Jacob is a research entomologist and agroecologist. He grew up in South Dakota and attended South Dakota State University for both undergraduate degree in biology and a MS in natural resource management. Jacob continued to a PhD in entomology at Purdue University where he studied the trade-offs that cucurbit growers face in managing insect pests while conserving insect pollinators and protecting crop yield. This multi-faceted project helped reduce the amount of insecticide applied to these cropping systems and aid in the preservation of pollinators, especially wild species. Currently Jacob is working on several projects at the California Organic Center centered around the use of cover crops to help in vegetable production. Collecting data on soil health, water retention, weed pressure, and insect pests to provide evidence to the viability of cover cropping systems can hopefully lead to wider adoption of cover crops as a solution to some of the troubles organic growers in the region face.
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Boosting Bees & Recruiting Dung Recyclers
October 26 @ 2:00 pm-3:00 pm
From boosting bees to recruiting dung recyclers; exploring the ways sustainable pest management practices improve beneficial insect communities
In his career as an entomologist Jacob has worked with a diversity of farmers and ranchers on the role insects play in their operations. This workshop will explore some of these examples with a robust collection of data and amazing pictures that demonstrate the changes to an operation that can recruit and retain beneficial insects such as pollinators, predator insects, and even dung beetles. In many cases, these practices simultaneously improve the profitability of many of these operations and often help mitigate the negative effects of insect pests, sometimes in surprising ways!