Panel: Boosting Yields and Plant Health with Active Microbe Communities

Jeff Lowenfels
Award-winning Author
“Lord of The Roots.”

Author of the Award-winning Teaming With Microbes: The Organic Gardener ‘Guide To The Soil Food Web, Teaming With Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition and in January of 2017, Teaming With Fungi: The Organic Grower’s Guide to Mycorrhizae, Jeff Lowenfels is one of the most humorous and entertaining lecturers on the garden lecture.

He is also a lawyer who writes the longest running garden column in North America, having never missed a week in 41 years. The combination of garden writing and law earned him the moniker of “America’s Dirtiest Lawyer,” though with the publication of his third book, a trilogy, he will morph into “Lord of The Roots.”
Jeff is a highly respected and popular garden writer. He is the former President of the Garden Writers of America, a GWA Fellow and in 2005 was inducted into the GWA Hall of Fame, the highest honor a garden writer can achieve.
Jeff Lowenfels has become a leader in the organic gardening/sustainability movement as a result of his two, bestselling books. His talks have converted tens of thousands of gardeners at venues throughout North and South America. Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to The Soil Food Web was reviewed as the most important new gardening book in 25 years and maybe even ever! It is now out in a Revised Edition, and has been translated into 7 languages. His second book, also an award winning best seller is Teaming with Nutrient, The organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition.

Colin Bell
Chief Growth Officer
Growcentia

Colin Bell is the co-founder, co-inventor and Chief Growth Officer at Growcentia, the parent company of Mammoth Microbes. Colin completed his Ph.D. in Soil Microbial Ecology in 2009. As a Research Scientist at Colorado State University, Colin published dozens of peer-reviewed publications that were focused on elucidating microbial mediated processes that enhance plant growth. Colin left his academic position at Colorado State University in March 2015 to launch Growcentia. Growcentia is a young company in the Ag-Tech sector that develops microbial soil additives that sustainably increase plant yield across many crops. Their first product, MAMMOTH P® is a beneficial bacterial bloom stimulant that targets phosphorus cycling to maximize both quality and yield in cannabis plants. Thousands of producers around the world are currently using reporting overwhelmingly positive results. MAMMOTH P® is now being sold in over 900 stores globally.

Colin’s academic research includes long-term multidisciplinary studies in which biological, chemical and physical characteristics of soils were measured to elucidate soil microbial and plant responses to climate variability. His more recent research efforts focused on plant-microbial relationships within the rhizosphere zone to identify mechanisms that may influence soil microbial taxonomic and functional differences among plant species. Prior to earning his PhD, Colin worked at CH Robinson Worldwide Logistics as a regional sales manager.

John Piccirilli
Founder & Chairman
Cutting Edge Solutions
John’s experience in gardening and farming began in 1978. In search of quality, John met and shared many growing techniques with research scientists and farmers. The journey led him to creating a specialty fertilizer company in 1999 and co-founding a microbiology lab in 2004.