The USDA defunded a program aimed at helping small farmers

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 culinary mushrooms they grow.  Jones was semiretired and looking for a way to leverage their property for additional income. One night, they decided to dive into farming mushrooms. After…

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Downtown KC Renaissance Seeds Congregations

The Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Downtown Kansas City doesn’t run a school but instead operates Morning Glory Ministries, which provides food and other help for needy people in the city’s center.

As civic, commercial and residential life has blossomed in Kansas City’s Downtown in recent years, religious life has grown there, too. But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy for newly planted Downtown faith communities to flourish. “It’s been tougher in one sense than we thought it would be,” says the Rev. Troy Campbell, pastor of…

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Nick’s Picks | Thanksgiving, Plaza, Betting

Kansas City shifts into festive high gear this week with the granddaddy of all local holiday traditions, the Plaza Lighting Ceremony. Members of the Kansas City Current, including Laurel Ivory and Kayla Sharples, will flip the switch on the Country Club Plaza’s more than 250,000 bulbs on Thanksgiving night. While the music and speeches start…

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Nick’s Picks | Andretti, FIFA, Petition and More …

From Shutdown to Epstein Now that the federal government shutdown is over, our major news outlets need another big drama to focus on. They seem to have found it in the Epstein files. The House is expected to vote Tuesday on releasing the final documents relating to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The…

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