After a decade in the Army, including three years in Iraq and Afghanistan, Seth Anderson felt lost. He had enlisted straight out of high school, and he didn’t know what to do with his life post-combat.
“I needed a way to reconnect and serve—and fight my own demons and get them under control,” he said. Then, he heard about Archi’s Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (AiSA). Run by a Marine veteran and his wife in Escondido, California, the educational program promised to train service men and women transitioning out of the military to be successful entrepreneurs in the sustainable agriculture industry. Mr. Anderson, who had gotten into gardening as a hobby while on active duty, was intrigued.
In February 2016, a few months after he was medically retired from the Army, he packed up his Subaru and a little trailer, left his wife and 10-month-old son at home in northern California, and drove down to Escondido to stay in a rented camp spot while attending the six-week program.
It was worth it. He graduated with a fully- fledged business plan for a start-up market garden, took it home to Janesville, and started operations the next month. By the month after that, he was selling at the local farmers market.
“My mission is, we sow, grow, and harvest in the community, for the community. That was at the heart,” Mr. Anderson said. In addition to his 1-acre urban farm growing and selling microgreens, salad greens, and root crops, he’s started a community garden, out of which formed a co-op that now manages both the garden and the local farmers market; added an education farm on a rented 1.5 acres, where he hosts workshops and grows other crops; works as a part-time gardening teacher at an elementary school; and is working to partner with local schools to deliver them local produce.
