My Day Job - Evenings, And Some Weekends, Too

For a long time, my family would tell folks who asked what I do, "Oh, he works with seeds." It was for quite a while after I had moved onto other research areas that everyone caught on that I hadn't worked with seeds for a long time - career paths change. A little over two years ago, I was asked to work for the office of an appointee in the Department of Agriculture - my task, provide technical advice for developing biofuels policy. The first comments made by the person interviewing me were: "How would you like to have a career change?"

I attend a meeting or give a presentation to various groups about every week or two about some aspect of agriculture and aviation biofuels. I was asked earlier this year to write an article for an on-line magazine, and it just appeared this past week. For me, being in agriculture and 

Inspecting JP-8 Jet Fuel

having a work-connection to the military is satisfying since we have one son who served in the Army, and a second who is training to be a naval aviator. Because of that connection, when I was sitting on a panel at a conference several months ago waiting my turn to speak, I came up with a thought that became a part of my opening remarks. With a picture of a Navy Aviation Boatswain’s Mate inspecting a sample of jet fuel up on the screen (1), I commented: "There is a commonality between agriculture and the military that I hadn't thought of before. For both, less than two percent of the U.S. population are involved in production agriculture and are in active military service." The rest of the panel members, an Air Force and an Army Lt. Colonel, a couple of civilian Defense Department employees, and an aviation trade association lawyer involved in biofuel testing, procurement, and advocacy nodded - recognizing the disconnect of these two sectors from the rest of the much broader population as a whole. That thought ended up becoming a part of the introduction to my article - the result of knowing how disconnected agriculture is from the general population in a largely industrialized nation, and being a dad of two kids connected to the service - a military family greatly disconnected from most families in the U.S. as well. I don't know if I would have drawn that link between the number of people who defend our country and grow our food - if not being connected to both - that fact would have likely been overlooked - remained unconnected otherwise.

An editorial in yesterday's Washington Post written by a veteran discussed his dealing with what he perceived as that disconnect between those who serve in the military, and the wider population that doesn't - how he processed through a simple thing like strangers saying, "Thanks for your service." It is worth reading and thinking about. Another Post article looks at the same idea from an outsider's perspective - the disconnected. For more information describing differences in well-being of active service and veterans, see the link here.
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(1) An interesting fact is the color-coding of the uniforms worn on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Those with jobs dealing with fuels were purple - thus are referred to as grapes. More about this is found by clicking here. My aviator-in-training son mentioned "grapes" to me while we were visiting the USS Lexington while visiting Corpus Christi a couple of months ago.