What is Veterans to Farmers?
Vision
To return the family farm to a prominent position on the American landscape.
Mission
To provide American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts with pride, education and fulfillment through a permanent source of sustainable income, community and contribution: The family farm.
A National Training Center at 2600 Lawrence will provide a physical location for training in aeroponic growing methods, greenhouse maintenance and construction, as well as business planning. The National Training Center will also serve as a community amenity; the food grown here will be sold direct to the consumer through a CSA model, and the greenhouse will be available for tours, farm dinners, and other gatherings.
Veterans will be taught how to build environmentally controlled greenhouses of uniform size and design that utilize methods of high-tech, controlled environment crop culture. The greenhouses will protect crops from rain, snow, heat, cold, wind and insects thus named Controlled Environment Agriculture. Ongoing maintenance and consulting on optimizing the greenhouse is provided through Veterans to Farmers (VTF).
VTF’s partner is Living Tower Farms (LTF), whose mission is to redeploy the American farm, one neighborhood at a time, through franchise and/or company owned vertical growing greenhouse farms. Once veterans have been trained through the 16 week VTF program, LTF deploys their graduates into (for profit) greenhouse sites.
