Quinn launches new book in his hometown of Big Sandy

Internationally renowned Big Sandy organic farmer Bob Quinn spent Tuesday, the day his book "Grain by Grain" was released, in his hometown of Big Sandy signing books and speaking at the Big Sandy Library to a crowd of supporters and people interested in his message.

Quinn and his co-author, Liz Carlisle, will be promoting the book at major venues across the U.S. and internationally for about the next year. His return home to launch the book in the rural community where his life and career came about, though, is on point with the message of the book, to promote rural communities, healthy foods and a sustainable, health-oriented food production industry.

Part autobiography, part business lesson and part education about healthy food and food production industry practices, "Grain by Grain," Quinn said in an interview Thursday, "is generally about the high cost of cheap food."

"The book is written not to depress people but to give them hope, for how to support a solution to all this ... a call to action to see what's happening for what it is and then start to work on changes," he added, "and how to change things."

Quinn said Tuesday he earned his doctorate in plant science at University of California Davis. He quickly became disillusioned with academia, he added, so he and his family packed up and returned to Montana and the family farm in Big Sandy to work alongside his parents.

He said he fully intended to farm the way that his family, neighbors and producers across the U.S. were doing it, ways that were promoted by the government and the big agriculture products companies.

He did this for a time, he said. However, in the process of figuring out how to make the farm profitable for two families, he heeded a few comments from people that led him to pursue organic farming and full-scale production of the ancient grain Kamut.

These three pursuits - profitability, regenerative organic farming and Kamut production - changed everything for him, guiding the direction of the rest of his life and taking him all over the world, he said.

"I came back to my farm where I continued my research aspects and interests and it's provided a whole new opportunity I never imagined existed on a farm in Big Sandy, Montana, to actually be on a stage worldwide in cutting-edge research," he said.

Early on, he said, he worked to market his own grains, cutting out the middle man who connects producers to mills, bakeries and other businesses that utilize the grains.

At the request of one buyer, he said, he searched to find a source for organic wheat. After having to travel all the way to Plentywood to get it, he started growing organic wheat himself. Through experiments in test plots on his own farm, he realized he could grow, on average, as much grain organically as he could with chemicals. But the organic method cost less.

He said he was at a food show in 1990 when a woman gave him a hug and thanked him with warmth and sincerity for growing food for her family. From that encounter, he said, he started thinking of what he produced differently - not as a commodity, but as nourishment for people.

It was during this time that he planted a half-acre of Kamut, an ancient Khorasan wheat, he said. He found a few markets for it, he said, but they also gave a bit of their homemade Kamut pasta to a friend and her sister who both had a wheat sensitivity.

Their positive response spurred Quinn to develop and trademark that grain as Kamut and launched his Kamut industry.

He said more than 100,000 acres of Kamut is grown annually around the world, and the grain is used in 3,500 products, including the Kracklin' Kamut he produces in and sells from Big Sandy. He has also spent about 15 years researching the health benefits of the grain in a laboratory in Italy, where wheat producers and consumers are very interested, he said, in making sure everyone can continue eating pasta.

At this point, he said, everything started coming together.

Studies on Kamut and organically grown grains showed a difference in the end products, nutrient value of the foods and benefit to the land.

As an example of problems in modern food production, he said, modern wheat has altered proteins so the bread can reach higher volume when rising. This makes more bread out of less wheat because the protein is more elastic and more complex.

The problem is that people are having trouble digesting the new protein, so there is an increasing number of people with wheat sensitivity, he added.

But the problem is compounded, he said, by the use of fast-rising yeast which doesn't give yeast, or bacteria, time to pre-digest the gluten.

If, he added, bakers use a sourdough mix with a 24-hour rise, that process destroys 97 percent of gluten in the bread - possibly enough to solve a gluten sensitivity problem.

At the same time, he said, the yeast and bacteria are making antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds that help the body and the gut.

"The fermentation time plays an enormous role in the digestibility of the end product, and people don't talk about that either, so there's many many factors in this whole thing," he said. "It's not just on the farmer's back or the plant breeder's back or the bread maker's back or the miller's back. It's on everybody's back who's involved with the food industry and the industrialization of what it has become."

The consumer, though, is a co-producer in the farming industry, he said. Everyone on the production side will start growing what the consumer is buying, and if this is happening between growers, product developers and consumers within smaller communities the message comes across quicker.

"The main message," he said, "is that we have a great opportunity to change something in a very positive way."