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Agriculture is a continued bright spot for Missouri

Missouri’s Director of Agriculture says rural communities have benefited from the significant growth in the state’s agriculture business sector.

Chris Chinn says she expects that to continue under Governor-elect Mike Kehoe’s administration. “But I think we’re also going to be going at a faster pace,” she says. “Governor-elect Kehoe is a businessman, so he wants to see things happen quickly because he knows that Missouri’s economy needs to have fast reaction times to be able to support the growing industry that we have here in the state of Missouri.”

Chinn will continue her role as Director of Ag in the new administration. She tells Brownfield there were significant investments made to increase connectivity in rural Missouri, but there’s still work to be done. “Making sure that we get rural broadband to the very last mile to the very last farm gate,” he says. “It’s great that we have so many more communities that are connected, but as long as we still have communities out there without access to high-speed affordable Internet, we haven’t achieved our goal.”

Chinn says 2025 will be a big year for Missouri agriculture as the American Foods Group is set to open its new harvest facility in Warren County.  “They’re going to process up to 2,400 head of cattle a day when they get up and running at full speed,” she says.  “So we’re really excited about that as it’s going to create 1,300 new jobs for the state of Missouri.”

Governor-elect Mike Kehoe will be sworn in as Missouri’s 58^th Governor on Monday, January 13, 2025.

AUDIO: Missouri Director of Agriculture Chris Chinn