Helping Veterans - Helping Agriculture

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

The Veterans On the Farm program was conceived last year by the Spokane Conservation District as a way of helping veterans reconnect with agriculture. Pat Munts, Small Farms and Acreage Coordinator with the Spokane Conservation District and WSU Spokane County Extension.

MUNTS: The skills that they learned in the military can transfer over to the independent minded actions on farms. And also it has proved to be a healing agent for people to get back in touch with the earth after a lot of the recent combat veterans’ experiences.

The program’s series of classes are being run through Spokane Community College and WSU Spokane County Extension.

MUNTS: We’re continuing this quarter through SCC with a vegetable production class being taught by our horticulture specialist from WSU Spokane County Extension. We’re also going to be doing a tractor and implement selection use and maintenance course sometime in May. Again it’s an opportunity to give people a chance to experience things before they really go off buying equipment, or learning something ahead of time that eventually will probably save them a lot of time and effort.

In November the Veterans On the Farm program will team up with the Tilth Producers of Washington at their annual conference in Spokane to develop a conference trac for veterans.

MUNTS: It will be looking at how veterans can connect with the USDA programs that are available and also a program that’s called Agriabililty which would look at adaptions that are available for farm machinery for people with disabilities, and it’s not only for the veterans but the older farmers who can’t always climb up on the tractor anymore.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray with the Ag Information Network of the West.