292: Jake Mowrer on Crop Roots

Appreciating the relationship between plant roots and the life in the soil.

In This Podcast: We meet Jake Mowrer and understand what brought him to his studies on soil and the relationships between crop roots and the complex community of life in the world beneath us.  This often-invisible world is so essential to the foods that we eat, and the interaction between the subterranean portion of crops and the microbial lifeforms there are easily overlooked. We learn more about what is happening between these elements and why this is crucial to our semi-finite resource of soil.   

Jake was raised on a farm in north Georgia where his family produced broiler chickens and beef cattle.  Growing up, the work was often hard, but the food was always good.  Life on the farm is a good way to gain an appreciation for the connectivity of food production in our daily lives. 

Jake now works with farmers in Texas as a Texas A&M faculty member in the Soil and Crop Science Department, and as an Extension Specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension to communicate the importance of managing soil as a natural resource. 

His research has become focused on the way that crop roots behave in their soil environment to better understand the best practices for keeping soils continuously functional & productive, both for people and the ecosystems we inhabit.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/09/26/292-jake-mowrer/ for show notes and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.