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Michael O’Gorman is interviewed by Sierra Club Magazine, April 4, 2009

Food Conscious: Farmers recruit combat veterans

San Franciso Chronicle
Janet Fletcher, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 24, 2008

A few years ago, Matt McCue was a U.S. Army infantry soldier trampling through fields and farms in Northern Iraq looking for enemy weapons. Today, the 26-year-old veteran traipses through 15 acres of fennel, beets, chard and kale as manager of the French Garden farm in Sebastopol, a job secured for him by a fledgling Bay Area organization dedicated to helping vets learn to farm.

“There was a sense that our farms had something to offer, not just for the soldiers coming back but for the whole nation,” says Michael O’Gorman, a founder of the new Farmer-Veteran Coalition and the former production manager for Del Cabo, an organic tomato-growing cooperative in Baja.
A win-win

Sensing a brewing epidemic of unemployed vets in rural areas, O’Gorman and several other California peace activists with ties to agriculture spotted a win-win solution. With a little assistance, returning combat vets could find healing and productive work on farms, while communities burgeoning with locavores would benefit from new recruits to local food production.

McCue, who started his farm job in December, grows produce for the affiliated French Garden restaurant and for several Sonoma County farmers’ markets.

“I feel like this has helped me set my future up,” says the vet, who cites the home gardens and pomegranate orchards of Iraq as inspiration for his interest in farming. “I even fantasize about going to Iraq and working as an extension agent.”

The coalition recently held its first benefit dinner, at the French Garden restaurant, and netted enough money to lay the legal foundation required to apply for grants. With funding, a paid outreach coordinator will be able to connect with vets through military job fairs and veterans’ groups.

“We want to get the word out to these young men and women that this is not your grandfather’s farm,” says O’Gorman. “This is a new time. You can get into farming with a lot less money doing regional production. You don’t need to inherit 640 acres.”

For the past year, O’Gorman has volunteered his time as a consultant to vets who are new to farming. Among his proteges is Colin Archipley, a Marine who did three tours in Iraq. At Archi’s Acres near San Diego, Archipley now grows avocados and hydroponic basil and tomatoes and welcomes other vets for two- to three-month apprenticeships.

Farming “is a good thing for vets, especially Iraq vets,” says Archipley. “We lose a lot of our social skills, and when we come back, we don’t want to mingle with people back on the block. We talk a different language.” On the farm, says Archipley, vets can find satisfying work that doesn’t require daily interaction with customers.

O’Gorman points to the recent Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco as a sign of the appetite for locally grown food and the urgent need for new lifeblood in agriculture.

“This whole exciting, dynamic revolution in food production is not going to happen if we don’t have young men and women go into farming,” says O’Gorman.

New purpose

For many soldiers returning from combat, growing food may be the ideal transition. “I think a lot of the depression in the military spawns from not having a purpose,” says McCue. “What is your life going to be defined by? In the military, if you get into an altercation, your life is defined by tragedy. My life is defined by growing and harvesting things, and there’s a lot to be said for that.”

Farming helps veterans ease back into civilian life

By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT (Santa Rosa, CA)

Published: Monday, September 15, 2008

In a plaid shirt and jeans, dusty boots and a billed cap, Matt Mccue surveyed a row of chili pepper plants in the commercial garden he manages on a hillside west of Sebastopol.

Mccue, 26, plucked a red, wrinkled chili from one stalk. “It’s sunburned,” he said, taking a large bite.

“Whew,” Mccue said. “That’s got some flavor.”

The tranquil, verdant setting at 25-acre French Garden Farm is as far removed as can be — physically and psychologically — from the Iraqi desert, where Mccue served as a sergeant with the Army’s 4th Infantry Division in 2003-04.

Outdoor work and the challenge of growing food suits Mccue, one of several dozen war veterans engaged in farming and allied with a 16-month-old group called the Farmer-Veteran Coalition.

“We think it’s a significant concept,” said Michael O’Gorman, production manager of the 1,600-acre Del Cabo organic farm operation in Baja, Mexico, and adviser to the coalition. “It’s just getting started.”

War vets need a place to decompress from the stresses of combat and the demands of military discipline, said Sufyan Bunch, the coalition’s veteran outreach coordinator who served with McCue at Fort Hood but did not go overseas.

“You can dress how you want, drive a tractor, grow a beard,” Bunch said. Farm work is “a perfect fit,” he said, for a veteran who might feel uncomfortable in an office cubicle.

The coalition grew from a meeting between a group of farmers and three Gold Star mothers who lost their sons in combat. They gathered at Swanton Berry Farm overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Davenport, north of Santa Cruz, in May, 2007.

One of the mothers was Nadia McCaffrey of Tracy, whose son, Army Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, was killed in Iraq while serving with a Petaluma-based National Guard unit in 2004.

The idea, said O’Gorman, is that farms can provide both employment and healing for war veterans. And it cuts both ways, he said, because American agriculture — with five times as many farmers over age 65 as under 35 — needs young blood.

New farmers are needed not only to invigorate the industry, but also to propel the “green farming” movement toward more wholesome, fresh, locally grown foods, O’Gorman said last week on a visit to French Garden Farm.

Sonoma County, he said, is a “ground zero” for the movement.

About half of French Garden Farm’s produce goes to the nearby French Garden Restaurant, where the menu is tailored to the seasonal harvest, said Dan Smith, a high-tech entrepreneur who owns the farm and upscale eatery.

Most of the rest is sold at farmers’ markets, and if there is still more bounty, it goes to local food pantries, Smith said.

Mccue, who started work as the farm’s foreman in December, said he feels at home among the long green rows of some 20 different crops. “I have a relationship with these plants,” he said.

Many people join the military for the challenge, and Mccue said farming is every bit as big a challenge — with no one around to pick up your slack. He said he feels as if he’s been promoted from private to general, responsible for both daily decisions and the ultimate outcomes.

“You have to go all or nothing into farming,” he said.

Mccue, who grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., left the Army in early 2005 and subsequently served with the Peace Corps in Niger, an impoverished west African nation, raising millet and sesame with farmers who do all their work by hand.

On the hillside west county, Mccue operates a tractor, trucks and drip irrigation lines. A spacious barn serves as the farm’s packing and storage area.

“I’m very lucky,” Mccue said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.

Unique food, peace and farmer event coming to French Garden

Sonoma West Times
Sebastopol’s French Garden Restaurant will lay out the white tablecloths for a special afternoon dinner on Sunday, Sept. 14, from 3 to 6 p.m. to help launch a new collaboration between seasoned farmers and energetic young veterans looking for their place in the current food revolution.

“Farms Not Arms,” headquartered in Petaluma is sponsoring this event to promote the Farmer-Veteran Coalition.

Produce for the event is grown by Iraq war vet Matt McCue and his crew, including other veterans, on the French Garden Farm nearby, according to Dan Smith, owner of both the restaurant and the farm.
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Executive Chef Didier is transforming the dinner menu.

Longtime organic farmer with Del Cabo Organic and Project Director of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, Michael O’Gorman said he was very excited to announce that his friend George Naylor, Iowa soybean and corn farmer, and Past President of the National Family Farm Coalition, will be the event’s keynote speaker.

“There is no one in the entire country,” O’Gorman said, “that can explain how agricultural practices, policies and politics have created the dire situation our food production is in.”

Much of Michael Pollan’s recent book, “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” was dedicated to Naylor and filled with references to his first-hand observations. Pollan is also involved with the Slow Food movement, which emphasizes preserving traditional food sources and educating people about food as a center of community.

“There truly is a revolution going on in food and farming,” O’Gorman said, “and Sonoma County is Ground Zero for it – the growing public demand for healthier, fresher, more diverse, and most importantly, locally grown food. But we can’t make it happen, unless we reverse the 200-year-old trend of having fewer and fewer American farmers. Farming is a life-long commitment to long hours and physical work. We will not find the farmers without reaching out to the two million young Americans who have come out of the military since September, 2001.”

Farm Life Soothes Veteran

(subscription required)

The Salinas Californian

By MARIA JOSE VENAS

02/11/2008

Jim Dunlop may have brought some demons with him after serving as a Marine in the first Iraq war in 1990. But he says he’s worked them out raising free-ranging pigs and laying hens on a 20-acre farm in Las Lomas.

Dunlop is a living example of what the group Farms Not Arms wants to achieve. The farmers association has started a program, dubbed Swords to Plowshares, which aims to help veterans to overcome painful war memories by encouraging them to become farmers, in a literal interpretation of the Old Testament passage, “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

The initiative aims not only to offer veterans solace, but also the chance to switch careers. Farms Not Arms’ co-founder Michael O’Gorman said a disproportionate percentage of soldiers’ fatalities in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have been young people coming from small, rural towns.

“The military is a job opportunity for people who had no opportunities on the land,” O’Gorman said. “And we want to reverse that.”

He spoke at the Eco-Farm Conference last month in Pacific Grove. Both O’Gorman and Dunlop participated in a panel that included three other veterans.

Dunlop, now 38, had just finished high school when he joined the Marine Corps.

“I wanted to be a tough guy, so I joined the Marines,” he said. “I thought it would be good for traveling.

“I didn’t have a good concept of what four years in the military would be like – I guess that when you’re young, you don’t have such a good concept of time.”

Dunlop, an athletic man who had been a track star in high school, said he really liked being in the Marine Corps … but only for the three-month duration of boot camp.

“I hated it when it became more like a job,” he said.

After boot camp, Dunlop was sent to an artillery training school in Oklahoma, then spent one year posted on a Navy ship. “It felt like prison,” he said. He started running around in circles on the ship’s deck at night; it took him 30 laps to complete a mile.

Afterward, Dunlop was sent to Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, where he started running “like crazy,” about 20 miles a day, and joined the Marines’ track team. He tried to get kicked out of the Marines; on one occasion he smashed his own hand with a rock and pretended he had broken it while running, so he could go visit his family in New York.

When he came back, he was deployed to the Gulf War. It was December 1990.

Dunlop and his fellow Marines disembarked in Saudi Arabia and moved very fast toward Kuwait. On one occasion, his group was trapped in a minefield, but managed to get out of it unharmed.

“Next day, two people died in there,” he said. “I guess we just got lucky.”

Dunlop spent only 10 days in Kuwait. He was then sent back to his ship in the Persian Gulf, where he stayed until August 1991. After he was discharged, he traveled in Australia, where he ran out of money and worked picking watermelons and tomatoes on a farm.
“I really liked the camaraderie and the hard work, and I realized I was good at it,” Dunlop said.

When he came back to the United States, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology and worked as a farmer in Mariposa, where he raised broilers, hens and vegetables and started a community-supported agriculture project. He moved to Las Lomas three years ago, after marrying Rebecca Thistlethwaite, director of programs at the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association in Salinas.

‘It’s good for people’

Dunlop said he agrees with the philosophy of Farms Not Arms, which believes that putting combat veterans in contact with nature will help heal the soldiers of mental or emotional problems associated with their service.

It is unclear how many of the military personnel deployed in the current wars will end up showing mental health problems. But according to a study published in 2006 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, 19 percent of the 238,938 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who answered an anonymous survey reported suffering mental-health disorders, which included major depression, generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Farms Not Arms is hoping that Swords to Plowshares can do its bit.

“Farming has been good for me,” Dunlop said. “Whether it’s the quiet, or the hard work, or being outside with nature, understanding the rhythms of the Earth – it’s good for people.”

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Organic Farmers Mobilizing Against the Iraq War

Anti-war movement grows from local farms

Santa Cruz Sentinel

By Soraya Gutierrez, , Posted Dec 20, 2006

DAVENPORT – Farmer Jim Cochran is inviting troops to drop their arms and join him on thefarm to stick their hands in the dirt, grow something and feed people.

In his line of work, Cochran always has to anticipate potentially harmfulsituations, like water and insect problems, and think about what he can doto mitigate things. Now, Cochran, who founded Swanton Berry Farm nearHighway 1 and served in the military for two years, is rallying the farmingcommunity to think globally, and say no to war and terror.

That’s the basis for Farms Not Arms, an organization Cochran co-chairs, thataims to unify farmers The group, with headquarters in Petaluma, was formed less than a year ago bya handful of West Coast farmers and now has about 200 members nationwide.They are intent on finding ways to bring an end to the war and welcometroops back home.

“Farmers want to cooperate in a constructive way,” Cochran said as he fixedan omelette for a recent brunch he hosted at his Davenport farm stand todiscuss the role food producers can play in opposing the war.

Taking a stance against war may not be an issue commonly associated withfarmers, but in Santa Cruz County, some say it’s only natural.

“California, specifically this area here, has been on the forefront offarming innovation and independent thinking,” said Steve Bontadelli,president of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau.

The idea of introducing Iraq war veterans to farming is appealing toBontadelli, who said his nephew recently returned from Baghdad after a yearof service.

While the county Farm Bureau has not taken an official stance on the war,Bontadelli said, bringing the troops home and welcoming them into thefarming community could be a healthy distraction.

“It would be a good way to get their mind off what they just went through,”he said.

Farms Not Arms wants to work with veterans groups to organize paid work onAmerican farms for the war-weary and injured veterans returning from Iraqand Afghanistan.

Farming, Cochran said, can provide a therapeutic experience and viablevocational training. He said the work and training can be extended to otheryoung people who are considering the military because they may not be awareof other opportunities.

“This is a way to increase those choices In addition to introducing would-be troops to the tools of the farmingtrade, Farms Not Arms is looking to go green by producing alternatives toforeign oil. Many types of crops are being turned into environmentallyfriendly home-grown fuels, and much more can be done in the future,according to the Farms Not Arms Web site.

Another of the group’s goals is to reduce fuels and carbon dioxideemissionsin what it calls “wasteful food production and distribution systems.”

Building alliances among farmers to protect farmland and the environmentmust start in the community, said Mike O’Gorman, a founder and co-chair ofFarms Not Arms.

“It’s not the president that needs to make a change, it’s our whole countryand society,” O’Gorman said. “We all have to do something.”

For information, visit http://www.farmsnotarms.org or e-mail info@farmsnotarms.org .

Contact Soraya Gutierrez at sgutierrez@santacruzsentinel.com

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