U.S. farmers offer solace to war veterans

[nosmokes]

A hopeful and bittersweet story,very human, very American.
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original-reuters

U.S. farmers offer solace to war veterans

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Matt McCue had a moment of enlightenment in Iraq while guarding the back door of a house where his fellow soldiers were hunting Saddam Hussein -- he bit into a sweet lime and discovered an interest in horticulture.

Now he's part of a movement seeking to help returning U.S. veterans find peace in civilian life by tilling the land.

"You take someone who has been walking around the street looking for insurgents, who's basically trained to capture people, to kill them ... you can't put them in some ordinary job and expect them to grasp on to it," McCue said.

"To go from that to watching things grow, to taking care of life, has been a very important step for me," he said by telephone from Niger in West Africa, where he is a Peace Corps volunteer teaching agriculture.

"It's beautiful to go to that nurture mode," he said, recalling how his curiosity was sparked by the produce in farmers' markets in Iraq. "I had no idea there was a variety of lime that tasted like that."

McCue will be in New York this weekend for a forum on the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on rural communities. Organized by a group called Farms Not Arms, the forum is part of the buildup to Sunday's Farm Aid concert, a benefit for family farmers that was first launched in 1985.

McCue, who grew up in the suburbs of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said it was hard to leave his field of millet, sesame and beans in the village of Garbey Kourou, even for a short trip. He is hoping his story may be an example to others.

William O'Hare, senior fellow at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, analyzed U.S. military casualties in a report last year and found the number of war deaths of soldiers from rural areas was disproportionately high.

"About 19 percent of the soldier-age population live in rural America but they account for 27 percent of the deaths," O'Hare told Reuters. He linked that to a scarcity of jobs in poor rural areas where people were less likely to go to college or work full-time jobs, making a military career more appealing.

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complete article here

[Mythsaje]

1. That's a very good idea...

Renew or introduce a connection to the land, a sense of accomplishment that doesn't involve blood and "glory."

[Karenina]

2. Rather nurturing..

Mucho good idea.