Episode #79: Joe Lewis
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
AEA Marketing
4.7 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2022
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joe Lewis is an internationally renowned scientist recognized for his work in entomology and agricultural studies. His discoveries in the behavioral and chemical interactions of parasitoids, insect herbivores, and plants have played a critical role in our understanding of ecological growing. He is also the author of A New Farm Language: How a Sharecropper's Son Discovered a World of Talking Plants, Smart Insects, and Natural Solutions.
Listen as Joe and John discuss:
- Joe's introduction to agriculture growing up on a Mississippi cotton farm
- The discovery of plants utilizing chemical compounds to alert parasitic wasps to the presence of caterpillars.
- The first demonstration of associative learning in parasitic wasps.
- Sensitivity of signals between plants and parasitic wasps, including how they differentiate from food and host.
- Environmental impacts that have led to unbalanced increases in insect pressures.
- The value of cover cropping to provide a nectar source for insects during production season.
- Changing the paradigm from "how to kill this pest" to "why is this pest a pest?"
A New Farm Language by Joe Lewis: https://bookstore.acresusa.com/products/a-new-farm-language
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi friends, this is John and this is the regenerative agriculture podcast where we talk about the agronomic science and the cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, soil health and public health, |
| 0:12.0 | and of course, very importantly, regenerate farm profitability in the pathway to achieving all these other outcomes. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm really excited to be having a conversation for this episode with Joe Lewis, who has been |
| 0:23.3 | on the forefront of a lot of foundational research on how insects communicate with their |
| 0:30.9 | environment, with their plants, and with an identifying target insects. |
| 0:35.6 | So I'm really excited to have Joe here. He has also published |
| 0:39.0 | a new book recently titled A New Farm Language. And this is a topic that's really important |
| 0:45.4 | to me personally because I think we constrain ourselves a lot by the choice of words that we use. Words are powerful and if we |
| 0:57.5 | constantly refer to things as pests or weeds or pathogens then to some degree |
| 1:04.0 | we're creating the reality that we expect and we would be wise I believe to |
| 1:09.2 | choose better words and to develop a new lexicon and a new language. |
| 1:12.9 | So, Joe, the title of your book really spoke to me a lot. I really appreciated it. |
| 1:18.1 | And thank you for being here today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your story |
| 1:24.1 | and what brought you to doing some of this foundational research. Sure, John. And let me say |
| 1:29.6 | it's a delight to be with you today. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I've seen some of |
| 1:34.8 | your work and your broadcast and I'm excited to be a part of today. And it's an exciting thing. |
| 1:43.7 | And we share so much of the same view and |
| 1:47.0 | hopefully we can have a good conversation and communicate some of those to the audience. |
| 1:53.0 | So I look forward to it. |
| 1:55.0 | And my background, you know, of course I just completed an exciting career as a scientist in the field of entomology |
| 2:05.2 | and agriculture specifically. |
| 2:09.5 | But after 40 plus years of academic research and being in that field. |
... |
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