Every August, I travel across Southeast and South Central Missouri to visit farms and small businesses as part of my annual Farm Tour, and this year was no different for our 14^th annual tour. Stop after stop, I got to walk fields, tour mills and factories, and sit down with the families who feed and fuel our nation — and every conversation reminded me why I do this job.

At every stop, I heard concern about the rising cost of the three F’s: food, fuel, and fertilizer. Missouri farmers are the best in the world, but higher input costs have made it harder for many of them to make ends meet. That’s why the higher reference prices I fought to include as part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill are so incredibly necessary, and those payments will start being disbursed this October. The importance of those reference prices was underscored by meetings I had with the Missouri Rice Council in Dunklin County, then with cotton producers in Pemiscot County. Growers raised concerns about export markets, high input costs, and a shrinking number of cotton gins that’s made it harder just to get crops to market. The reference price increases I fought for included the first increase in the rice reference price in nearly 20 years and raised the cotton reference price by 14 percent.

In Howell County, I visited Long Farms with owners Jake and Brittney Long where Jake’s family has raised cattle since right after the Great Depression. Jake’s father ran the operation as a dairy for 35 years before Jake came home from college and the family shifted to commercial beef, and today they run about 175 mama cows. He and Brittney use their online platform, Faithful Farming, to share their family’s way of life and show how they work to maintain something to hand down to their boys, Henry and Jack, just as Jake’s father did to him. As I met with them, I was reminded of the importance of the death tax relief that we expanded and made permanent in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill as well.

It’s also incredible to see how our farms are focused on feeding Missouri families. One of my first stops was BJG Meat Co. in Carter County, where I sat down with owner Brad Goodman to tour the business his family has built in Grandin over the past three years. BJG employs 15 people between its processing plant and retail stores in Grandin and Poplar Bluff, and 99 percent of what it sells is sourced right here in Missouri. Family operations like Brad’s know their business better than Washington ever will.

This year’s tour brought me to Reynolds and Iron Counties as well, which are still recovering from the historic flooding that hit the area in July. In Reynolds County, I toured the damage at Valley Springs Youth Ranch, which suffered an estimated $3 million in losses, and at Black River Baptist Church, where floodwaters destroyed its sanctuary as well as its food distribution building that the church used to feed more than 100 families. In Iron County, commissioners walked me through the staggering $19 million in infrastructure damage countywide. What I saw was heartbreaking, and my office is working to connect these communities with the resources they need to rebuild.

Agriculture has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I spent my childhood helping out on my grandparents’ farm in Salem, and I later bought that same farm to keep it in the family. FFA played a big role in shaping who I am, too. Serving as President of my local chapter taught me how to lead and instilled values that got me to where I am today — hard work, responsibility, faith, and service. And that blue jacket still hangs in my office as a reminder of where I came from. I’ll continue showing up, listening, and fighting for the farmers who work from sunrise to sunset to feed, clothe, and fuel our nation.