The Tenpenny Files with Brian Reisinger

The disappearance of the American family farm has unfolded quietly, year after year, without a public reckoning proportional to its scale.

Brian Reisinger traces this erosion through lived experience, beginning with a dairy farm in the hills of southern Wisconsin that survived wars, depressions, droughts, and generational transition while thousands of neighboring farms vanished. He documents how the loss accelerated through economic pressures that compound annually, driven by policy decisions, market structures, and technological shifts that narrowed survival to size and scale, leaving families trapped between rising costs and shrinking margins.

The record shows a century-long pattern of farm loss that continues at roughly forty five thousand operations per year, weakening food supply resilience while concentrating ownership and control. Reisinger describes how farmers became the smallest actors inside increasingly consolidated chains, absorbing shocks from global trade, energy costs, commodity pricing, and equipment expenses while lacking leverage to recover value downstream.

As farms disappear, food travels farther, changes hands repeatedly, and grows more uniform, increasing vulnerability to disruption and price instability. Reisinger explains how this fragility affects households directly, pushing families toward cheaper processed options as supply chains tighten and costs rise, while farmers face the same economic strain layered with business risk tied to land and weather.

The pressure extends beyond economics into national security as farmland becomes vulnerable to foreign ownership near critical infrastructure and military installations. Reisinger outlines how limited transparency and weak safeguards allow strategic acquisitions that place food production, mineral rights, and land access under external influence while family farms struggle to hold ground.

Despite decades of attrition, most remaining farms remain family operations, many sustained only through off farm labor and multiple incomes. Reisinger identifies this as a narrowing window, where generational transfer becomes harder, young farmers hesitate without viable markets, and the remaining infrastructure strains under consolidation that leaves fewer paths forward.

You’ve never heard this laid out like this before. And you won’t again.

Meet our Guest:

Brian Reisinger is an award winning author, rural policy expert, and fourth generation farmer whose book Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer documents the economic, historical, and policy forces reshaping agriculture through the lens of his own family’s survival. His work appears nationally, examining food systems, land ownership, and rural economics from firsthand experience.

Websites:

Book: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brian+reisinger