AGRICULTURE

Growing the Agriculture Industry

Running the farm he grew up on allows Robert to understand the many challenges facing our farms and rural communities. Farms support local jobs and families, and annual farm revenue supports local economies. This means when our agriculture industries suffer – entire rural communities suffer.

Robert has worked on and passed legislation to slow the increase of agricultural property taxes, but realizes with our state’s agricultural property taxes already being 5 – 10 times higher on the same soil types than our neighboring states, that more needs to be done to address this very serious issue. If a new formula is not written to calculate our agricultural property tax rate in an equitable manner, in our lifetimes we could see agriculture insolvency in our state – which would cripple our state’s entire economy.

Our neglected bridges must be addressed so that our farmers can get their crops out of their fields, loggers can get their trees to the mills and our poultry, catfish and cattle farmers can get their products to market. All of these farmers pay more than their fair share of taxes and our government has let them down on one of the most basic functions of its responsibility.

Robert will work with our President and Congress to push back against over-regulation from the EPA and stand with our farmers to protect their right to farm. We must maintain a safe and clean environment, but common sense must prevail if we are to compete in a global economy.