On this episode we’re discussing talking plants and smart insects with entomologist and author Dr. Joe Lewis.
Lewis spent his career in entomology with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service at the Tifton Campus of the University of Georgia. It was there that he worked to unlock the secrets of how plants and insects communicate with one another, particularly how plants use SOS signals to recruit beneficial insects to their defense. Based on those groundbreaking insights, Lewis and his colleagues developed holistic and sustainable approaches to pest management within agricultural systems. In 2008, along with his colleagues John A, Pickett and James H. Tumlinson, Lewis received the prestigious Wolf Prize in Agriculture.
Although Lewis has published papers in many academic and scientific journals, he’s just published his first book for Acres U.S.A. It’s call A New Farm Language: How a Sharecropper’s Son Discovered a World of Talking Plants, Smart Insects, and Natural Solutions.
The book tells the story of Joe Lewis’s humble beginnings as the son of an illiterate Mississippi sharecropper and the hardscrabble, yet happy childhood he spent raising chickens and growing cotton. It was on that small, rented farm, which had no electricity or indoor plumbing, that Lewis developed a fondness for nature that would set him on an unlikely path toward becoming an eminent scientist and innovator. More than a memoir, A New Farm Language is a manifesto and mission statement confronting the abuses of industrial agriculture and defending the value of strong communities and natural solutions.
Tractor Time Episode 37: Dr. Zach Bush on Farming, Glyphosate and Human Health
Tractor Time Episode 36: Kathleen Merrigan on the Future of Food
Tractor Time Episode 35: Marty Travis, Super-Farmer
Tractor Time Episode 34: Paul Dorrance, from Top Gun to Top Grazier
Tractor Time Episode 33: Doug Fine, Author of Hemp Bound
Tractor Time Episode 32: Bob Quinn & Liz Carlisle, Authors of Grain by Grain
Tractor Time Episode 31: Rodale Institute’s Pigs, and Cathy Payne, author of Saving the Guinea Hog
Tractor Time Episode 30: Carey Gillam, Environmental Journalist, Author
Tractor Time Episode 29: Glen Rabenberg, Soil Expert
Tractor Time Episode 28: Dr. Paul Dettloff, V.M.D., Author, Livestock Specialist (from 2007)
Tractor Time Episode 27: Jodi Helmer, Author, Protecting Pollinators
Tractor Time Episode 26: Will Winter, Matt Maier, Thousand Hills Beef Cattle in Minnesota
Tractor Time Episode 25: Fred Provenza, Author & Animal Behavior Expert
Tractor Time Episode 24: Jeff Moyer, Rodale Institute, 2018 Eco-Ag Award Winner
Tractor Time Episode 23: The 2018 Eco-Ag Preview Special
Tractor Time Episode 22: On Assignment, the Tropical Agriculture Conference in Belize
Tractor Time Episode 21: Daniela Ibarra-Howell, CEO of The Savory Institute
Tractor Time Episode 20: David Montgomery & Anne Biklé, Authors & Scientists
Tractor Time Episode 19: Judith McGeary, Founder of Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance
Tractor Time Episode 18: Charles Walters, Then, Today and Tomorrow (from 2006)
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