GOTURSIX at the Missouri Capitol
Veto Session 2026
GOTURSIX is a veteran-founded 501(c)(3) community development nonprofit serving Missouri’s South Central Ozarks.
Mission: Building the conditions for economic mobility in Missouri’s Ozarks.
Current strategy: Championing Ozark Food Producers.
Our work asks a practical question: What stands between the resources already present in our rural communities and the opportunity those resources could create locally?
Why We’re at the Capitol
We are not coming with a list of complaints or a predetermined legislative solution.
We are bringing questions, producer experiences, and early findings from the ground.
Our work with local producers is revealing places where food safety, regulation, market access, nutrition benefits, infrastructure, and rural enterprise intersect.
We want Missouri policymakers to know what small producers are experiencing as they move from:
Resource → Product → Market → Enterprise
Conversation 1: Cottage Food and Value-Added Enterprise
Our recent conversations with local producers raised a simple example:
A cucumber can feed a family. A pickle can feed a business.
Missouri provides a relatively accessible cottage food pathway for certain foods produced in home kitchens. Other products, including pickles and similar acidified foods, require a substantially different production pathway.
That raised a question for us:
Could Missouri safely expand the types of products eligible for small-scale home production while maintaining appropriate food-safety protections?
Following our conversation with Representative Melissa Schmidt, GOTURSIX researched approaches used in other states and developed the legislative research brief:
From Cucumber to Pickle: Growing Producer Pathways for Local Market Enterprise in Missouri
We are interested in continuing that conversation.
What We’re Asking
Would you be willing to explore whether Missouri’s cottage food framework could provide inclusive product eligibility for additional foods when appropriate safety requirements can be established?
We are interested in helping bring producer experiences, research, public-health perspectives, and examples from other states into that discussion.
Conversation 2: Small Producers and the Missing Middle
A producer may have the land, skill, product, and customer.
What may be missing is everything between production and market:
• Processing
• Refrigeration
• Storage
• Retail infrastructure
• Licensing knowledge
• Distribution
• Market access
• SNAP access
• Affordable shared infrastructure
GOTURSIX calls this space the Missing Middle.
Our question is:
What could Missouri do to make it easier for small producers to navigate the distance between producing food and building viable local enterprise?
The answer may involve policy, but it may also involve technical assistance, shared infrastructure, regulatory clarity, market development, or better coordination between existing resources.
Conversation 3: SNAP and Local Food
GOTURSIX is developing the Wright County Farm Stop and testing how a small shared market could connect local producers with consumers.
One goal is to make qualifying locally produced food available to households using SNAP.
As we began exploring SNAP authorization, we encountered ownership and application requirements that raised questions about the most workable structure for a nonprofit-supported rural market.
We are now documenting the pathway through a separate retail model.
The larger question is:
How do we make it easier for locally produced food and SNAP purchasing power to meet in the same rural marketplace?
This matters to both sides.
For consumers: More opportunities to purchase locally produced food.
For producers: Access to customers whose food purchasing power may otherwise never reach their businesses.
Conversation 4: Rural Food Access Is Also Economic Development
Food access and producer development are often discussed separately.
We see them as connected.
If a producer has food and a consumer has purchasing power, but no local market connects them, the community loses both a food-access opportunity and an economic transaction.
Our economic-development question is:
How can Missouri help more local resources create more local value?
Sometimes the opportunity is not recruiting something new into a community.
Sometimes the producer, product, customer, and demand are already there.
What is missing is the pathway between them.
Conversation 5: South Central Missouri Foodshed Project
GOTURSIX has been selected through the MO EATs framework with University of Missouri Extension to lead regional foodshed work in South Central Missouri.
Our approach is:
Listen locally. Learn regionally. Build together.
We are beginning in Wright County and expanding the work across the region.
We want to understand:
What exists?
What is missing?
What makes it easier or more difficult for local food to move from producer to consumer?
Local stories will help identify shared patterns and priorities that will inform a regional Food System Action Plan.
What We Are Learning
Several themes are beginning to connect:
Producer readiness: Growing food and becoming market-ready are different stages.
Shared infrastructure: Small producers may benefit from resources they could not economically build individually.
Value-added opportunity: Processing can create additional value, but also introduces additional regulatory and infrastructure requirements.
Market access: Producing food does not create income until a producer can reach a customer.
Food access: Consumers cannot purchase local food with nutrition benefits unless an authorized market connects them.
Regulatory navigation: Understanding what is required can itself become part of the barrier.
These are the questions GOTURSIX intends to continue exploring through real-world experience and community listening.
What We Need From Legislators
We are not asking lawmakers to solve every issue today.
We are asking for partnership.
Listen: Hear what South Central Missouri producers are experiencing.
Connect: Help us identify agencies, organizations, committees, and other policymakers who should be part of these conversations.
Question: Ask whether existing systems work as intended for very small rural producers and retailers.
Explore: Consider where policy, administrative practice, technical assistance, or shared infrastructure could improve producer pathways.
Stay connected: Let us bring you what we learn through the South Central Missouri Foodshed Project.
Our Commitment
GOTURSIX will continue to:
Listen to producers and consumers.
Walk the pathways ourselves.
Document what happens.
Separate individual frustrations from broader patterns.
Research before recommending.
Include food safety and consumer protection in the conversation.
Bring regional voices and evidence to policymakers.
Look for practical solutions before assuming legislative solutions are necessary.
The Question We Want to Leave Behind
When a South Central Missouri resident already has the land, skill, product, work ethic, and customer demand to create economic opportunity, what can we do together to make sure the missing piece is not simply a pathway to market?
That is where GOTURSIX intends to keep working.
Connect neighbors. Navigate barriers. Build what’s missing.
