Matt Gellings

Matt Gellings broke both of his legs and couldn’t walk for six months after he crashed his snowmobile into a snow-covered stump in January of 2016.

Six years later, the fourth-generation Idaho Falls farmer can look back on his debilitating accident as an experience that closed one door — ending his long career as a food producer — but helped to open another opportunity.

On Jan. 21, Gellings, 64, and his wife, Kathy, made the move from Eastern Idaho to Boise, where the Biden administration has appointed him to serve as the new state executive director for the USDA Farm Service Agency.

Ever since the accident, Gellings has rented his Idaho Falls farmland to a neighbor, Derek Reed. He’s now free to put his experience to work and contribute to Idaho agriculture from an office setting.

Gellings never lost his affinity for farming. By the fall of 2017, he met a personal goal of helping Reed with potato and grain harvest, regaining strength in his legs through a unique physical therapy regimen — reps of climbing up and down the ladder of his tractor.

However, Gellings was glad to leave behind the stress of living with constant risk and having to eke out a profit margin in the face of rising input costs and stagnant commodity prices.

He admits he could have jumped back into crop production after just a year’s hiatus, but he ultimately decided walking away was a safe bet.

“It was so nice not to owe the bank any money,” Gellings said. “We were getting some good cash rent and there was no risk. I’d never had that before.”

Gellings knows through first-hand experience about the importance of the security afforded to food producers through FSA programs. In 2021 alone, FSA loaned $800 million to Idaho farmers and ranchers.

“The government payments definitely helped a lot of people continue their farming and ranching,” Gellings said.

Gellings has a long history of involvement in agricultural leadership, both at the state and national levels.

“If we don’t tell our story, somebody is going to tell it for us,” Gellings said. “Rather than sit and gripe about something in the coffee shop, why don’t you get involved and see if you can make a difference?”

The Idaho Wheat Commission sponsored Gellings to participate in Leadership Idaho Agriculture in 2000 and he explained “from that point doors started opening.”