Professional Experience:
John Bowman, a USAID senior staff member, has over 33 years of experience in the design, implementation, coordination, and evaluation of international agricultural research and development projects. His goal is to develop and manage strategic programming for USAID and USDA which ensures food security for vulnerable populations through agricultural best practices designed to deliver improved household level food nutrition and food safety. He manages a multidisciplinary research project portfolio in the areas of food and agricultural science. His research projects span the areas of horticulture, pest management, post-harvest loss, nutrition, livestock systems, aquaculture, and food safety. He has served as a project manager and advisor to the USAID Office of Nutrition, and currently serves as a senior staffer and Program Area Leader in Nutritious and Safe Foods to the USAID Office of Agricultural Research and Policy. As a USAID contractor, he has over 15 years of experience managing and consulting for USAID food security projects in the areas of agriculture, agribusiness, and health/food safety. Dr. Bowman has held senior management positions with several multinational agribusiness firms focused on the procurement of agricultural raw materials. He has specialized in the design and management of agricultural supply programs for food-processing companies, and the support of agribusiness projects for international donor agencies. Dr. Bowman played a critical role in establishing the Health/Nutrition Practice at DAI, a leading USAID contractor, through building DAI credentials in the areas of agricultural health, nutrition, food safety, and zoonotic disease management. Dr. Bowman is an agribusiness manager and has extensive agribusiness experience in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, where he has interacted with small farmers, cooperatives, local government units, traders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the scientific community in order to develop raw material supply chains for multinational food companies. He is a trained plant pathologist with expertise in IPM (Integrated Pest Management) and seed-borne diseases of soybean, wheat/barley, beans, and potato. He has worked on the germplasm development teams of CIMMYT, CIAT, and PepsiCo Foods, and has extensive field experience in Mexico, Costa Rica, Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia, Nepal, and Tanzania. Dr. Bowman’s career has always emphasized a highly participatory approach to the design of agricultural research and development projects, mainly through extensive field-level contact with individual growers, grower associations, local government units, and multidisciplinary scientific teams. Dr. Bowman has extensive experience as a designer and manager of projects which transfer agricultural technology to farmers in remote, rural environments, and which offer capacity building and scientific exchange between U.S. land grant universities and foreign universities and agricultura