Nick Brummel, owner of Brummel Lawn & Landscape LLC, based in Blue Springs, Missouri, has been involved in advocacy for years after a local landscape company invited him to attend a fly-in they were doing with NALP. He says he went, enjoyed it and the rest has been history.
Brummel has been so committed to advocating for the industry that he was named the 2024 Advocate of the Year.
“I started looking back on the names of previous folks, and those are people that have really helped push the industry forward and are also the ones who are always at the fly-ins and are heavily involved,” Brummel says. “It’s a great honor, and it’s a unique group that I’m part of now.”
Brummel has been a major advocate for the H-2B program and for protecting pesticide usage.
“The more you learn about how much pesticides are getting scrutinized and how we could lose different pesticides, there’s been a big push,” Brummel says.
He participates in numerous fly-ins, attends fundraising events, and also talks to his clients and other people about the industry’s causes and why they’re important.
“It’s kind of a three-fold approach to educating our own clients, educating our employees and then educating our lawmakers,” Brummel says.
Brummel says he’s explained to clients about the H-2B program so they have a better understanding of how it is not an immigration issue nor are they hiring undocumented workers.
“Then the light bulb comes on,” Brummel says. “They say, ‘Okay, so you guys are doing it the right way.’”
He says that even though in the Midwest they haven’t been dealing with any leaf blower bans, they are working to be proactive on that front as well. Brummel notes that if things start happening on the coast, they will eventually start happening in the Midwest.
Brummel says without advocacy, landscape professionals would lose so much.
“We wouldn’t have our labor,” Brummel says. “We wouldn’t be able to have our equipment. So if there’s no one speaking and being the voice for us, it’s not going to happen. I think that we’re kind of behind the ball, but we’re getting closer to getting in front of things. I feel like we didn’t do a good job of telling our story in the past, but now, in the last five years, we’ve done an amazing job, and we keep growing, and we keep getting the things we need, and it’s just it’s moving forward.”
He says business owners can’t expect change to happen in a blink of an eye. Brummel makes a point to get to know his representatives and share his story.
“Once you build that relationship, and it doesn’t matter if they’re for you or against you on one issue, if you have that relationship, they’ll at least have the conversation,” Brummel says. “Just that personal story really goes a long way.”
Brummel cautions against refusing to contact a representative just because they may be associated with a party opposite of your political views.
“Someone might be against us on H-2B, but they might be our biggest ally on pesticides,” Brummel says. “If we get in that mindset where we’re not going to talk to them because of one topic, we could hurt ourselves on the other. We have some of our Republicans that don’t really want the H-2B because they think of it as immigration, but they’re a huge fan of us with our pesticide stuff, so they’re really helpful in that aspect. But if we go in there and burn the bridge on the H-2B, we’re costing ourselves something on the other side of the aisle.”
He says it’s about coming together and having an open conversation. Brummel says it’s okay to express your frustration with them, but leave knowing you’ve been heard, and maybe at a future meeting, they’ll have changed their mind.
“The more voices we have, the more power we have,” Brummel says. “It can’t just be a few of us that are speaking out. It’s got to be everybody. Without that, we can’t do it. Everybody’s got to reach out from all 50 states to be able to push the ball forward, not just a few states.”
This article will be published in the November/December issue of the magazine. To read more stories from The Edge magazine, click here to subscribe to the digital edition.
