Support Veteran-Owned Farms with an Innovative Interactive Map
For many US veterans, transitioning back to civilian life after active duty is not always easy. Due to the challenge of translating military work into civilian work, certification hurdles, and disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder, veterans generally face unemployment at higher rates than the general population.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made things even worse for US veterans — who suffered a peak of unemployment rate of 11.7% during April of 2020. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate had declined to 3.0% for male veterans in 2019, with a 3.7% rate for female veterans. This means that veteran unemployment has more than tripled over the past few months.
In April 2020, when New York City was in full lockdown because of the Coronavirus emergency, I was itching to find a way to help out while being confined to my Brooklyn apartment. In January, I had started my Master’s Degree in Digital Humanities at CUNY GC, which transitioned to fully-online after only one month of classes. When Jonathan Peters, my Geospatial Humanities professor, told me that the CUNY Digital Fellows group was looking for ways to make a difference by using GIS technology, I got really excited. After a few weeks, I started serving as the leader of the General Mapping team of The Food Chain, a group focused on fighting food insecurity by connecting farms and food pantries.
As leader of the group, my job was mostly to coordinate the efforts of the team, organize meetings, and writing a weekly summary to keep everyone up to date on our work. However, I also contributed in the data collection for farms across the country. The case of veteran farmers really stood out to me, because I love these stories of people who can turn their lives around and discover a passion for nature after years of service for their country. My contribution was to collect information about the farmers who obtained the Homegrown by Heroes certification from FVC, the Farmer Veteran Coalition. I copied the information about the farms (including their products and how to contact them) and pasted it into a Google Spreadsheet. The work from there was easy: I imported the spreadsheet into Google MyMaps and created a basic map of the Homegrown by Heroes list. My teammate Regina Biswas Thomas then converted this map into a .KML file that was used to create our interactive map.
If you would like to support veteran-owned farms during the pandemic, use the map to find veteran-owned farms across the United States that are currently in need of new clients due to significant disruptions in the supply chain. This includes loss of restaurant demand from shuttering small businesses.
You can also support the FVC, whose goal is to provide assistance and farming education to US veterans from all corps. This includes small grants, financial planning and business classes, farm retreats, and even the FEED, a program to exchange or donate farming equipment within the network. FVC farmers can also apply for the Homegrown by Heroes certification, a label that indicates veteran-produced products. As farmer Lorne Williams told FVC, the Homegrown by Heroes label creates a renewed spirit of gratitude for veterans, which he believed helped boost his sales. Visit the Farmer Veteran Coalition Website to read the stories of veteran farmers from across the US!
Do you want to support veteran farmers in your area? Visit the Food Sovereignty Network / Food Chain Web Map to find the nearest Homegrown by Heroes farm.
Elena Abou Mrad
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaaboumrad/
