Six Weeks In: MO EATs Learning Log

GOTURSIX is not in the same place we were on August 1.

We already had the Wright County Farm Stop underway. We knew producers. We were working on food access, SNAP, WIC, infrastructure, and ways to create more opportunities for local food producers. We had no shortage of ideas or things we could put our energy toward.

Missouri EATs gave us a framework and funding to spend some of that energy learning while we were building.

At the beginning of August, many of our questions centered on the Farm Stop. How should it operate? Who should sell there? How could consignment work? How do we accept SNAP and WIC? What licenses are required?

Then the question got bigger:

How does local food move through South Central Missouri now?

So we started following the food.

We talked with Extension, producers, food access organizations, health departments, businesses, Chambers, policymakers, community organizations, and people already doing pieces of this work.

Our project area grew to include Wright, Webster, Douglas, Texas, Laclede, Ozark, and Howell Counties. Those seven counties give us a way to organize the work, but we quickly saw that food does not care much about our project boundaries.

A producer may grow in one county and sell in another. A customer may drive to Springfield. Processing may happen somewhere else. A market may serve several counties.

That changed how we think about the foodshed. Rather than drawing a boundary and asking people to work inside it, we want to put the map on the table and see where the relationships go.

One Egg Led to a Lot of Questions

Some of our best learning has come from following ordinary food through the system.

We wanted to explore selling locally produced eggs through pop ups and eventually through the Farm Stop.

That took us into candling, grading, labeling, refrigeration, retail licensing, dealer licensing, consignment, SNAP, WIC, business structure, and the different roles of producer, retailer, and nonprofit.

One carton of eggs exposed a whole system.

SNAP pushed us further. We had assumed GOTURSIX would eventually become the SNAP authorized retailer for the Farm Stop. Once we got into the process, we encountered governance concerns that made us question whether the nonprofit should be the retailer at all.

That was important.

We started asking less, “How can GOTURSIX do this?” and more, “Who needs to perform this function, and where can GOTURSIX be useful?”

Then we followed a cucumber.

A producer can grow a cucumber, have a pickle recipe people love, and have customers ready to buy it. Getting that cucumber legally into a jar and into a customer's hands took us through cottage food law, acidified food requirements, processing, training, labeling, permitting, facilities, markets, and value added agriculture.

That is where our phrase came from:

A cucumber can feed a family. A pickle can feed a business.

The cucumber also took us to public policy.

We attended the Missouri Foundation for Health Introductory Capitol Workshop on August 25 and 26. By September, we were sitting down with Rep. Melissa Schmidt. A conversation that began with Food Is Medicine moved into cottage food law, eggs, SNAP, local producers, and what we were seeing through our foodshed work.

She asked questions. We went home and researched them.

That became our From Cucumber to Pickle legislative research brief.

In six weeks, we had followed a local food question all the way from the garden to Missouri law.

We Also Started Finding What Was Already There

Our meeting with Little Farm Association gave us another useful lesson.

They are already connecting producers and consumers through ordering, aggregation, membership, and pickup locations across much of the geography we are studying.

That matters because if someone is already performing a function well, we need to know that before we spend money recreating it.

Maybe we connect to it. Maybe there is a capacity or geographic gap. Maybe the Farm Stop provides a different function.

Or maybe something we thought was missing was there all along and we simply did not know about it.

That has made us much more careful with the word missing.

Something may truly be absent. It may be unknown. It may exist but be inaccessible. It may exist without enough capacity. Or the pieces may exist but be disconnected.

Absent, unknown, inaccessible, insufficient, and disconnected are different problems.

That distinction is starting to influence how GOTURSIX approaches community development well beyond this project.

Our Engagement Plan Changed With Us

We went through a lot of ideas for Missouri EATs engagement: surveys, interviews, recorded coffee conversations, story collection, multiple workshops, even a board game.

Eventually, I realized I was moving away from something I already know how to do: facilitate.

So we returned to the Experiential Learning Model I was trained to use in the Army. Give people an experience. Let them work through it. Ask what happened. Then add information that lets them reconsider what they thought they knew.

That is now the basis of our two hour Building the Missing Middle workshop.

Participants will start with a map and a simple scenario:

You just moved to South Central Missouri. Feed yourself locally for a week.

We will not define “local” or tell them where the foodshed ends.

Then company comes to visit and something changes. Maybe the family member has Alpha Gal. Maybe they use SNAP or WIC. Maybe diabetes changes what they need.

What happens to the map?

Afterward, we add information developed by MU Extension and let participants look again.

Then we flip the system.

They have a cucumber, a pickle recipe, and customers.

Get the cucumber to the customer.

We want to see what people know, where their knowledge stops, what resources they know about, what they assume, and what we need to investigate.

That process also helped us finally define a useful role for the Local Leadership Team. We need community connectors who can help us follow what we hear. Is it accurate? Does that resource exist? Does it have capacity? Is there something across the county line? Is this really a barrier, or have we simply not found the pathway yet?

Now the LLT has something concrete to do with what comes out of community engagement.

Six Weeks in Numbers

We are still building the activity log, and we would rather undercount than inflate it. As of September 15, we can document:

7 counties in the project area.

7 Chamber communities identified for activation and relationship building.

1 two day Capitol advocacy training completed.

1 Capitol trip completed during this period.

At least 9 legislative offices or lawmakers brought into our developing network through meetings, introductions, outreach, or follow up.

1 direct meeting with Rep. Melissa Schmidt that generated additional food policy research.

2 HFFI funding pathways pursued, Technical Assistance and Infrastructure, with neither counted as an award.

1 MDA Food Insecure Cost Share application submitted and awaiting a decision.

Those numbers do not capture every producer conversation, phone call, meeting, introduction, regulatory question, partner connection, grant application, or mile driven. But we need to start counting them because the impact of this project includes what is happening to GOTURSIX while we do the work.

What Six Weeks Has Given Us

We are a young, volunteer led nonprofit. We do not have separate research, policy, community engagement, grant, and regional development staff.

Our energy is one of our most important resources.

Missouri EATs gives us a reason and the resources to put some of that energy into learning before we put it into building.

It has taken us to another county for coffee, into conversations with Chambers and producers, through Missouri egg regulations, into another organization's food distribution model, through the Capitol doors, and back home to research questions raised by a legislator.

Then it gives us a framework for asking whether all those individual encounters are telling us something larger.

On August 1, much of our energy was pointed toward building the Wright County Farm Stop.

We are still building it.

But now we are asking what should happen there, what should happen somewhere else, what we can connect to instead of recreate, what needs more investigation, and where GOTURSIX can make a useful contribution.

That may be the most important thing for us to document from these first six weeks.

Missouri EATs is helping GOTURSIX figure out where our energy can best serve the community.