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 civilian consulting role with Navy Medicine Western Region.
Emma grew up in Toronto and a very early age, fell in love with horses. She spent much of her early childhood learning horsemanship before moving to Arizona when she was in college. While finishing her undergraduate degree in nursing, she met her husband who was an active duty airman in the Air Force. She went on to get her master’s degree in public health before spending years working across flight medicine and public health at military bases in Italy and San Diego, then ultimately joining Barry at Nav Med West. There, the two of them started connecting the dots between military service and agriculture over coffee while both working as infection prevention and control nurses.
What they landed on is something Emma articulates in a way I’ve never heard described before:
“Agriculture is full of these imperatives — you must get up to feed the animals, there’s just no way around that. Coming from a very structured life in the military, where there are lots of things that you must do, and then going to the free-for-all of civilian life can be very challenging. Having an occupation that’s full of these imperatives is helpful — it gives structure in a non-rigid way.”
In this episode, I want you to listen for a few key themes:
- Emma’s expert review of the peer-reviewed, evidence-based case for why agriculture and military service are a documented fit — not just intuition, but data;
- How Land At Home’s three-part model of education, internship, and mentorship was built by studying what other programs were missing; and
- A conversation about the One Health framework — and why food security, veteran mental health, and rural community revitalization could actually be the same problem wearing three different hats.
Enjoy!
