The thing that stops a small farm is not only the land. It is whether you can sell what you make without a commercial kitchen. A late frost can wipe out a planting. A rule can wipe out the jar you planned to sell from it.
I have not filed anything. This is the reading, and the disclaimer applies.
Missouri is the narrow one. RSMo 196.298 allows three things from a home kitchen: a baked good, a canned jam or jelly, and a dried herb or herb mix. No state food permit. No sales cap. The old $50,000 limit came off in 2022. You sell direct to the buyer. Online is allowed only if you and the buyer are both in Missouri. A store or a restaurant is not a cottage-food sale. Candy, pickles, salsa, and anything that needs a fridge are outside the three categories. The Missouri enterprise note is the product list. This is the rule that list has to fit.
Kentucky is wider, and it has a ceiling. A home-based processor can sell shelf-stable food from a home kitchen: bread, cakes, fruit pies, jams, candy, dried herbs, nuts, granola. The gross cap is $60,000 a year. You register with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The form is DFS-250, and the fee is $50 a year. Sales are direct, including online, inside Kentucky. Wholesale is out. Pickles and salsa are a different tier, the home-based microprocessor, and that one is for a farmer who grows the crop. KRS 217.136 is the statute. The Kentucky enterprise note is where the product side sits.
Arkansas replaced its old cottage-food law with the Food Freedom Act, Act 1040 of 2021. No license. No sales cap. The food has to be non-TCS, meaning it does not need time or temperature control to stay safe. Baked goods, jams, candy, honey products, and some acidified foods under pH 4.6 fit. Meat, poultry, and seafood do not. You sell to an informed end consumer, and the label has to say the food was made in a private residence that is not state licensed or inspected. The University of Arkansas extension sheet is the plain-language version: FSPPC318. The Arkansas enterprise note is the matching product page.
Mississippi is the tight cap. Miss. Code Ann. § 75-29-951 allows cottage food with no state permit, up to $35,000 in gross sales a year. The sale has to be in person, to the end buyer, in Mississippi. You can advertise online. You cannot take the payment online, ship it, or sell it to a store. The label has to say, in at least 10-point type, “Made in a cottage food operation that is not subject to Mississippi’s food safety regulations.” The health department’s FAQ is here: MSDH cottage food. The Mississippi enterprise note is the product side.
Honey is not the same rule. In these states it is usually treated as a farm product, not a cottage-food jar. Eggs are the same. I am not folding either into this page. A hive and a flock have their own statutes, and I have not read those yet.
What I take from the four. Arkansas is the open door. Missouri is free of a cap but narrow on the food. Kentucky asks for a form and a $60,000 ceiling. Mississippi asks for an in-person sale and stops at $35,000. None of them let me wholesale a jar to a shop. The location post is where the states sit. The Challenge is the budget those sales would have to help carry.
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