She did say that officials were relying on reports from agents at the scene.

It's always about deflection too, with this administration.

actually take responsibility or accountability always deflect

and that comes up later because that was even the Republican senators and we're getting we're getting

yes

because that's the highlight

we're

burying the lead but they also were like you never take responsibility there is never you you never can admit that something went wrong and when Republicans are telling you that

Yeah, they want to listen

so we're gonna jump in with Senator John Kennedy now because let's be realistic on most issues I have been a fierce In fierce opposition to most of what John Kennedy has said publicly has said on the record has said in hearings in heat

Yesterday during the testimony, he questioned a $220 million, drop in my pen here, $220 million DHS advertising campaign.

And he said that the ads prominently feature Nome and questioned how the contracts were awarded.

This is hearing gold.

If you're a political nerd, this is hearing gold coming from John Kennedy especially.

This is cut seven.

The president approved ahead of time, you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently.

Yes, sir.

We

went through the legal processes.

Did it

correctly work with OMB?

Did the president know you were going to do this?

Yes.

He did.

Yes.

OK.

And one thing, Senator, I think would be helpful to know is how effective that communications has been.

Well, they were effective in your name recognition.

I mean I personally just I mean to me it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot and it And I just I'm not saying you're not telling the truth.

It's just hard for me to believe you know and the president As I do that you said mr. President Here's some ads I've cut and I'm gonna spend 220 million dollars Running them that he would have agreed to that

I don't think Russ Vote at OMB would have agreed to that.

It's something we have to defend.

I'm on the Appropriations Committee.

I mean, my research shows that you did not bid them out.

In fact, one of the people you picked, the strategy group, I'm sorry, Safe America Media was a company.

formed 11 days before you picked them and that

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the

strategy group got most of the money and the head of that is Married to your former spoke We all have friends who are qualified.

I'm not quibbling with that.

I'm just it troubles me quarter Fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money

When one was scratching forever panty and we're fighting over rescission packages Oops

Yeah, a company that was formed 11 days before that's just long enough for the ink to dry in the paperwork to go through They're like we can't afford we can't award the contract today not today.

Here it is here This company is great.

What I thought was most interesting about that is why Senator Kennedy was was

asking her these questions, he was trying so hard to give her an off ramp at the same time.

It was

literally like he was leading her to say the right answer that he wanted to hear to settle it in his own mind as a supporter of this administration.

And he just, he couldn't do it.

He couldn't get her there to be able to say those words.

And she obviously did not understand where things were going because she was not taking the off ramp that was

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being

offered.

Well, the conversation got really tense when Senator Tom Tillis, the Republican from North Carolina, started criticizing Noam's leadership, accusing her of DHS poorly handling deportations and arresting innocent Americans.

He also criticized Noam's refusal to acknowledge mistakes in those Minneapolis shootings.

This is where it got really heated though, because he called out Noam to resign.

yesterday.

Tillis was a man who voted to confirm her.

He asked her to resign yesterday and even went as far as referencing her memoir about killing her family dog and her family goat.

This is cut eight.

Secretary, I read your book last week and honestly some of the parts of it impressed me.

But some of it distresses me.

And I'll give you a good example of one that does.

The passage where you talk about killing a dog that was 14 months old.

I train dogs, all right?

And you are a farmer.

You should know better.

You should know that if you're going out to a hunting lodge and you're putting pheasants out and you're putting dogs out, you don't take a puppy out there.

A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years.

You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices.

It's in your book.

We could play it if we had time.

At that same lunch hour, you killed a goat.

And you killed the goat because you said it was behaving badly.

You are a farmer.

You don't castrated goat.

They behave badly.

You should have probably done that before.

But my point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.

I expect we're an exceptional nation.

And one of the reasons we're exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership.

And you've demonstrated anything but that in the time that I've seen you responding to the emergency in North Carolina and across the Southeast and acknowledging when mistakes are made and speaking too soon for the expedient of social media or whatever it is.

Wow.

He was apoplectic.

He had charts, graphs.

He went on and on.

We could play.

We could have played the whole thing because his commentary against her was...

Unleashed

he went

crazy.

I liked it.

Yeah, but Unfortunately time is the tyrant, but I don't know if you know we'll talk about Trump and the lawsuits against law firms and what he's doing and how they backtracked again

Kathryn Lake

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All facts, no fiction.

It's Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.

It's 8.22 right now.

You are listening to Daybreak as the big voice guy just said.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And I'm Brian Noon and we're glad you're with us.

We've talked a lot about media companies who've capitulated to the administration and tech companies that are capitulating and if you remember a year ago Donald Trump started a campaign against he signed an executive order where he was going to Target the some of the biggest the most premier law firms in this country because

He didn't like that they had been part of the investigations into him.

He didn't like what they did He didn't like what they said.

It was nothing unethical.

They had done nothing wrong, but the president just wanted them to you know go out of business unless They paid him a little cash.

Well Earlier this week they decided all right, we're gonna drop those suits.

We're gonna forget it.

Well

as is the case in a lot of areas with this administration on Monday they abandoned the efforts to enforce those orders and on Tuesday they decided nope we're going back the administration abruptly reversed course yesterday said it would proceed with the court fight against these they they can't explain much like the war why they there was this change of plan but there is and so now

the law firms, some of them immediately gave in and paid off.

It was a huge amount of free legal service.

That was the price they had to pay to stay in business and stay on the good side of the administration.

Some paid it right away.

Some are still vowing that we are not going to give in.

We're not going to fight.

But it's, again, just extortion against people who were only doing

Their job and not not the old follow.

We were only following orders defense.

This is hey, we were hired.

We're attorneys.

We were investigating this these allegations and these cases and What

do

you want us to do?

You know and I think that's the amazing part because this isn't just about the the attorneys and these law firms necessarily It's about how power is being used right now and how stable government decisions are because of

When you first look at this, the Justice Department said that it was going to drop that appeal.

They lost

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in

court.

It sounded like the administration was going to back down.

And then they reversed course and said that they're going to continue this bite.

So now we sit here talking about the story thinking, was this actually a win for the law firms?

Was it just a pause before the next move?

And then there's this sense that something else is probably going to come.

from this administration, right?

Like, is there gonna be

a

new order?

Is there gonna be some new legal argument?

Is there a new strategy?

Because their executive orders for this administration are not just symbolic.

They are

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literally

aimed usually at some sort of punishment.

In this case, it's gonna be to punish law firms by suspending their security clearances, maybe canceling federal contracts, maybe blocking lawyers from federal buildings because of the past legal work.

connected to Trump investigations.

We've got Dave chiming in over on the text line this morning saying, what amazes me is how many people believe the mega BS.

If you want to chime in on the conversation text and call in, we'd love to hear from you today.

1-855-752-4842.

That's 1-855-75 Civic.

We have to point out too that just like the investigation into the alleged interference in the 2020 election, all of the

challenges to these executive orders have been upheld by judges.

They

all ruled that these were not legal.

They didn't hold water, and so the law firms were winning.

Well, that cannot make this administration happy because they're so used to...

Despite Donald Trump's protestations that we should be tired of winning, man, you would think he and his administration would be tired of losing every court battle they come up against from the Supreme Court all the way down on every issue.

Don't you think, though, it's about limiting the independence of the legal system?

Because we know as logical human beings that lawyers are supposed to be able to represent clients, even the most unpopular ones, even the ones who are guilty without fear of government retaliation.

That's a basic part of how the justice system actually works.

So when the government starts targeting these law firms for doing the real work that it doesn't actually like or just, you know, doesn't want them to be a part of, the courts are going to tend to take that very seriously.

And then we see this back and forth that we're having now, making us wonder, what is the real plan?

What is actually, what is this actually about?

Is the administration going to test their limits on executive power?

Are they trying to really

dive deep into these intimidation tactics or is this just a refusal to back down?

It's exhausting.

It's exhausting having to constantly wonder what the motive is.

Why?

Because we used to have a boring government where these questions didn't matter.

We just went about our daily lives and things happened and people did their jobs and government employees made sure that the system kept moving along and now we have to constantly ask these questions.

And the scandals came one at a time.

Let's, you know, there'd be a scandal and we could all focus on that one thing and then it would get resolved one way or another or it would go away and then we'd be quiet for a little bit and something else would pop up.

There's always something, but this is a non-stop barrage

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of

everything's a crisis.

And I know that the Republican side of the aisle wants to make it seem like everything is not a crisis.

But a lot of it is and this is not hysteria.

This is not Trump derangement syndrome This is people looking at the facts and going okay.

You keep bringing these threats against these law firms The judges have said your appeal to them not following it is not legal Yeah, should be it right that should be the end of it this should go away and then something else will come along but no this will stay on the burner too because

Everything is being thrown at the wall to distract.

Well, they

want that sort of uncertainty.

They want us to be exhausted because when we're actually exhausted, then we start questioning.

what the laws are and what the system itself is doing.

So they want us to be exhausted because they want us to not be paying attention so that we start questioning our norms so that they can start breaking them down, or at least in this case, continue to break them down.

When we come back... Yeah, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Listen, you got a tease, Jamie.

This is radio.

Brian Resker is going to join us.

He's the author of Land Rich, Cash Poor.

We're going to talk about the effect of the tariffs and the state of Wisconsin's family farms on the other side.

Now you

can do it.

Now I can do it.

This is Daybreak 829.

You're listening to the Civic Media

Network.

Local news, community stories, and the conversations that matter most.

Now, more Daybreak with Brian and JB.

It's 8.35 right now.

Good morning.

If you are just joining us on the Civic Media Network, we are glad that you are with us on this Wednesday.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And I'm Brian Noonan here in Wisconsin and across the country.

Over the past year, Trump's tariffs have caused major uncertainty with farmers.

The Supreme Court decision that struck down those tariffs hasn't done a lot yet to eliminate those concerns and that uncertainty.

Meanwhile, farm bankruptcies here in Wisconsin increased 700% in 2025.

16 farms...

filed for bankruptcy in 2025 versus 2 in 2024.

Joining us to talk about the state of family farms in Wisconsin is Brian Reisiger.

You may know him as the author of Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope and the Untold Story of the Disappearing American Farmer.

Brian, it's good to talk to you again.

I spoke to you when the book first came out and Jamie has spoken to you since.

It's good to be back, but we know your story.

For the people who might, can you give us a brief history of your family farm and its connection to Wisconsin?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you for having me here.

We've been around for four generations.

My dad is still farming.

My sister's working to take the farm over.

And we really began in 1912 when my great grandparents escaped pre-World War I Europe.

came to wisconsin to dig a better living out of the dirt like so many people all across the state and since then our generation or excuse me our family has lived through the generations through the depression through the farm crisis through globalization everything and along the way for any farm family there's weather that blesses and threatens there's economic upheaval there's

farm accidents.

So we decided to tell that story honestly in our book but weave that with the forces that are wiping out family farms across the country and so that's what brings us here today is this is a crisis that everybody in the state of Wisconsin and rural communities is living and we decided it was time to tell the story.

No, it's a great book.

I do implore anybody who wants a little history and to find out about what, what the farming community is like to, to take a read.

You can find that at bryan dash ricinger.com.

Um, no, Brian mentioned that we've seen a 700% increase in farm bankruptcies in Wisconsin in just the last year alone.

Um, you know, for, for somebody who is a rural policy expert, uh, and who, who lives on a farm, uh, part time and works with.

the farming community, what are you hearing from farmers across the state right now?

Is this as serious as these facts make it sound right now?

Well, you know, it is really challenging.

It's very serious.

And I think that the farm families that are out there, whatever their view is of one piece of news or one direction in politics or another.

It's a continuation of something that people have been living for decades.

And I think that's the thing I always try to tell people whenever we hear like the national media swooping in saying, hey, farmers are in crisis.

Farmers are kind of like, hey, we've been in crisis here.

What are we going to do about this in a big picture way?

So it's true that some of the recent events have.

been challenging, and it's also true that those recent events are attached to deep, deep issues.

We've had economic crises from the Great Depression to COVID and beyond that our country didn't understand the impact of.

We've had governmental policies from both parties for decades.

We've had technology that's moved American agriculture forward, but also leaves so many of our family farms behind.

These are some of those foundational things that are going on, driving economic decline, whatever's happening in the news.

And then when you see something dramatic that's happening to farmers, that adds on top of it.

So that's really the reality that our farm families are living.

Brian, for people who are not in the agriculture industry, we know what farms are, we know what farmers do, but we hear different things regarding the tariffs and other policies.

Some farmers are saying,

no these are horrible things they're really hurting us we're paying more for fertilizer we're paying more for this and that but then there are other farmers who are saying yeah um things are rough but it's it's leveling the playing field as far as trade where's is there a truth on one side or the other is it in the middle what is the actual

impact for Wisconsin farmers.

I'm so glad you asked that because there's so many people making you know political arguments one direction and another and here's the reality and this is why you hear things from farmers like that.

Farmers live in a state of double-edged sword as it pertains to trade.

So it is true that when you have trade disputes that spin out of control you know retaliatory tariffs from other countries meaning they're not gonna

buy our goods are going to make it more expensive to sell soybeans in China, for instance, and nobody in China is going to be buying soybeans in America.

That's really challenging.

We saw that last fall at the same time.

The other swing of that double-edged blade is the fact that farm families have been living with unfair trade practices since the 90s.

And this is something that both parties have talked about.

There were a lot of labor Democrats who talked about this back in the day too.

And the reality is that you have great big trading partners like China that will buy up, whether it's dairy or whether it's corn or soybeans, they'll buy it up until they have.

of American farmers hostage and then they'll dump those products to drive the prices down.

So we've got unfair trade keeping prices down.

We've also got trade disputes if they spin out of control causing problems.

So what you have, not all farmers agree and I don't speak for all of them, but we have as a lot of farmers saying, boy, we do need to get tough.

We do need to do something to make sure that trade across the globe is fair.

to our farmers at the same time, they say, hey, we got to make sure that these negotiations reach a result and that we don't end up just having disputes that make people not willing to deal with them, shut markets down.

So it's those two things at once.

That's what happens in the real world.

So first of all, we're talking with Brian Reisinger.

He's the author of Land Rich Cash Poor.

He is a writer.

He's a rural policy expert.

If you want to check out the book or more on him, go to bryan-reisinger.com.

So when you talk a little bit about all of these trade disputes, and you and I have had this conversation, I feel like there are certain subsects of the world that are used as pawns for each political party.

And I feel like farmers are very much in part of that game.

How do we get through to our legislators?

What can we be telling them?

What can the farming community or anybody who just is worried about the family farm because they are such a backbone of our community?

What can we be imploring to our legislators right now?

You know, I always tell people if you want to see a politician's arm shoot up fast asking if they've ever voted to support a farmer You know because everybody's got some kind of program or something one way or the other in both parties They voted for of course to support the farmer They're gonna say that the reality is that we need to go a layer deeper when I always say to people and this This was born out of research in the book when I was seeing all the dilemmas where we had false choices made the wrong choice in our history and I got the chance to tie that with my family's story and what so many farm families have lived through what I always say is hey

Ask your leaders what they're doing to create new entrepreneurial opportunity for our farmers, because that's harder.

They have to stop and think about that.

And if they don't know, well, what could I do to create new opportunity for our farmers?

Talk to them about how you want to buy your food.

Talk to them about what you want out of your food, where you want to get local or regional or specialty foods.

Talk to them about how you want things to be.

different and how you could connect that with farmers down the road if only our food system was different.

That challenges them to do something to change the situation, find ways for food to get from the farm gate to the dinner table more ways because right now with us wiping out farms at 45,000 a year on average for the past century, we're making it harder and harder for farmers to grow food

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and

harder and harder for that food to get from the farm gate to the dinner table.

It's jacking up food prices, making things less healthy, it's making it harder to find local food sources, all these problems.

see you you say those numbers and you're used to hearing those numbers but people outside of the industry those numbers are shocking and I'm sure there are other things on a day-to-day basis for a family farm like yours from how much how much is ice having an effect on costs and what are the other kind of things that day to day you're dealing with because it's

Everybody can understand, oh, fertilizer costs more.

Seed costs more.

Okay, that's the same as if we go to the grocery store, things cost more.

But there's a lot of other factors at play on the day to day.

And what are some of those for the people who,

you know, we care, but

we just don't

know?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, when my dad goes into the fields planting this spring and my sister who's working take over the farm joins him when they're doing that.

And when all of us are working to figure out where we're going to go with our farm in the future, what we're dealing with is the fact that there are very few new and growing markets for farmers out there.

Most farmers are, you know, facing the fact that they've got markets available to them that for one reason or another have kind of become broken.

You know, you got corn, field corn, the price of corn in the past year is about four bucks.

That's not too far off from where it was when I was born in 1984.

when I was a kid.

Meantime, the seed, the feed, the fertilizer, the energy, all those costs continue to go up.

Now, you mentioned ice and other things.

When you talk about things like, you know, farm labor, half our farm labor comes from immigrant labor.

What we need is Washington, not only to find a way to change your food system, find a way to, you know, secure the border, which has been a bipartisan goal for a long time and many farmers, or while also increasing access to

legal farm labor.

I mean the the H2A farm visa program is there for people who want to come to this country and work hard and find a way up and we do need that agriculture labor.

Our farm has never had immigrant labor but there are farms that aren't too much bigger than ours down the road who have and so the reality is you got all these increasing costs and all these huge disruptions going on where farmers are kind of caught in the crosshairs of all of our political crosswinds here and

While that's going on, they don't have new and growing markets.

What we need is more and more places that farmers could say, hey, I could sell this over here.

I could sell that over there.

There's very little of that available to our farmers these days.

Brian, we also hear right now that there are some of these farmers who are having harder times getting the operating loans that they might depend on each and every season.

So why are lenders starting to view farming and the farms in general as a bigger risk?

Yeah, well one of the issues that we've got is that farming has continued to go toward this tipping point We're just getting tougher and tougher at a point to farming and say hey, this is this is something that I can invest in now I think that's actually a misnomer.

I think people are mistaken about that The reality is that people care more than ever about where their food comes from and there are a lot of hard work and resilient farm families making it through all of this You know, even though our country does so many things to make the economics not work But one

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of

the big things that we can do a lever we can pull in order to make getting operating loans easier is to pass a bipartisan

Farm Bill and they're actually debating that this week.

The farm bill is supposed to be passed for five years ahead.

So you pass the farm bill and it sets things for five years.

And whether people like the government programs or not, there's debates about that.

Those programs set all kinds of pricing mechanisms and different things in the industry.

So you can want more government or less government, whatever you want.

Passing that bipartisan farm bill is crucial to setting up all these programs and letting people know what the industry is going to be like.

So bankers who are out there, they need to see a farm bill in order to be able to lend.

So not having one makes it harder even for private.

sector sources of capital, bankers and credit unions and others to lend to a farmer.

You mentioned the number of family farms that go under every year and we've talked about the financing and all of that.

How are the big corporate farms being affected?

That would seem like they're safer and you know people like you guys and your smaller farm

are really the ones who are in danger.

There's always going to be somebody growing the food because we need to eat it.

But are the family farms exponentially more danger?

Yeah.

What's happening overall is that all farms, large, small, whatever shape and size, are all subject to this overall force of get bigger, get out.

All these problems we've been talking about, what?

the

Kathryn Lake

one

thing all these problems have in common is they all push farms toward get bigger get out.

So the great big farms are getting bigger and bigger because they have to be able to make it economically and they gobble up other farms.

The medium and small size farms are either getting bigger as well or slipping by the wayside.

There are some who are being creative, diversifying, finding ways to make it but it is very

very hard.

So that's what's going on in family farms.

You're right.

As a result, those midsize and small farms are getting in worse and worse shape.

Here's the reality.

We will always have someone growing our food.

But if we keep losing farms at this rate, 45,000 a year going forward like we have for the past century, 45,000 year, I'm 41.

By the time my little baby grows, my age will have lost the rest of our family farms in this country.

So we'll have a food system that is too big to fail.

If you think about that, imagine what happened when the banks are too big to fail.

People worried is the ATM going to kick out money to me.

Then they're going to have to wonder, is the store or the restaurant going to have food for me?

If we have such big systems and part of it collapses, that's a huge problem.

Brian, we have about a minute left.

If we continue losing these farms, the small, the mid-sized farms at the rate that we're talking, what does this mean for rural communities across states like Wisconsin and what is the future of agriculture in general?

Now, while all Americans in that scenario are going to see food prices continue to get higher and food less healthy, for farm families and rural communities, here's what happens.

Farming is a backbone of a lot of rural communities, even places that have transitioned toward other things.

They still have roots so deep in agriculture that when you keep losing your farms, you harm your rural communities.

There's fewer businesses in downtown Main Street.

There's fewer banks.

There's fewer everything.

And so it really does hollow out our rural communities.

Now, I have optimism.

because 96% of our farms are still family farms.

That means there's nearly 2 million farm families out there still fighting to make it.

We try to tell those resilient stories, too.

Well, Brian, we always enjoy talking to you.

Brian Reziger is our guest.

He is the author of Land Rich, Cash Poor, My Family's Hope, and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer.

You can get it anywhere books are sold or go to bryan-reziger.com.

Brian, thanks for being here.

We appreciate it.

Thanks.

It's 8.48 right now.

You're listening to the Civic Media

Kathryn Lake

now.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.

Local voices state-wide impact.

It's Daybreak with Brian and

Jamie.

8.52 right now.

We hope that you are having a great morning.

I am Jamie Martenson.

And I'm Brian Noonan, glad you're here.

We had some texts coming in.

We've been talking about how Wisconsin is going to be affected by...

Rising gas prices based on what's going on in Iran and the straights of hermos the straight of hermos And all of that so people have been chiming in you can always chime in eight five five seven five civic eight five five seven five two four eight four two and we do We do get around to them.

We do We have a lot to say right away.

We have a lot to say Tom from Hartford.

Thank you for the text listening on WMDX this morning says that he hasn't seen any gas less than 290 a gallon as of yesterday

Roger and Stevens Point saying it was 309 and Stevens Point in Marshfield in his travels yesterday.

Tiffany over in River Falls listening on 93.5 the tap says that in her area, it's about 319 right now.

Kathryn Lake

And

she also chimed in to give us a little credit on having Brian Reisinger on saying that she just ordered his book from the local bookstore.

Her family lost their farm over 10 years ago.

And Tiffany says in text today that.

she misses it dearly.

So thank you for all of that input this morning.

I'm glad you liked the segment and Brian's book, you'll enjoy that.

And Tiffany is watching The Secret Show.

She

is.

What's The

Secret Show?

We feel left out.

It's

a

secret.

You get to see us, you get to hear us, and for better or worse, you get to hear us when everybody else is listening to commercials and

what not.

And news and things.

All of that's important, but so are we.

Yes.

Jamie, you're a lady.

Sure.

Sure.

Thank you for acknowledging

that.

You're welcome.

In case people, you know, people who can't see us, maybe they just think you're a man with a light voice.

There

we go.

I have never used a filter on social media.

So there's two questions here.

When you post to social media, are you posting reality or are you posting some idealized version of your life that you want other people to believe?

And why are, I think this is especially a female problem on

the

internet.

Why do ladies feel the pressure to use these filters to make themselves look

Different than they are

and I

know that a lot you can scroll through and you can automatically tell who's using a filter

Well, and let's be real this goes far beyond social media This goes back years and years where a photo we would see these images of women in magazines that have been totally touched and even

on TV where

they shot

women through cheesecloth to

Right

make sure they smooth everything

out.

Yes, and

you're like Brian with all that's going on

Why would you bring this up?

Because, well, it's the last segment and we always try to leave.

And I thought this was odd and hilarious and

Kathryn Lake

you're telling all

at the same time.

Yes.

So a beauty influencer in China lost 140,000 followers.

Why did she say something controversial?

No.

Her filter glitched mid-live stream and revealed her natural face.

And it wasn't like it revealed some horrible abomination.

No.

She wasn't

the

elephant woman.

Yes.

No, she's beautiful.

Yeah.

But, uh, yeah, 140,000 people went, I don't want to see the real you.

I gotta go.

Yeah, she was, she was, she's unnamed, uh, and according to this viral footage, if you haven't seen it, she's, uh, on.

filming herself dancing for the camera.

She appears with this very porcelain-like complexion and these very perfect symmetrical features on a

too small head is essentially what it looked like.

Then the filter glitched and it dropped

and

it revealed a much more natural appearance with a warmer skin tone.

Shortly after that, the filter returned, it restored the more we'll call it stylized look and that it kept flipping back and forth between the two looks, which was even crazier if you watch it.

Now, of course, this is where she started losing followers.

Some have accused the influencer of deception.

Others have rejected that framing.

If you look at social media questioning instead.

Like we are, why filters carry so much weight in the first place, and why women feel the need to actually use them.

I'll be honest, I will never use a filter.

What you see is what you get.

I don't even leave the house with a full face of makeup most days.

I am completely natural in that respect.

That's another one of the double standards in this society.

I never feel the need

to look pretty.

I'll dress nice if I'm going to an event or something, but my face is my face.

This is the one I got.

You like it or you don't, whatever.

My wife's happy with it, so that's all that matters.

But yeah, it's the fact that you have to say

I leave the house without a full face of makeup.

I can't imagine.

Parker, could you imagine having to get up in the morning looking at your Amish visage

Kathryn Lake

and saying,

I've got to cover this up with pancake.

I need my cat eyeliner on before

I can leave.

I'm going to the gym.

I got to put on my foundation.

I look great as is, Brian.

I'm not doing anything.

You are a handsome young man.

Now, I will be honest.

Even when I did wear makeup, it was always very light.

I have never played personally.

into I need a lot of makeup in order to, I don't have that kind of time.

I've done a lot of morning radio at

four

in the morning.

I don't care.

It

is what it is.

But then during COVID is when I started adopting kind of a new routine for myself.

And essentially it became, I just want to take care of my skin.

I am going to age, I'm 48 years old.

I'm okay with being 48 years old.

I've been through a few

things in life and every wrinkle is, I'm okay with it.

I'm okay with it.

Even though I don't want to get older, I'm okay with the aging process.

And as far as social media goes, yeah, everybody gets older.

Because the alternative sucks.

You

either get older or you're dead.

So you got to pick right there.

I hate to be so blunt, but sometimes things are blunt.

Tiffany jumps in, she says societal pressures focus on how women look and what women do.

America, Ferrara's Barbie

Kathryn Lake

maybe

monologue comes to mind.

Society expects women to be just so, but then get mad when a woman isn't honest.

We've all met a woman who looks one way at the bar and then she washes her face and you're like, ah, who are you?

What happened?

That's a goiter, isn't it?

Two-faced.

Two-faced.

You're a Batman villain.

What is your deal?

All right, well, that's it for today.

We've got to go.

The dogs need to go out.

You need

a break.

We do.

So thank you for listening and be a part of the show

today.

It's 8.59.

You are listening to Daybreak.

This is the Civic Media Network.

Have a fantastic day.

Bye.

Kathryn Lake

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