SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC), a national group of veterans and supporters, has announced its expansion into four state chapters, including Michigan. It made the announcement during its annual meeting in California last week.

Adam Ingrao, executive director of the Michigan FVC chapter, called it the largest expansion in the organization’s history. The other states are Maine, Vermont and Kansas.

“We have a unique opportunity in Michigan to really see our veterans prosper,” Ingrao said. “Veterans bring a unique set of qualities from military life.”

Ingrao, a veteran and now a PhD student in entomology at Michigan State University, explained farming requires a tremendous work ethic, management skills and problem-solving skills that are “inherent in military life. Farming is a natural match for these skill sets and offers veterans the ability to use their skills from the military to contribute to their communities.”

He said Michigan is the nation’s third most diverse agricultural state and is home to nearly 660,000 veterans. The group wants to help veterans identify agriculture as a viable career option after military service and promote the success of these veterans through farming.

Ingrao, a native of Yucaipa, in the southern part of California, served in the Army in 2003-04 in Fort Bliss, Texas. He was a technician who repaired Patriot missile radar units. During his service he ruptured the ligaments of his right ankle and was no longer able to do his job, he said. He went through a year of physical rehabilitation.

“The transition from military to civilian life can be very difficult,” he noted. “It was a difficult transition for me. Plus there was a lot of guilt associated with leaving my buddies when they went off to Iraq.”

Still, he prospered after leaving the service, first getting a bachelor’s degree from Polytechnic University in California and, later, receiving a National Science Foundation scholarship to pursue a PhD at MSU. He started his PhD in 2013.

“I love the work. I’m working as an agricultural entomologist on beneficial insects for crops,” he said.

Right now he’s working with asparagus growers in the southwestern part of the state. He said agricultural work has given him a kind of peace. He started working with the FVC after he began as a volunteer with the Michigan Food and Farming Systems as a veteran outreach coordinator. That was in 2014.

“I just wanted to share my experience in agriculture with other veterans,” he said. “If it influenced even one veteran, I thought it would be worth it.”

According to a statement from the FVC, one-fifth to one-third of those veterans who served in combat after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and rates of PTSD among Vietnam veterans has been estimated at exceeding 30 percent.

Farming offers a career path that helps veterans deal with PTSD by providing a slower paced environment than the typical 9-to-5 careers that can often lead to episodes of anxiety, depression and panic attacks. Farming can also provide the ability to work at home, where there is security and support from family members, which are critical to the health and well being of these veterans, the FVC says. The work can also allow veterans to reconnect with the natural world through the cycles and beauty of nature and farming.

To find out more about this organization, visit www.farmvetco.org