The new National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) president admits he has spent an unusual amount of his time this year in the air, flying between Washington, D.C. and his eastern Michigan “thumb” farm. He’s already made 12 flights since spring, more counting international journeys.

“You get used to it,” Matt Frostic said. “When I first started doing this, it gave me a chance to stretch my mind and prepare for the added pressure in my schedule.”

Frostic’s two top priorities since he became NCGA president on Oct. 1 remain a 2026 Farm Bill and some type of 15 percent ethanol legislation. The farm bill is waiting for a full Senate vote and includes an attached E15 provision. Should that fail, a separate E15 bill is parked in a Senate committee.

“There’s wide-range support,” he said of the farm bill. “We have great advocates for it, great champions. It’s just pathway and key players and key situations that haven’t always been our best advocates.”

The farm bill passed the House in late April, seeking in part to raise reference prices for corn and soybeans that had previously been increased temporarily in the 2025 budget bill but had not been otherwise changed since 2018. The bill ran into Democratic opposition late last month over an indirect issue, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) payments. Such monies represent a major spending of the entire package.

“The sense is that we need to get it done given the industry’s plight right now,” Frostic said. “We get through the election and Congress gets back to work, it will get done. That’s our hope.” Frostic noted that the present farm bill will die and need to be started anew if it is not acted upon in the post-election session.

Agriculture is a geopolitical industry, but Frostic said national farm advocates like NCGA are watching the mid-term elections closely, especially if majorities remain small in both houses.

Corn growers have also been advocating allowing year-round national sales of 15 percent ethanol gasoline. The NCGA has lobbied Congress since at least 2015 to permanently allow E15 sales in months other than summer, which would expand corn demand and eliminate need for recurring emergency waivers.

The NCGA had also pressed for a tariff on Brazilian ethanol as American sales of the fuel have declined 93 percent since 2018. A 25 percent tariff was placed on Brazilian ethanol in July after American ethanol supporters, including Frostic, testified before the U.S. Trade Representative, an arm of the executive branch.

“It’s a little too soon to tell what that will look like,” he said. “With the tariff, we’ve evened out the playing field but at the end of the day we want to be able to move this product freely throughout the world so the consumer doesn’t have interruptions.”

Frostic, 52, is a fourth-generation farmer, planting corn, soybeans, edible beans, sugar beets, and raising beef cattle on some 1,000 acres. His ancestors started out in dairy farming and he likes to tell the story of a great-great grandfather who moved to Michigan from Canada, bringing with him a single, treasured cow. Dairy farming transitioned into his present crop and livestock operation over the late 20th century.

“We’re here,” he said of his present operation, “the last four years have been negative margins and we’re headed into 2027 with the same recipe and how long can some of these growers hold up to that kind of adversity is the trouble.

“With the age of farmers and seeing that the future is very bleak, we don’t have that younger generation coming back to the farm,” he said, “and we have that older generation saying I’m not going to spend all my equity to plant this crop. I’ll just rent it to the guy who’s trying to get bigger.”

Frostic, who studied public administration at Michigan’s Oakland University, is also concerned about the concentration among seed, chemicals and agricultural machinery companies. He chaired a NCGA input cost task force that reported in July that American farmers were being increasingly squeezed between prices for their supplies and prices paid for their crops, what the group labeled “price gouging.”

“On top of the premiums we’re paying,” he said then, “companies are now using trade remedy laws to consolidate their market share and increase prices even further. If this trend continues, input providers will force their own customers out of business.”

Frostic’s family represents some of the personal ironies of modern American farming. His wife Traci has what she calls “a city job” and Katelyn Noll, one of their three daughters, is a certified crop adviser who works for Bayer, according to her mother. The German-based conglomerate was criticized by NCGA in June for seeking import duties on its widely used herbicide glyphosate before backing down on the proposal.

Both Matt and Traci point with pride to all their daughters’ interests and involvement in farming, especially during his work for the NCGA and previously with the Michigan Farm Bureau. Youngest daughter Reagan Sprague manages the family beef operation.

“They had to decide if they were going to get interested in farming,” Traci said. “Whether they ‘own it’ and invest themselves in it mentally or not has to be up to them.”

Beyond the economic state of American farms, Traci pointed out that social media and organizations like the NCGA have helped propel a comeback of the farm wife in recent years. “Farming is getting cool again,” she said. “Networking helps other (farm) women bond.”

Frostic still has 11 months of his presidential term left before he moves into a one-year stint as NCGA chairman. One of his other priorities is expanding American ethanol production into new markets, including an effort toward building ethanol consumption in aviation, bio plastics, and especially the maritime industry.

“This is a big undertaking, but as we have talked and partnered with those industries we do have a natural fit with them,” he said.

Marine bio fuel is an especially attractive new market. Some newly built international ships are including engines that can burn biofuels in addition to traditional bunker fuels, Frostic said.

He admits that he hasn’t made any plans for his life after he graduates from the NCGA leadership, but past presidents have offered him some encouragements.

“It’s when they take your email away and you’re done on Oct. 1, it’s like that day after Christmas times 10,” he said. “I’m not thinking about that day yet because there’s a lot more we need to get done in the next two years.”