Forty years and over forty countries later, John Bowman, a 1984 plant pathology doctoral graduate from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, reflects on his worldly career. 

Bowman attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, where he completed master’s degrees in Latin American Studies and plant pathology. His roommates at the time were pursuing doctoral studies in agronomy, and the exposure inspired a breakthrough for Bowman — the idea to combine his passions for biology and global studies into a career in international agriculture. And what better place than Illinois.

“For my doctoral study, I was attracted to the Department of Crop Sciences due to its strong connection to INTSOY, a USAID-funded International Soybean Program, and in particular, the soybean research team of the late Dr. J.B. Sinclair,” he said. 

Immersive fieldwork in Brazil

Bowman joined Sinclair’s research team and secured an INTSOY-funded travel grant that allowed him to complete a year of fieldwork in Brazil. Hosted by the Brazilian Enterprise for Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA), his work was guided by in-country advisor J.T. Yorinori (Ph.D. ’80, CPSC), who had just completed his doctorate with Sinclair and begun his career at EMBRAPA. 

While there, Bowman was immersed in the Brazilian community and hands-on fieldwork. He conducted on-farm research and worked closely with Brazilian commercial soybean farmers to collect his research data. 

Yorinori was a close mentor throughout his year abroad. “I learned so much from Dr. Yorinori about research and scientific curiosity, and more importantly, he taught me how to establish meaningful, lasting relationships with farmers and EMBRAPA colleagues,”  Bowman said. 

That year of fieldwork launched his passion and career in international agricultural development. 

A career spanning continents and sectors

For much of his career, Bowman worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a branch of the State Department that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. He managed programs and projects related to food security, agricultural research, and human nutrition. 

Additionally, he spent time in the private sector, working directly for multinational food and seed companies to make a difference in international agricultural development. His passion was to transfer private sector-driven technologies to small farmers in remote environments.

Bowman began his career in Mexico working as a postdoctoral fellow at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) followed by four years in Costa Rica working for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) as a regional plant pathologist.

Soon after, Bowman landed a job with the International Division of PepsiCo as the lead agronomist for PepsiCo Foods International (PFI) in Latin America and Europe. His role was to oversee the growing of potatoes for potato chips and manage relationships with the local farmers. As there are a host of field and post-harvest potato diseases, his expertise in plant pathology was crucial to his success in this role. 

Promoting nutrition and agricultural sustainability

After making great strides for PepsiCo, Bowman’s career took him on a different path — working with the USAID Office of Nutrition. His work was through a senior fellowship program managed by Johns Hopkins University, which aimed to improve global health and nutrition. He traveled all over the world focused on making nutritionists more aware of agricultural and food technology interventions to improve health and food safety.

Bowman promoted the idea of delivering better nutrition intrinsically — breeding food crops to be higher in nutrients, which reduces the need for vitamin supplementation through pills and injections. A colleague and partner, Dr. Howarth Bouis, at the International Food Policy Research Institute, took this idea to the next level, securing millions in funding and rolling out the “breeding for nutrition” concept worldwide through the HarvestPlus program.

Ensuring agricultural progress across the globe

Bowman’s second major private sector experience was with Universal Robina Corporation (URC), a Filipino food company. He got a call from the CEO, who was recruiting him to share the knowledge and expertise he acquired at PepsiCo Foods. 

For four years, Bowman served as the director of agriculture for URC. He helped the company source world-class potatoes using small farmer-based, contract-growing schemes with certified seeds imported from the USA, Europe, and Australia. He also helped URC expand and improve its potato operations in China and Thailand.

While living in the Philippines for five years and working with Filipino, Chinese, and Thai farmers and government officials, Bowman experienced firsthand how important it was to have people skills in order to work effectively with so many different cultures.  

“I had built such a strong foundation at Illinois, especially learning how to interact and communicate with others. Dr. Yorinori and Dr. Sinclair taught me that to become an impactful scientist on the world stage, you have to become a ‘people person’ and know how to effectively communicate with others who will likely not have research knowledge,” Bowman said. 

“Another teaching from the Sinclair team was the crucial need for mutual respect between all members of an international project effort,” he added. “Concerns about rank or social pecking order in the field or the lab were reduced to a minimum. All of those learnings have made my international experiences, especially my work with that multinational Filipino company, more meaningful and effective.”

A different kind of opportunity brought Bowman back across the world to work in the Brazilian Amazon on a development project funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Farmers were struggling to grow guarana, a plant similar to coffee with even higher levels of caffeine. Around 2002, the demand for guarana was skyrocketing due to its use in sports drinks, but the small farmers in the Amazon were not benefiting fairly from this boom. 

“These farmers didn’t know the hidden value of their crop,” he said. “They deserved much more money.”

His team helped these farmers improve the yield and quality of the guarana berries and helped connect them to higher-paying buyers in the global market.

A full-circle career leading USAID efforts

Following the Brazilian adventure, Bowman took on a number of different assignments for DAI Global, a consulting firm focused on the implementation of USAID projects. He frequently traveled to the Chapare region of Bolivia, helping small coca farmers grow alternative crops such as premium bananas, citrus, and palmito (heart of palm).

He later led a global USAID project focused on enabling farmers to meet public and private agri-food standards. This project analyzed and promoted the connection of small, resource-poor African farmers to local supermarket chains. Bowman and his team also assisted Vietnamese dragonfruit farmers, enabling them to meet tough export standards and successfully sell products to European supermarkets.  

Continuing to work in Vietnam, Bowman transitioned roles significantly and managed new USAID investments targeted to combat the bird flu crisis, which peaked in Asia around 2006. 

Bowman’s team utilized USAID health funds to help Vietnamese poultry farmers produce safe, high-quality poultry under closely monitored conditions involving mandatory vaccinations and inspections. He worked with small poultry producers and government officials to build higher levels of trust between consumers and farmers. 

After completing his bird flu assignments in Asia with DAI Global, Bowman returned to USAID in 2011 as a senior agricultural officer and program area leader. He managed a diverse project portfolio worth over $400 million for the Feed The Future (FTF) initiative, a food security directive launched by the Obama administration to reduce global hunger and poverty. 

Bowman supervised various agricultural research projects in horticulture, integrated pest management, post-harvest loss reduction, and food safety. These projects were operative in 15 FTF countries and were mostly administered through grants to U.S. land-grant universities, including Illinois. In fact, Bowman was part of the team that developed the rationale and funding for the University of Illinois Soybean Innovation Lab, housed in the College of ACES. 

Bowman’s nine-year (2011-2020) role as a USAID officer brought his career into full circle. “I was a Big10-trained scientist, and then I became a high-level grant manager of funding given to U.S. universities, many of them being Big10 land grants like Illinois,” he said. 

Reflecting on a distinguished career

To conclude his career, Bowman worked as an Assistant Director of Preclearance for the USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), managing commodity inspection programs in over 20 countries until he fully retired from federal service in 2022. 

“My whole career really was an exhilarating ride,”  Bowman said. “My four years at Illinois exposed me to coursework, fieldwork, extension, and research opportunities, which gave me a comprehensive view of food production and was critical to my personal and professional development. I learned so much from Illinois faculty, my fellow students, and ‘down-to-earth’ soybean farmers in Illinois and Brazil. This marvelous learning platform helped me navigate through my eventual failures and capitalize on my successes to become a global ambassador for Illinois.”