Improving the Health and Resilience of our Land, Livestock and Community

Presentation to the Michigan State University Board of Trustees on February 11, 2022.

Jason Rowntree is an associate professor of Animal Science at Michigan State University where he holds the Charles Stewart Mott Distinguished Professorship for Sustainable Agriculture.

Rowntree holds appointments in Extension and Research and focuses on identifying the metrics and management that reflect ecological improvement in grazing land systems. He conducts this work at Lake City AgBio Research Center along with the Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center where he also maintains coordinator responsibilities.

Since arriving to MSU in 2009, Rowntree has given over 250 extension presentations throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Africa and New Zealand. He has also worked to co-develop, with the Savory Institute, an Ecological Outcome Verification that is now being used on over 2 M acres of grasslands on every continent except Antarctica. The EOV has also been branded for products marketed by General Mills, Applegate, Timberland and many others.

Rowntree has 29 refereed publications and has led or been a co-investigator on $27.75 million in funding to conduct food system research.

Jason will also serve as the Director of a new Center for Regenerative Agriculture at Michigan State University.

His work in beef sustainability was featured in the movie Sacred Cow and he too has been highlighted in The Washington Post, New York Times, Forbes and many other popular media publications.