Monday, July 28, 2025
spot_imgspot_img
Monday, July 28, 2025

Milwaukee Press Club 'Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism' 2020 & 2021 Award Winners

Book Excerpt: The Hollowing Out of Wisconsin Farmland

spot_img

The following excerpt is from Wisconsin author Brian Reisinger’s “Land Rich, Cash Poor:
My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer.”
Reisinger’s book weaves hidden history from the Great Depression to today with the four-
generation fight for survival of his own family on their farm in southern Wisconsin, revealing risks to the cost and health of our food, America’s security from foreign adversaries, and more. This excerpt from Chapter 7 has been edited for length and clarity.

My first memory with my dad was in our barn —a barn still standing to this day. I was three years old, sitting on a pile of shelled corn in a wheelbarrow my dad was pushing back and forth across the manger in front of our family’s milk cows. Light shone from the long overhead lights, and the heat of animals filled the barn, so that everything was golden and warm, the cows maternal and hungry before milking. With the girls mooing and the wheelbarrow squeaking, we rolled from one cow to the next, feeding each of them by hand.

My dad was tanned on the arms and neck, and strong. He thought nothing of hauling wheelbarrows full of corn up and down the length of the barn, the added weight of his little boy along for the job. At each cow he plunged his large metal scoop into the pile and dumped her share of corn out into the manger. I did the same with a little plastic scoop, dipping into a pale of mineral that sat with me in the wheelbarrow.

Sprinkling each cow her ration of nutrients like pixie dust from Neverland. Every so often, my dad’s scoops would dig enough corn out from beneath me that it would give way, like the sands of time, and I’d tumble—one way or the other—as he worked the wheelbarrow handles just so, to balance the load and keep us rolling.

This is where we learned about the world. Me, and my sister, too, after she came along. Working with our dad, in whatever way our little hands could muster, in the barn and farmyard. Laughing as he hung us from the barn beams by our pants. Screaming as he squirted us with milk from a cow’s udder. Begging him, as he tried to get his work done, to tie us up with baler twine just one more time, to show him how we could escape no matter how tight he pretended to bind us. Watching as he and my mom did chores and tested milk quality and talked about crops together.

Drinking whole milk from a pitcher my mom dipped straight from the bulk tank in the milkhouse then carried to our kitchen table where breakfast was waiting for us all to eat together. Coming back to the barn at the oddest of hours to help pull a calf if its mother was struggling in labor, feeling it slide to the ground, my dad clearing its mouth and nostrils and watching, waiting to see if it would take its first breath—or fall lifeless.

“Come on gol’ dang you,” he’d say. “Come on now.”

We learned, too, in the fields beyond the farmyard where my dad would drive his old pickup, down through the valley, up onto sunny slopes where he had mowed rows of hay to make. Reaching down, he’d feel the fallen alfalfa with his hands, then look at the sky, deciding when it would be dry enough for him to come back through with the tractor to bale or chop his latest crop.

Work and weather and life and death. We learned each of these lessons, there in the dreams and safety of childhood, and each was destined to slip not only into the realities of adulthood, as all things do, but also into the peril of a vanishing way of life. This would be true no matter how badly we might wish it weren’t so, and laid bare with harsh honesty as my sister and I took our different paths. Paths that began in a Neverland that would one day depart from its natural law and disappear before our eyes.

***

American farm country in the late 1980s and 1990s was a dreamworld, an imaginary land in so many ways, not simply because of the innocence of childhood. And not because the fruits of a strong and relatively stable economy were not real, because they were. Farm life during this time was a dreamworld because it felt like a respite from the tumultuous decades that came before. Yet, for the hard-working families of the heartland that helped feed our country for centuries, it was a time of great danger and, for many, unseen extinction.

As the economy of a modern America and global trade system grew, farms already battered by decades of decline lost more control over their own destinies than ever before. Even as they recovered from past crises, they also slipped, one by one, into the endless pull of getting bigger or falling by the wayside. A world of increasingly large farms producing most of our food, or increasingly small farms requiring jobs off the farm to make it, emerged. The farms in the middle, like our family’s—once a major driver of our food economy and a hallmark of American identity—made up the largest share of the disappearance.

“What we end up seeing is kind of a dual system of agriculture,” said Paul Lasley, a rural sociologist and professor emeritus at Iowa State University. That system was one with ever-larger farms producing most of the food, he said, and small farms that families couldn’t depend upon for their entire living because the profits were too small, if they existed at all. Left in between was a hidden force that almost everyone who has closely studied it describes as a “hollowing out of the middle.”

And this slipping away, of large and small farms further away from one another, and of midsized farms out of existence, happened as most Americans—including many recovering farmers—experienced a new wave of opportunity. The tradeoffs facing American agriculture, that constant pairing of opportunity and peril farm families had known from the beginning, were in some ways more closely linked than they’d ever been. Free trade opened more markets across the world to American farmers, while introducing new and often unforeseen risks. A more sophisticated food supply chain accomplished more than ever for the American consumer but demanded more than ever for farm families to adapt.

All this happened as the American farmer carried the scars now of seven decades of disappearance: the loss of mixed agriculture that enabled the shift from subsistence farming; the two decades of off and on economic depression so much deeper than many knew; the departure of farm kids, so important to farming’s future, to the good jobs and bright lights of urban life; times of broad prosperity after World War II that left an unbelievable number of farms behind; family farms’ very own economic catastrophe during the Farm Crisis of the 1980s; and the change in technology that would continue to handicap small and midsized farms, no matter how competitive they were capable of being, for decades more. Now these forces compounded atop one another.

The disappearance was also more invisible than ever before. …

Brian Reisinger is an award-winning writer and rural policy expert who grew working with his dad from the time he could walk on their family farm in southern Wisconsin. His book “Land Rich, Cash Poor” was published August 20 and is available via Amazon and other online retailers, and at bookstores nationwide. He lives with his wife and daughter, and helps lead Wisconsin-based Platform Communications, splitting time between northern California near his wife’s family and the family farm in Wisconsin. You can find him on X at
@BrianJReisinger

Milwaukee Police Detective Bureau

Milwaukee Insults MPD Officers, ‘Betrays’ Them by Stalling Contract, Pay Raises AGAIN: MPA

In a statement, the Milwaukee Police Association called the city's "labor contract tactics" a "betrayal" of Milwaukee police officers. The Milwaukee Police Association is objecting...
U.S.-Canada Border Illegal Border Crossings

Border Patrol Agents Continue to Arrest Iranians, Weapons Traffickers at Northern Border

At the northern border, Border Patrol agents continue to arrest Iranians and weapons traffickers and are helping seize record amounts of fentanyl.

While illegal border crossings are down at the northern border under the Trump administration, Border Patrol agents in the busiest northern border Swanton Sector are continuing to interdict crime. The sector includes all of Vermont, six upstate New York counties, and three New Hampshire counties.

Earlier this month, Border Patrol Agents from the Champlain Station in New York responded to a report of suspicious activity near Mooers Forks, New York. Upon arrival, they located a minivan occupied by five Iranian citizens and two Uzbekistan citizens – all adult men in the country illegally.

Border Patrol agents then determined all seven men “had previously illegally entered the United States at various locations along both the U.S./Mexico border and the U.S./Canada border,” Swanton Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Robert Garcia said. They were detained and are being processed for removal.

“Border security is national security and directly correlates to public safety,” Garcia said, adding that “Swanton Sector agents remain vigilant and committed to protecting our borders and enforcing immigration laws.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are also arresting Iranians in the country illegally, including Revolutionary Guard soldiers, after more than 1,500 Iranians illegally entered the U.S. under the Biden administration, with more than 700 released into the U.S., The Center Square exclusively reported.

In another instance, Border Patrol agents notified the New York State Police about a suspected driver of a vehicle allegedly involved in smuggling activity in upstate New York. State troopers responded, located and stopped the vehicle near Albany, Garcia said. A subsequent vehicle search resulted in a seizure of roughly 4.7 pounds of powdered fentanyl, enough to kill more than one million people.

“This seizure is a powerful reminder of why strong partnerships between federal, state, and local law enforcement are vital to our national security and public safety,” Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia said.

In another instance, Border Patrol agents helped ATF federal partners apprehend a criminal foreign national wanted for weapons trafficking. Honduran national Yubert Yasiel Lopez-Lopez, 31, was arrested in North Attleboro, Mass., after he illegally reentered the country after he was previously deported.

He was first apprehended in 2014 after illegally entering the U.S. in Hidalgo, Texas, under the Obama administration. A federal immigration judge in Houston ordered his removal, which occurred four years later under the first Trump administration. In 2022, he again illegally entered the country in Yuma, Arizona, under the Biden administration. It took another three years to arrest him, this time in Massachusetts, with authorities learning he was wanted in Honduras on weapons trafficking charges. A federal grand jury indicted him last month in Vermont, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont announced. He faces up to two years in prison if convicted and removal from the U.S. for a third time.

“We continue to enforce federal immigration laws and seek maximum consequences against those who violate them,” Garcia said.

Garcia also regularly thanks members of the public for supporting Border Patrol efforts, sometimes acting as the eyes and ears for agents in rural areas by calling in sightings of illegal border crossers or suspicious activity. He continues to encourage members of the public to report suspicious border activity in the Swanton Sector by calling 1-800-689-3362.

The sector was hit hard under the Biden administration with illegal border crossings from Canada reaching record levels, totaling nearly one million, according to CBP data and gotaway data exclusively reported by The Center Square. The greatest number ever reported in U.S. history in the sector was in fiscal 2024 of nearly 200,000, excluding those who evaded capture, The Center Square reported.

Evers Drew Congressional Maps Eric Wimberger Republican’s Second Tax Cut evers vetoes evers budget

Wisconsin Republicans Introduce Bill to Repeal Evers’ 400-Year Veto

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin state legislators have started circulating a bill to repeal Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding veto.

Evers’ veto in July 2023, which turned a temporary $325 per student K-12 funding increase – originally slated for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years – into a permanent increase through the year 2425, was recently upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April, The Center Square previously reported.

However, the court’s ruling suggested lawmakers could still draft legislation as a recourse to the governor’s partial veto, and Republicans are seeking to do just that.

“The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock 402 years before this veto. It is hard to justify locking in a funding increase for just as long into the future,” the bill’s four co-authors said in a cosponsorship memo circulating at the state Capitol, WPR reported.

The bill would effectively reverse Evers’ 400-year veto, eliminating the $325 per pupil adjustment in the school district revenue limit formula beginning with the 2026-27 school year.

“One man locked in a tax-raising mechanism that no one voted for and no one approved,” the cosponsorship memo reads. “Evers’ move bypassed both the elected Legislature and the hard-working people who pay the bills.”

However, if the bill passes both chambers of the Legislature, it would ironically require Evers to not veto it in order to become law.

While the Senate had voted to override Evers’ original veto in September 2023, the Assembly never held a vote on the override, so the effort failed and the veto stood.

Will Flanders, the research director at Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, previously wrote, “The Governor is not a king, even if the state Supreme Court says he is. Given this increase, the legislature should fight hard against any further increases for public schools that are now set up for a boondoggle.”

Governor’s Veto Powers Wisconsin Republicans Parental Bill of Rights Outlaw Child Sex Dolls Embrace Them Both Unemployment Reforms Wisconsin’s Professional Licensing Bail Reform Amendment wisconsin covid-19

Wisconsin Cities, Counties Saw Drop in June Unemployment Rate

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin saw the June unemployment rate go down in 24 of the state’s largest 35 cities over the month while the rates lowered in 63 counties and stayed the same in eight more, according to new numbers from the state’s Department of Workforce Development.

Wisconsin’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate went down to 3.2% in June, less than the 4.1% national rate.

Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate went down to 65.1% in June while the national rate decreased slightly to 62.3%.

Wisconsin saw 10 of its largest metropolitan areas show unemployment decreases while three of those areas remained the same. Twelve of the metropolitan areas saw unemployment decreases over the year while the rate in Sheboygan remained the same.

Menominee, meanwhile, was the only county that saw a month over month increase in unemployment rate while the rate increased in just four counties year over year.

Trump Expects Indictment White House Cocaine president trump covid-19

Tulsi Gabbard Releases New Intel Claiming FBI, CIA ‘Knowingly created’ Russia Hoax

Federal officials have released more documents indicating a Democratic-led intelligence community politically targeted President Donald Trump by claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin influenced the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report Wednesday that “exposes how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false.”

“The Russia Hoax was a lie that was knowingly created by the Obama Administration to undermine the legitimacy and power of the duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump,” Gabbard posted on X.

Notably, the report found that the majority of the intelligence community’s judgements on Russia’s confirmed attempts to meddle with the 2016 election were “sound,” including its findings that Putin ordered “conventional and cyber influence operations” to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and the legitimacy of an expected Hillary Clinton presidency.

However, further judgments from the intelligence community alleging that Putin “developed a clear preference for candidate Trump” and “aspired to help his chances of victory” were not only false but also the result of apparent bad faith, the oversight investigation reveals.

To reach their conclusion that Putin had attempted to help Trump win, top intelligence officials cherry-picked inconclusive information that supported the narrative, omitted or suppressed information contradicting the narrative, and based their “high confidence” assumptions on untrustworthy and dishonest sources.

The report builds upon other documents that Gabbard declassified over the weekend showing that Obama, along with his senior advisors, reportedly pressured the intelligence community to contrive evidence that Russia intended to manipulate the vote count in Trump’s favor.

The Trump administration believes these efforts amounted to a “coup” meant to delegitimize the results of the 2016 election and cast doubts on Trump’s presidency.

Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said Wednesday that the “Russia hoax will go down as one of the most troublesome events in U.S. history” that caused the country to become “more polarized than ever before.”

“A President of the United States was falsely accused, and a nation had to endure lies fabricated by rogue personnel within their own Intelligence Community,” Crawford said on X. “There are still Americans who passionately believe the fabricated narrative. That is why releasing this document to the public has been so important.”

eric toney

Eric Toney Named Wisconsin District Attorney of the Year for His ‘Pursuit of Justice for Victims’

The Wisconsin District Attorneys’ Association has named Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney the District Attorney of the Year for 2024, citing...
ron tusler

Governor Caught Playing Politics with Brillion Residents’ Lives & Livelihood [COLUMN]

This is a column by state Rep. Ron Tusler At 1:30 a.m., while most of Wisconsin was asleep, Governor Evers quietly vetoed a project that...
Brown Deer Police

Boy Invites Brown Deer Cops to His Lemonade Stand & Gets His Wish

A boy invited Brown Deer police over to his lemonade stand and got his wish! It's the heartwarming story of the day, and Brown Deer...
jerome powell

Fed Chair Candidates & New York’s Mayoral Race

Before we talk about the candidates for the Fed Chair position, let’s discuss for a moment the problem with Chair Powell’s current thinking. Right...

Q&A with Tommy Clark, Author of The 2020 Portland Riots: A Fight Against Domestic Terrorism

By Chris Mann Read part 1: Chris Mann's review of The 2020 Portland Riots: A Fight Against Domestic Terrorism by Tommy Clark. Tommy Clark and...

Protecting Portland: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished [REVIEW]

By Chris Mann An In-Depth Review of The 2020 Portland Riots: A Fight Against Domestic Terrorism by Tommy Clark. This summary is the second in...
Governor’s Veto Powers Wisconsin Republicans Parental Bill of Rights Outlaw Child Sex Dolls Embrace Them Both Unemployment Reforms Wisconsin’s Professional Licensing Bail Reform Amendment wisconsin covid-19

Conservative Wins in the Wisconsin State Budget Bill That Passed July 3

Wisconsin has a divided government, and, with a Democrat in the governor's mansion, conservatives were not going to get everything they wanted. However, there...

Shorewood Officer Shot; Glendale Pursues Suspect, Who Appears Dead

A Shorewood, Wisconsin, police officer was shot but saved by his bulletproof vest in the early morning hours of July 3. Several hours later, Glendale...
kendall corder

MPD Confirms Sad News That Officer Kendall Corder Has Died; Procession Unfolding

The Milwaukee Police Department has officially confirmed the tragic news that Officer Kendall Corder has died in the line of duty. Earlier in the day,...

Oconomowoc Rotary Refuses to Document ‘Threats’ & There’s No Police Reports

Getting criticized is hard, but reasonable criticism - even heated criticism - is not a threat. And it's what representative democracy is all about,...
kendall corder, tremaine jones

Tremaine Jones: Milwaukee DA Declined to Prosecute Him 4 Times Leading Up to Officer Shooting

KEY FINDINGS: Accused cop shooter Tremaine Jones was given a deferred prosecution agreement for a 2021 Milwaukee case involving a stolen Kia and...
Killed by Milwaukee Reckless Drivers Milwaukee Reckless Drivers Kill Box In Milwaukee Police

2 Milwaukee Police Officers Shot Near 25th & Garfield

Two Milwaukee police officers were shot on the evening of June 26, police confirmed. One officer remains in critical condition and the second does...
josh schoemann Washington County’s Early Vote

2026 GOP Candidate Josh Schoemann Challenges Evers’ Budget Approach

(The Center Square) – Josh Schoemann, the only Republican currently in the race for governor next year, is criticizing Gov. Tony Evers’ approach to the next state budget by comparing it to his plans in Washington County.

“In Washington County our budget cycle starts right now, and it’s not due until November. We will propose our budget goals to the County Board in the next couple of months. We will share ‘This is what we’re thinking.’ It gives them months of time to think those through, give us feedback, and [have] that kind of dialogue,” Schoemann explained in an interview on News Talk 1130 WISN.

Schoemann said that is far better than the approach Evers is taking again this year.

“That’s not how government is supposed to work,” Schoemann said. “It’s not the vision of the governor. It’s not the vision of any one person.”

Evers and the Republican legislative leaders who will write the budget have been involved in on-again, off-again budget talks this month. On Thursday, the governor’s office said those talks were off once again because of gridlock in the Senate.

“Ultimately, the Senate needs to decide whether they were elected to govern and get things done or not,” Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback said in a post on X.

Schoemann’s criticism of Evers is nothing new. He has long been a critic of the governor and has turned that criticism up since launching his campaign for governor.

But the recent criticism was also aimed at other Republicans who may jump into the 20206 governor’s race later this year.

“Nobody else in this race on the Republican side, being rumored to this point, has the executive leadership of skills and history to be able to show ‘This is how I’ve done it before, and here’s how we’ll do it Madison,’” Schoemann said. “The results in Washington County speak for themselves.”

Northwoods Congressman Tom Tiffany is also rumored to be looking to get into the Republican race. Before he went to Congress, Tiffany was a Republican lawmaker in Madison.

Businessman and veteran Bill Berrien is also on the short list of likely GOP candidates for 2026.

richard van buren

Richard Van Buren Arrested in Dodge County Dog’s Death, Sheriff Says

Richard Van Buren, the chairman of the Chester Town Board in Wisconsin, was arrested in the death of a golden retriever dog in rural...

Rep. Donovan, Greenfield Officials Outraged at Release of Accused Random Stabber

State Rep. Bob Donovan and top Greenfield officials are expressing outrage and concern over the release of a man who is accused of randomly...