Military Veterans Learn to Farm with Farmer-Veteran Coalition

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Veterans and farming experts help lay irrigation piping in a field at Archi’s Acres Organic Garden in Valley Center, California. Owner Colin Archipley developed Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training in 2007. Sandy Huffaker/Corbis

An innovative, relatively young program provides active-duty soldiers and military veterans a jump start into civilian existence while bringing life to agriculture.

One-sixth of the U.S. population is enlisted in the military, and 45 percent of that number is from rural farm communities, according to the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Farms need more hands, and veterans need work after service. So Michael O’Gorman founded the nonprofit Farmer-Veteran Coalition, based in Davis, California, to plow the hindrances and help reintegrate service men and women on a national scale.

O’Gorman, a seasoned organic farmer, watched the problem develop just in his lifetime. There was a “major shrinking of the amount of people involved in farming, and more and more dependence on immigrant labor to do our farm work, and I just kind of put two and two together. It was kind of like the lightbulb went off in my head, and I thought, ‘What if we got together with some of my farmer friends and helped create jobs on farms?’” After speaking with other farmers and colleagues, O’Gorman found again and again that others would be onboard. His vision took shape with the focus on a sustainable farm principle, fitting with the military mindset concerned with national defense and security.

The program and its network of farms are open to both veterans and active-duty soldiers. They teach service men and women with little or no background in farming, as well as those who grew up in rural areas, how to run a business on their own.

Buck Adams is one of those security-minded folks. His farming practices utilize scarce Colorado resources in practical ways, and he hopes to go local using greenhouse and hydroponic technology. He sees each state as a small country, and each country he feels should be able to sustain itself.

A career in agriculture is accessible for those looking into the greenhouse model, he says. “You don’t have to have millions of acres of land to be able to produce a decent living, you can have a half-acre and create a decent small business for a single family that can run it and operate it and feel good about it.”