Wounded Warrior Project Expands Support for Wounded Veterans and their Families with New Funding for Farmers in 2021

Dec 18, 2020

Davis, Calif. — Wounded Warrior Project® (WWP) expanded partnerships to include 12 new and existing veteran and military service organizations to help meet the needs of our nation's wounded, ill, and injured veterans and their families.

Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC) was one of the dozen awarded. A national non-profit serving nearly 25,000 veterans turned farmers, FVC creates a new generation of farmers and food leaders while simultaneously offering our veterans a place to heal on America’s farms.

WWP funding will directly support the Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund. It’s a small grant program that provides assistance to veterans in the early stages of their agricultural careers with the purchase of a piece of equipment. For hundreds of members, the Fellowship Fund has made the difference in the viability of their farming operation.

Like WWP, FVC believes that every warrior has a next mission. Farming provides the kind of mission-oriented work that many veterans found satisfying while in the military, in addition to offering them a sense of purpose, opportunity, and physical and psychological benefits.

As member Davon Goodwin of North Carolina puts it, “the camaraderie you lose when you exit the military, you gain that through FVC.” Davon was injured in Afghanistan in 2010, which altered his life goal of pursuing a PhD in Botany. He transitioned into farming instead with the idea of providing the same commitment to his community as a farmer that he did as a soldier.

“When I got on the farm I felt reinvigorated, I felt life. I felt like there was a connection between humans and soil,” acknowledges the prior Fellowship Fund awardee. “When I put my hands in the dirt, it changed me.”

This funding from WWP will support 36 new fellowships - at least half of them designated for female veterans - on their next mission: they have served their country once by defending it, and now a second time in feeding it.

The Fellowship Fund program directly aligns with WWP’s mission by connecting, serving, and empowering wounded warriors that have experienced physical and emotional harm.

It connects recipients into FVC’s vast network of veterans to combat geographic and psychological isolation so common to farmers, while establishing a sense of community and camaraderie that mirrors the fellowship of military service.

It serves those who have served our country. For many, the purchase of equipment gives “wounded warriors” with physical limitations the ability to do work on their farms that their physical limitations would otherwise prohibit.

It empowers by giving veterans the financial assistance they need to launch a farming business, and the opportunity to use their existing skills from military service to succeed as an agricultural professional and earn a meaningful, financially sustainable place in the agricultural community.

WWP is providing their 2021 partners more than $2.3 million combined total in grants to expand the impact of WWP's existing efforts and to fill gaps in programs and services. "The military and veteran community organizations that we work with help us fill critical gaps in care, ensuring that America's injured veterans and their families have access to the resources they need to thrive," said WWP CEO Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Mike Linnington. "We're proud to support these amazing organizations and the diverse spectrum of services and programs they provide. Through these grants we are strengthening the communities where these warriors, and their families, work and live."

Source : farmvetco

Video: Moving Ag Research Forward Through Collaboration

BY: Ashley Robinson

It may seem that public and private researchers have different goals when it comes to agricultural research. However, their different strategies can work in tandem to drive agricultural research forward. Public research may focus more on high-risk and applied research with federal or outside funding, while private sector researchers focus more on research application.

“For me, the sweet spot for public private sector research is when we identify problems and collaborate and can use that diverse perspective to address the different aspects of the challenge. Public sector researchers can work on basic science high risk solutions as tools and technologies are developed. They then can work with their private sector partners who prototype solutions,” Mitch Tuinstra, professor of plant breeding and genetics in Purdue University’s Department of Agronomy, said during the Jan. 10 episode of Seed Speaks.

Public researchers they have the flexibility to be more curiosity driven in their work and do discovery research. This is complimentary to private research, which focuses on delivering a product, explained Jed Christianson, canola product design lead for Bayer CropScience, explained during the episode.

“As a seed developer, we worry about things like new crop diseases emerging. Having strong public sector research where people can look into how a disease lifecycle cycle works, how widespread is it and what damage it causes really helps inform our product development strategies,” he added.

It’s not always easy though to develop these partnerships. For Christianson, it’s simple to call up a colleague at Bayer and start working on a research project. Working with someone outside of his company requires approvals from more people and potential contracts.

“Partnerships take time, and you always need to be careful when you're establishing those contracts. For discoveries made within the agreement, there need to be clear mechanisms for sharing credits and guidelines for anything brought into the research to be used in ways that both parties are comfortable with,” Christianson said.

Kamil Witek, group leader of 2Blades, a non-profit that works with public and private ag researchers, pointed out there can be limitations and challenges to these partnerships. While private researchers are driven by being able to make profits and stay ahead of competitors, public researchers may be focused on information sharing and making it accessible to all.

“The way we deal with this, we work in this unique dual market model. Where on one hand we work with business collaborators, with companies to deliver value to perform projects for them. And at the same time, we return the rights to our discoveries to the IP to use for the public good in developing countries,” Witek said during the episode.

At the end of the day, the focus for all researchers is to drive agricultural research forward through combining the knowledge, skills and specializations of the whole innovation chain, Witek added.

“If there's a win in it for me, and there's a win in it for my private sector colleagues in my case, because I'm on the public side, it’s very likely to succeed, because there's something in it for all of us and everyone's motivated to move forward,” Tuinstra said.