Congressman Jason Smith visited Lowery Acres as part of his annual farm tour. Lowery Acres is a fourth generation farm located on County Road 283.
“It's great, it is the prime example of what so many family farms are in Southeast and South Central Missouri,” said Smith following the tour of the farm. “This is fourth generation and they are using creative tools to be able to live off the farm and enjoy the life that they want in promoting agriculture. Wether it is the apple orchard they are starting or the potted plants they are growing it is pretty amazing.”
Lowery Acres was started in the late 1930s and produces bedding plants, hanging baskets, mums, apples, berries, cut flowers, pumpkins, Christmas Trees, alfalfa and row crops. Smith, who was joined by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Stoddard County Collector Josh Speakman, viewed one of the four greenhouses, the apple orchard, some of the mums and one of the alfalfa fields during the visit.
Smith then spoke about why the farm tour and Missouri agriculture are so important to him.
“Agriculture is the number one economic driver in our entire state and definitely in our congressional district,” Said Smith. “It is good to hear from farmers and agribusiness men and working families, the issues that they are having and how Washington could hopefully solve the problems they have created. It is usually what Washington has created, and make their lives better where they csn just farm and run their business and not worry about government interfering.”
“It concerns me that for the first time in decades that our agriculture imports to our nation was more than our exports,” said Smith. “That has to change so this is a way that we are trying to look at vehicles to help the products and the items that we are growing.”
Smith said he is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He said this committee is over all tax policy, trade, social security, healthcare and over site of the IRS. He said an economic tax bill came out of the committee in June that will help small businesses, farmers and working class Americans.
Smith said inflation has gone up 16.9 percent in the last two and a half years and they increased the standard deduction by $4,000 in this tax bill to help families cover the inflation they have seen. He said they also did things for small businesses in regards to expensing. Smith said they expanded expensing from the current $1,000,000 to $2,500,000. Smith explained that this extra money could cover the cost of one cotton picker as an example.
He also said taxing and preventing the Chinese from purchasing our farmland is included in the package. Smith said the committee also passed a U.S. Tiwain trade agreement, which he said was his piece of legislation. He said it was the most bipatrasin trade agreement. He said every Republican and Democrat in the house and senate voted for it and the president signed it into law a few weeks ago.
Smith said they are also working on price transparency for healthcare. This will enable people to know what they are paying for when seeking healthcare.
“I really enjoyed him (Smith), I enjoyed visiting with him I enjoyed hearing about what was going on up there a little bit,” said Logan Lowery. “I hope they come away with a little bit of understanding of what we are doing down here as far as speciality crops go. We are not just all corn, beans, rice and cotton. There is some other things happening here too that could be paid attention to.”