Land Rich, Cash Poor weaves forgotten eras of history with the four-generation fight for survival of the author’s family in Midwestern farm country. Readers learn the truth about America’s most detrimental and unexplained socioeconomic crisis: How our family farms went from cutting a middle-class path through the Great Depression to barely making ends meet in modern America. Along the way, they see the working-class grit it takes to survive life on the farm and feed our country: accidents that kill or maim; weather that blesses or threatens; resilience against 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 new historical analysis, talks with modern farming’s biggest champions and critics, honest debate on both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between, and personal storytelling, Land Rich, Cash Poor reveals how the hollowing out of rural America affects every dinner table. A vulnerable food supply chain, food prices for American families soaring far beyond the rate of inflation, environmental and ecological dilemmas, the security of our farmland, a mental health crisis that includes farmer suicides and addictions, a deepening urban-rural divide, and more.

Brian Reisinger grew up on a family farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin and lives to tell the hidden stories of rural America. An award-winning writer, rural policy expert, speaker, and consultant, Brian worked with his dad on the farm from the time he could walk. His book Land Rich, Cash Poor tells the story of the disappearing American farmer, weaving the forgotten history of an issue affecting every dinner table with his own family’s four-generation fight for survival.

Brian has given a TEDx talk on risks to our food supply, and appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” CNN, public radio, farm radio, and other news outlets across the political spectrum. He’s been published in USA Today, Newsweek, Yahoo News, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, PBS Wisconsin/Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Life”, Game & Fish magazine, The Daily Yonder, RealClearPolitics, The Hill, Saving Country Music, and elsewhere. Brian’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.

Brian worked as a journalist covering economic upheaval, then a speechwriter and strategist on Capitol Hill and across the country. Today, alongside independent writing and speaking engagements, he works at Platform Communications, a Midwestern-based consulting firm. He lives with his wife and daughter, splitting time between northern California near his wife’s family, and his family’s farm in southern Wisconsin.