There’s a national crisis playing out right here in Wisconsin – one we’ve all seen, but with too little known about what’s driving it, or how to fix it.
I’m talking about the crisis of the disappearing American farmer. And I’m honored to do my best to tell the truth about it with the launch this month of my book Land Rich, Cash Poor. Many of you who have gotten to know me from our work together at Platform are well aware of my family farming roots. Now I get to share more about that, and what it’s taught me about this national crisis that’s hollowing out rural America and threatening our country’s food supply.
For those wanting more information or wondering what you can do to help, you can check us out on Amazon – please share this link with anyone you think might be interested (and if you see fit to pick up a copy, you’d have my gratitude). Meantime I thought I’d share a few things about this issue, and its policy implications:
- Since the 1920s, America has lost an average of 45,000 farms per year for the past century, impacting farms of all sizes and every American dinner table – when we could have been working together on innovative ways to truly address the issues farmers face.
- The forces driving the disappearance have included economic upheaval, societal shifts, technological change, government policies, and more. This is not just normal industry consolidation, it’s a systematic flaw in how we view the farms that feed us.
- The stakes of this issue are as high as they get – a food supply in question with higher food prices, a food supply chain vulnerable to disaster, and many of our most challenging and divisive issues made worse, when we could be working together.
The book weaves forgotten eras of American history that reveal the truth about this issue with my own family’s four-generation fight on our farm in southern Wisconsin. From my great-grandparents escaping war-torn Europe to my grandparents surviving the Depression to my parents weathering the 1980s Farm Crisis and more, you’ll see our story unfold alongside this nationwide problem that has been a century in the making.
I’m going to be speaking across Wisconsin and the country on this issue, with events coming up Aug. 20 in Milwaukee and Sept. 3 in Madison if you’d like to join. If you’re interested in learning more about it or having me speak to a group, please let me know. You can also find more information on my website, or help by sharing my recent posts on X/Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, or by checking out my new author page on Facebook.
This book has been my 5 a.m. labor of love for a few years now, and I hope it can make a difference on an issue that hits close to home for so many of us.
Brian
President & Chief Content Officer
br@platform-communications.com
P.S. – In case you missed it, my latest columns in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/USA Today Network were on my farmland adoption story, and my new venture into fatherhood.
