Land Rich, Cash Poor
Regular price
€18.50
2025 Book of the Year from the Nonpartisan Farm Foundation
A 2024 C-SPAN Author Series Pick
2025 Best Book Award Winner for U.S. History; Finalist for Best New Nonfiction from the American Book Fest
2025 Readers’ Favorite Book Award Recipient
The award-winning hidden history of an economic and cultural crisis that is threatening our very food supply—the disappearance of the American farmer.
“An anthem to the family farm in America.” —AP News
Taking on this working-class story of heart and hardship, writer and rural policy expert Brian Reisinger weaves forgotten eras of American history with his own family’s four-generation fight for survival on their small Midwestern farm. Readers learn the truth about America’s most detrimental and unexplained socioeconomic crisis: How the family farms that feed us went from cutting a middle-class path through the Great Depression to barely making ends meet in modern America. Along the way, they’ll see what it truly takes to feed our country: accidents that can kill or maim; weather that blesses or threatens; resilience in the face of crushing economic crises, from depressions and recessions to COVID-19; and the tradition that presses down on each generation when you're not just fighting for your job, you're fighting for your heritage.
With newly analyzed data, sharp historical analysis, conversations with some of modern farming’s most notable champions and critics alike, honest debate on both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between, and personal storytelling, Reisinger reveals how the hollowing out of rural America is affecting every single American dinner table. Food prices soaring far beyond the rate of inflation, a vulnerable food supply chain, environmental and ecological dilemmas, the security of our farmland from foreign adversaries, a mental health crisis that includes farmer suicides and addictions, a deepening urban-rural divide, and more worries than ever about what’s for dinner. These are all becoming the hallmarks of a food system that has long stood as a modern miracle. The critically acclaimed Land Rich, Cash Poor offers the truth and what we can do—before it’s too late.
A 2024 C-SPAN Author Series Pick
2025 Best Book Award Winner for U.S. History; Finalist for Best New Nonfiction from the American Book Fest
2025 Readers’ Favorite Book Award Recipient
The award-winning hidden history of an economic and cultural crisis that is threatening our very food supply—the disappearance of the American farmer.
“An anthem to the family farm in America.” —AP News
Taking on this working-class story of heart and hardship, writer and rural policy expert Brian Reisinger weaves forgotten eras of American history with his own family’s four-generation fight for survival on their small Midwestern farm. Readers learn the truth about America’s most detrimental and unexplained socioeconomic crisis: How the family farms that feed us went from cutting a middle-class path through the Great Depression to barely making ends meet in modern America. Along the way, they’ll see what it truly takes to feed our country: accidents that can kill or maim; weather that blesses or threatens; resilience in the face of crushing economic crises, from depressions and recessions to COVID-19; and the tradition that presses down on each generation when you're not just fighting for your job, you're fighting for your heritage.
With newly analyzed data, sharp historical analysis, conversations with some of modern farming’s most notable champions and critics alike, honest debate on both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between, and personal storytelling, Reisinger reveals how the hollowing out of rural America is affecting every single American dinner table. Food prices soaring far beyond the rate of inflation, a vulnerable food supply chain, environmental and ecological dilemmas, the security of our farmland from foreign adversaries, a mental health crisis that includes farmer suicides and addictions, a deepening urban-rural divide, and more worries than ever about what’s for dinner. These are all becoming the hallmarks of a food system that has long stood as a modern miracle. The critically acclaimed Land Rich, Cash Poor offers the truth and what we can do—before it’s too late.
Brian Reisinger is an award-winning author and rural policy expert who grew up on a family farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin. His writing has appeared in USA Today, Yahoo News, Newsweek, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, PBS/Wisconsin Public Radio, and many other publications. Reisinger’s debut book Land Rich, Cash Poor won Book of the Year from the nonpartisan Farm Foundation, and his writing has also won awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, first place in the Seven Hills Literary Contest, and a Solas Award. He has given a TEDx talk on threats to our food supply, and discussed rural issues on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, Fox News, farm radio, and more. 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. He serves as senior writer for Midwestern-based Platform Communications and lives with his wife and daughter, splitting time between Sacramento, Califorinia—America’s “farm-to-fork capital,” near his wife’s family—and the family farm in Wisconsin.