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How Godwin Owolabi found unique passion studying George Washington Carver

by Shelly Poe

AUBURN, Ala. – Most Americans are aware of the work of agricultural pioneer George Washington Carver at nearby Tuskegee University, just 30 minutes from the Auburn campus.

But few have embraced Carver’s legacy like Auburn defensive lineman Godwin Owolabi, a Tuskegee native who is mapping out his own promising career involving agriculture, science and technology.

Carver taught and conducted research at Tuskegee Institute for 47 years, beginning in 1896 until his death in 1943. Famous for his research into the many uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans and other Southern crops, he was one of the pioneers in the science of crop rotation and the land management of fields that were nutrient-depleted from overuse in cotton growing.

Carver was among those who introduced the extension service and mobile classrooms for farmers to the state of Alabama and his research into plant diseases and chemurgy developed many crop-based substitutes for commercial agricultural products.

Owolabi, an all-region lineman at Booker T. Washington High (named for the first teacher/principal at Tuskegee University in 1881), joined the Auburn football team as a walk-on prior to the 2022 season, a decision that he says was inevitable.

“I chose Auburn because I’ve been a fan of the school and the sports program since I was a little kid,” Owolabi said. “I love being part of the football program. My greatest reward is building relationships with teammates and coaches and working toward a common goal.”

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As spring practice opens this week, Owolabi has goals in mind.

“Getting to know this new team is my priority and helping everybody get better in any way I can,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t mean reps, but helping the young guys understand what they’ve got to do is how I can help this team.”

In the classroom, Owolabi – who is studying in the College of Agriculture – has goals that are even bigger.

“My major is biological and agricultural technology management – that used to be agricultural engineering,” he said. “We do a lot of things in this field. You can do programming like AutoCad and Autodesk Civil 3D, which is like scale mapping. We also use ArcGIS, a program that shows maps of everything. It syncs with topographical maps, so in the case of rainfall, they can tell where the water’s going to flow and which places are most likely to flood.

“We work with water filtration, what keeps our water clean and how we can conserve more of it. We also work with farming technology. For instance, take tractors – we would look at the technology to make them more fuel efficient.”

His interest in this field was sparked at a young age.

“I used to be in 4-H in Tuskegee,” Olowabi said. “A project at the local high school was a greenhouse project where we grew collard greens and other vegetables and cold crops. In 4-H, we studied a lot of things, went on field trips, and I’ve always been a fan of technology. So, my advisor told me this major was a combination of the two.”

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Some of those 4-H trips, as well as school field trips, were to Tuskegee University.

“George Washington Carver was a visionary and we’re lucky to be able to study his life,” Owolabi said. “I’ve been to the museum at the university multiple times on many field trips.

“It’s amazing, first, to see what he was working with – they still have some of the actual plants in jars that he worked on and studied – and the research tools themselves were limited and primitive. Plus, the times he was living in were very different and challenging.

“But watching the videos, you can see how passionate he was about making stuff better for everybody. He was so committed to doing that for the community around him, right where I grew up. Obviously, his work spread much farther and changed lives around the world.”

Owolabi admires Carver’s commitment to education.

“I think we could start teaching children young – kindergarten through third grade classrooms – showing them and teaching them about how crops are grown and how hard it is to produce them and all the things that go into it,” he said. “The same with animals that are grown for food and where our water comes from. Everything goes back to nature at the start, and I think young kids would be excited to learn that.” 

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Owolabi is very interested in sustainability and making a career of improving lives.

“I’m minoring in horticulture, and I want to be able to feed people, especially if it ends up being harder to grow crops in the future for the general population,” he said. “I want to have the knowledge to produce my own organic crops, actually knowing where my food is grown.

“I can see myself working in the water industry, tracking water filtration. I can also see myself working with AutoCAD, helping to look at buildings and fuels and seeing how we can improve things. And I want to help beat this battle of getting food to people. There are people starving and don’t need to be.

“I look at articles talking about the climate and how things are changing, and I want to be a part of the future and how we’re going to fix these problems. My classes and training are providing me tools to do that.

“We’ve got to preserve our food supply globally because the population gets bigger. We’ve got to find a way to feed people, and I want to be a part of that.”