Missouri Farmers Ponder Future without Defunded USDA Program

USDA defunded a program that helped Missouri farmers. What’s next for those who relied on it?

The program aimed to help small and midsized farms with things like market access and technical assistance to help them grow and maintain their businesses.

USDA defunded a program that helped Missouri farmers. What's next for those who relied on it?

With the help of a now-defunded program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Travis Jones and Makeesha Munro spend almost 15 hours a week traveling to various farmers markets and selling their culinary mushrooms to other buyers in Sedalia, Joplin and Springfield (Meg Cunningham/The Beacon).When Makeesha Munro and her partner Travis Jones started their farm in Collins, Missouri, they didn’t expect to be traveling across the state to sell the …