Swords into ploughshares: Veteran Farmers, Farmer VeteransThe Obama administration has been focusing much attention on initiatives for both Veterans and farmers, and as we end a week of Veterans Day celebrations and memorials, we thought we'd point out a terrific non-government organization that is uniting these two groups. The Farmer-Veteran Coalition (FVC), based in Northern California, is an apprenticeship-based program that's doing a critical service for both our military and Ag sectors, by placing Veterans on farms in order to learn Ag skills, as well as to ensure that they have a safe place to re-adjust to civilian life.
Organized in early 2008, and run by experienced farmers, Veterans, and Veterans advocates, the FVC is fulfilling a critical need. After eight years and two wars, the US has a lot of returning vets who entered military service, often as as teens, but who have already spent what seems like lifetimes in war zones, frequently serving multiple tours of duty. Healing from those kinds of psychic and emotional challenges is something that can be boosted by the agrarian life, in which there's a focus on the earth and growth, a regular pattern to the days, and a new set of skills to learn. The kind of hard work, discipline and technical skills developed during military service is also an incredibly good fit for those who work in farming. There are older Vets involved too, training to be new farmers. (Above: FVC members on a trip to a Farm Aid concert in October; the group included Vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who are beginning farmers; read about their trip here)
It's a terrific project from another standpoint, too. The average age of the majority of America's farmers is now 57.1 years old, according to the latest USDA Ag census, and the fastest-growing population is over age 65. American farmers will soon be retiring in droves, and there's a critical need for new farmers. But FVC also has a focus on Urban Ag, for Veterans who don't want to relocate to rural areas, but who do want to farm. And with a huge concentration of the American population in urban areas, Urban Farming is a growth economy, too. As the Coalition's mission statement points out, "If given the opportunity, our returning veterans can benefit from and help to stimulate the growing green economy, even in these hard times."
FVC is led by some impressive figures in Ag. Executive director Michael O'Gorman has been in farming for almost forty years, and for the last twenty, he has been the Production Manager for some of the nation’s largest organic vegetable companies, including TKO Farms, Mission Organics (Natural Selection Foods) and, most recently, Jacobs Farm/DelCabo, where he oversaw 1600 acres of vegetables in the Northern half of the Baja Peninsula. O'Gorman now runs Just Farms Consulting, splitting his time between Del Cabo fields in Mexico and working with new beginning farmers in the US. The FVC advisory board is headed by David Visher, California Program Manager of Food Alliance, and also includes Poppy Davis of USDA; Erin Hardie of California Institute For Rural Studies; Larry Jacobs, CEO of Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo; Todd Koons, CEO/Founder of EpicRoots; Mark Lipson, Policy Program Director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation; Nadia McCaffrey, Founder of the Patrick McCaffrey Foundatin; Matt McCue (an Iraq Vet and farmer) of Shooting Star CSA; Gail Wadsworth, a food systems consultant.
Click the links above and check out this excellent, important organization.
*Photo by Matt Edson, from FVC
