Rooted in the Ozarks: Stories From the Missing Middle

GOTURSIX is developing a body of public-facing writing that documents what we are learning about economic mobility, local food, rural enterprise, food access, community infrastructure, and policy in Missouri’s Ozarks.

Rather than treating each blog as a separate topic, the work can become a connected GOTURSIX editorial and research series.

The common question is:

What stands between the resources already present in our communities and the opportunity those resources could create locally?

Series Purpose

The series gives GOTURSIX a way to turn field experience into public learning.

Each piece should do at least one of four things:

Tell a local story: Show what producers, consumers, businesses, or communities are experiencing.

Explain a pathway: Make complicated systems easier to understand.

Explore a barrier: Examine where local resources and local opportunity fail to connect.

Invite action: Show where partnerships, infrastructure, community leadership, or policy could strengthen the system.

Together, the pieces create an ongoing record of GOTURSIX’s work.

Series Theme

The Missing Middle

The Missing Middle is the space between what a community already has and what it is attempting to accomplish.

In the local food system, that may look like:

Producer → Missing Middle → Market

Local Food → Missing Middle → Consumer

Cucumber → Missing Middle → Pickle Business

SNAP Purchasing Power → Missing Middle → Local Food

Community Resource → Missing Middle → Economic Opportunity

GOTURSIX works in that space.

Current and Developing Stories

The Hidden Costs of Not Trusting a Pickle in Missouri

Theme: Cottage food policy, value-added agriculture, and rural enterprise.

Core question: Could Missouri safely expand the products eligible for small-scale production while maintaining appropriate food-safety protections?

Signature line: A cucumber can feed a family. A pickle can feed a business.

This piece connects a seemingly small regulatory question to a much larger conversation about economic mobility.

When Food Assistance Changes, Rural Communities Feel It

Theme: Food access, SNAP, community response, and rural resilience.

Core question: What happens locally when household food purchasing power changes?

The piece creates an opportunity to explain why food assistance affects more than individual households. Those dollars also interact with grocery stores, farmers markets, producers, community organizations, and local economies.

Soil to Serotonin

Theme: Food, land, community, purpose, connection, and wellbeing.

Core question: What happens when we think about food systems as human systems?

This story broadens GOTURSIX’s food work beyond transactions. Growing, preparing, sharing, and gathering around food can create connection, purpose, skill development, recreation, community participation, and belonging.

Building the Missing Middle

Theme: South Central Missouri Foodshed Project.

Core question: How does local food move through our region, and what do communities need to strengthen that movement?

This becomes the foundational story explaining the MO EATs work and GOTURSIX’s regional role.

Wright County First: Learning by Doing

Theme: Wright County Foodshed pilot.

Core question: What can we learn by participating in the local food system while studying it?

This piece introduces the idea of Wright County as the first learning environment for the regional work.

From Hen to Market

Theme: Fresh Egg Enterprise Pilot.

Core question: What does it take for one very small producer to move one locally produced food into retail?

The egg becomes the vehicle for explaining licensing, refrigeration, pricing, retail, consignment, SNAP, and market readiness.

What Happens to the Other 25%?

Theme: Farm Stop consignment economics.

Core question: What does it cost to create a market for a small producer?

This piece can transparently explain why a Farm Stop retains a portion of a retail transaction and what shared market infrastructure costs.

When SNAP Meets the Farm Stand

Theme: Nutrition benefits and local markets.

Core question: What infrastructure is required to connect SNAP purchasing power with locally produced food?

This story connects food access with producer market access.

One Refrigerator Can Be Economic Infrastructure

Theme: Shared infrastructure.

Core question: What could several producers accomplish together that might be financially unrealistic individually?

A refrigerator, freezer, retail shed, commercial kitchen, or aggregation space can become a tangible way to explain infrastructure as economic development.

The Distance Between Growing Food and Selling Food

Theme: Producer readiness.

Core question: Why does having a product not automatically mean having a business?

This piece can explain the licensing, packaging, insurance, refrigeration, processing, transportation, marketing, and retail steps hidden between production and sale.

Someone Has to Connect Them

Theme: Producer and consumer access.

Core question: What happens when a producer has food and a consumer wants it, but no market connects them?

This becomes a simple explanation of GOTURSIX’s role in the Missing Middle.

Economic Development Might Already Be Growing in the Garden

Theme: Rural economic mobility.

Core question: What economic opportunities already exist locally but lack the conditions needed to grow?

This piece connects the local food work directly to GOTURSIX’s broader community-development mission.

Editorial Structure

Each GOTURSIX piece should generally move through the same progression:

Start with something real.

An egg. A cucumber. A refrigerator. A producer. A customer. A regulation. A conversation.

Reveal the larger question.

Show why the seemingly small issue matters.

Follow the pathway.

Explain what happens between the starting point and the desired outcome.

Identify the Missing Middle.

Show where the connection becomes difficult.

Connect it to people.

Who gains or loses opportunity because of that gap?

Explore rather than prescribe.

Ask what could improve the pathway without assuming one solution.

Bring it home.

Connect the issue to South Central Missouri and GOTURSIX’s mission.

Editorial Voice

GOTURSIX writing should be:

Curious, not accusatory.

Plainspoken, not academic.

Evidence-informed, not jargon-heavy.

Producer-centered, not organization-centered.

Constructive, not performative.

Local first, regional second, policy when relevant.

The writing should sound like an organization that has rolled up its sleeves and encountered the system firsthand.

Research Standard

When a piece makes factual claims involving law, regulation, public programs, economics, or policy, GOTURSIX should maintain the source material behind it.

Sources may include:

• Missouri statutes
• Missouri regulations
• State agencies
• Federal agencies
• University of Missouri Extension
• USDA
• Peer-reviewed research
• Legislative materials
• Reputable nonprofit research
• Producer interviews and firsthand experiences

The blog tells the story.

The research protects the story.

From Blog to Organizational Asset

One research question can create multiple useful products.

Research → Blog → One-page brief → Social content → Producer education → Legislative talking points → Foodshed finding → Action Plan evidence

That means writing is not simply communications work.

It becomes part of GOTURSIX’s community-development infrastructure.

Editorial Calendar

The series can follow the development of the Foodshed Project rather than requiring an artificial publishing schedule.

Fall 2026: Explain the questions.

Focus on the Missing Middle, cottage food, producer pathways, SNAP, the egg pilot, and the Farm Stop model.

Winter 2026–2027: Share what we are hearing.

Begin publishing producer stories, county perspectives, recurring barriers, existing assets, and shared infrastructure questions.

Spring 2027: Show what is emerging.

Connect experiences across counties and begin explaining regional themes.

Summer 2027: Show what we learned.

Use the Food System Action Plan to communicate findings, priorities, opportunities, and next steps.

The Bigger Story

The individual stories may be about eggs, pickles, refrigerators, SNAP, farmers, markets, gardens, or regulations.

The larger story is consistent:

The Ozarks already has resources.

The Ozarks already has people with skills.

The Ozarks already has people willing to build.

Sometimes what stands between those resources and greater economic opportunity is a connection, pathway, partnership, or piece of infrastructure.

Those are the stories GOTURSIX should keep telling.

Rooted in the Ozarks. Growing Opportunity.

Connect neighbors. Navigate barriers. Build what’s missing.