Farmer sick of being poster boy for stewardship

Matt Bormann feels used and abused as a model for stewardship by an ag establishment that does not want to invest in comprehensive conservation.

The St. Joe farmer, age 46, is a registered Republican. He is a former Kossuth County Farm Bureau president and was a voting delegate to the Iowa Farm Bureau for 14 years. He was appointed by Gov. Reynolds to the state soil and water commission.

“It disgusts me,” Bormann said.

All of it: the polluted surface water and lost soil, the duplicity of state officials, the chemical companies spinning yarns using him on the cover of their magazine as an agent of conservation improvement.

He’s been in the “strip-till Mafia” for decades, farming with his two brothers and his wife, Nancy. She holds a doctorate in soil science and is a former agronomy consultant for a confined swine feeding company. They were held up by the commodity groups as an example of the kind of culture that could be fostered under “voluntary nutrient reduction.” See? Here’s a guy with an Iowa State cap who’s doing it.

Eventually Matt realized that the president of the chemical company was making kajillions while the Bormanns make rent but didn’t get a red cent for posing. In fact, his brother pays rent to my wife as an absentee landlord from the farm where she grew up near LuVerne. Matt was not crazy about me because he had heard all the smack at the meetings. His views started to change in conversations with my father-in-law, an eccentric and brilliant farmer who never toed the corporate line.

Bormann was furious when the chair of the state soil and water commission came back from a meeting with Ag Secretary Mike Naig and someone from the governor’s office who told them what the budget would be without the commission having any say.

“I got absolutely used and they did absolutely nothing,” he said. “This thing is rigged. You eat a free lunch for not doing anything.”

Water quality is getting worse. Soil is rolling down the river. Matt and Nancy would hold a field day for three farmers wanting their own free lunch and a van full of politicians and bureaucrats for pictures.

“I’ve been paraded around as the poster boy and I’m sick of it,” he said. “Every neighbor around is not strip tilling. They’re all doing what they’ve always done. So I ask: What are we doing?”

Matt says advocacy can’t be merely left to a bunch of aging hippies. He says he is in a peer group of about 25 farmers devoted to resilient and regenerative agriculture who need to be heard: You can farm for yield without fall fertilization, or without over-applying manure at the wrong time. You can reduce chemical costs and improve soil health with cover crops.

The incentives favor production and ample use of chemicals.

“Back in 1997 I was a conservative farm kid at Iowa State who wanted less government just like these guys. Now they’re defending the system. I’m still the same guy. What happened to them?

“Everybody’s frustrated,” he said. “They’re scared of the machine.”

He would love to give gubernatorial candidates an earful from a real producer with big red tractors who used to raise cattle until they nearly dragged him under. He knows first-hand the challenges of modern agriculture. They have ghosted him and his cohort so far. If Rob Sand indeed wants to learn more about surface water pollution, Bormann farms in the Des Moines River watershed that funnels toxic nitrate and phosphorous to Saylorville Reservoir. Bormann’s phone is not ringing off the hook. He isn’t waiting for a call from whichever Republican succeeds Gov. Reynolds.

If he were full of bunk he would not be growing seed corn for a major company. They know he and Nancy pay attention to detail and manage it. He is no outlier. Matt lives on Kenny Bormann’s place, next door to where his dad grew up on the Harold Bormann farm. Not all farmers buy into the cropaganda.

A lot of people clamoring for water quality should hear him out. We need nitrogen at the right time in the right place. Chemicals in moderation. Cover crops inhibit weed growth. If you are conserving soil and water, you are sequestering carbon. None of it is radical. Change is possible even in St. Joe when the right people get on board and the right incentives are in place.

Change we must. Our rivers are among the worst in America. People in Des Moines worry about tap water safety, pretty basic stuff of life. Eventually the politics catch up, and Matt Bormann would like to be independently on the right side of it.