Each year, more than 200,000 veterans leave military service and return to civilian life. These men and women have served their country with honor and have learned invaluable skills that make them a tremendous asset to American businesses of all kinds.
Recently, LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, researched the profiles of 1.1 million veterans on the networking platform and determined that veterans are more likely to be detail-oriented and dependable team players, and have skills such as integrity, team leadership, and problem solving and critical thinking already developed.
Here at Farm Credit West—one of the West’s leading agricultural lenders—we’ve believed for years that veterans make great employees. To find them, we have developed an outreach program to hire them ourselves, and also work with other groups to urge veterans to consider a broad range of careers in agriculture.
Why veterans? We have found that once veterans make a decision about a career path, they are generally tenacious about sticking with it. As I’ve learned from several family members who have served, veterans are willing to stand up when they’re knocked down, which is a valuable trait to have in farming.
We also believe veterans exhibit the character, honor, and integrity we want in our workforce. To that end, our recruiters actively look for veterans to hire, and we have hired a veterans’ coordinator to visit college campuses to meet with veterans’ groups and to supervise a companywide mentor program.
Our veteran coordinator, Len Monaco—a Marine veteran and retired Farm Credit West senior vice president—visits such colleges as Chico State, Fresno State, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to reach out to veterans. That can be a little bit like finding needles in a haystack as there may be only 200 veterans on a campus of 20,000 students.
Farm Credit West also offers scholarships for veterans and others to attend the Center for Land-Based Learning’s California Farm Academy, which trains young farmers and ranchers. But unlike lower-cost states, in California it’s more difficult for a veteran to acquire the land needed to make farming or ranching work. So a big part of our outreach effort is to encourage veterans to pursue careers in farm-related services, such as lending, chemicals, transport, and appraisals.
In addition, we help fund the Farmer Veteran Coalition, a nationwide nonprofit based in Davis that was launched in 2008 after organizers determined that there were some 40,000 groups organized across the nation to help veterans, but none that were solely focused on helping them move into agriculture. And that is an important issue since so many people from rural areas join today’s all-volunteer armed forces.
The Farmer Veteran Coalition has a number of programs available to help finance a veteran’s transition to agriculture, including educational conferences and small grants averaging between $4,000 and $5,000 to pay for such things as pregnant heifers, drilling wells, and greenhouses. Farm Credit West has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund these grants.
The coalition also holds career fairs and even has a small 6-acre training farm in San Jose where four veterans are now learning the ropes. And it has created a Homegrown by Heroes label that participants can put on their packaging materials.
Helping veterans is a win-win for both veterans and the agricultural industry, which needs new blood and talent. If you know of a veteran who might be interested in a career in agriculture, ask them to reach out to Farm Credit West at hr@farmcreditwest.com or by calling 916-780-1166. For more information about the Farmer Veteran Coalition, visit farmvetco.org or call 530-756-1395.
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Mark Littlefield is president and CEO of Farm Credit West, which provides financial services to farmers, ranchers, and agribusiness in the Sacramento Valley, the San Joaquin Valley, and the Central Coast. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 16-23, 2017.
