We explore the stories and insights from the military veteran and supporter communities who are leading the way for vets in agribusiness, agtech, and agri-preneurship. We swap stories, talk ag, and show how grass-roots nature of the ag community can be a natural fit for the military veteran.
Reading the feed…
That bright orange yolk you're paying a premium for? There's a good chance it's been manipulated. 🥚 Patrick Samuels went from West Point to Army Ranger School then to Special Forces — deploying to Iraq and Tajikistan - running partner force operations. He left the military because he felt he and his men didn't have the autonomy they needed to make a difference. According to Patrick, nobody wanted to actually win. So he went and built a company where the only limits are the ones he sets. Sunnyside Egg Co is doing what the rest of the pasture-raised egg industry claims to do — chickens actually
She became an archeologist because of her love for exploration and discovery. She became a land conservationist because of the U.S. Army. And somewhere in between, she figured out that the land surrounding a military base might be just as important as what's inside the fence line. 🌱 Coral Eginton grew up in California as an only child before spending years chasing ancient mysteries — from shipwrecks off the coast of Spain to ruins buried in the jungles of the Yucatan. She has a master's in nautical archeology. She's excavated Dutch East India Company wrecks in Australia. In 2016, she walked o
From Marine Corps logistician to champion of regenerative agriculture — Brian Pugh’s journey is one you don’t want to miss.🌱 In this conversation, Brian shares how family gardens, his time in Okinawa’s Blue Zone, and a growing concern for food as medicine led him to leave the service and dive headfirst into healing our food system from the soil up. He’s now leading the Service to Soil program at Carnation Farms, a SkillBridge initiative helping transitioning veterans gain hands-on experience in regenerative farming, crops, livestock, and building community in ag. If you’re a veteran curious a
Today's guests are Barry Taylor and Emma Cashman — the co-founders of the Land At Home Project, a nonprofit built on the simple but evidence-backed premise that veterans need a renewed sense of purpose and America needs new farmers and ranchers. Barry grew up on a small ranch in rural southeastern Arizona — the kind of place where summers meant fence work and cattle, the kind of work you couldn’t wait to leave until you were old enough to realize what it imparted in you. His career took him through emergency medicine, nursing, and eventually hospital administration before landing him in a civi
Our guest today is Dan Kelly, a Marine Corps Cobra pilot, architect, entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Numanac, an ag tech company using artificial intelligence and voice-based data collection to help farmers make better decisions and spend less time head down inputting data. But this conversation goes much deeper than technology. As Dan puts it, “There is purpose in the process of building for those who otherwise would not be built for or invested in in a meaningful capacity." Dan shares how growing up around South Texas agriculture, losing a close friend at a young age, serving as a Marine
This was a really special episode for me. If you've followed past episodes, you'll remember Major Eric Czaja and his wife Angela, and the Regenerative Grazing Open Air Lab (R-GOAL) about Camp San Luis Obispo — a first-of-its-kind program letting transitioning veterans learn about regenerative agriculture through adaptive grazing aboard a military installation. Eric and Angela invited me out to Camp SLO for a two-day Ranching for Profit course hosted by Noble Research Institute, and while I was there, I got the chance to sit down with the R-GOAL interns themselves — in- person, for the first ti
Today's guest is Wes Mathews — a Louisiana native, former Army cavalry scout, Iraq veteran, former CrossFit coach, and now a veteran at DMR Drones, a company that's quietly becoming one of the leading drone manufacturing companies in America. Wes grew up in central Louisiana, surrounded by a multi-generational military family — his grandfather served Korea, stepfather in the National Guard, younger brother served in Iraq with Wes and would later become a Blackhawk pilot, and the list goes on. According to Wes, joining the Army wasn't a decision so much as a foregone conclusion. What wasn't pla
Today's guest is Shay Foulk — an Iowa native, Army Ranger, and current National Guard officer who came home from the military not to slow down, but to build. What he built is three interlocking businesses: a 100-year-old family seed operation he married into, a family farm he's actively transitioning into his generation's hands, and a consulting firm that helps family farms across the country do the same thing he's doing — make hard decisions before it's too late. As Shay puts it, "It is so easy — so easy — to set yourself apart in a world where nobody wants to do the hard things, in a world w
Today's guests are David and Nicki Yanak from DNA Acres — two Air Force veterans who left the service with no farming background, a piece of land in rural Missouri, and absolutely no idea what they were getting into. David spent his career in security forces before a series of back surgeries brought his military path to an abrupt end. Nicki served in communications and later became a nurse. Neither of them grew up farming, nor had they planned to, but when a neighbor knocked on David's door and said "good — you have no bad habits I have to break," something clicked. What started with a backfie
“Agriculture is an act of peace. Well-fed people really don’t feel like fighting, but unfed people will do anything to feed their family.” Peter Byck is a Professor of Practice at the Schools of Sustainability and Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, President of Carbon Cowboys, and documentary filmmaker. Peter’s work sits at the intersection of military readiness, national security, and regenerative agriculture. His journey involving the military and agriculture started with a simple question: why are we putting our military in harm’s way to protect resources we could be
