Big Sandy's Quinn talks to book club about farming, grain by grain

Former Big Sandy farmer and renowned agricultural researcher Bob Quinn was invited by Havre's Sparkle Plenty Book Club to talk about his 2019 book "Grain by Grain," which members of the club recently read.

The book is an autobiography told through the lens of Quinn's work in agriculture studying the potential of organic farming, as well as his efforts to shift the mindset of fellow producers and the industry at large toward a more sustainable and healthier way of doing things.

Quinn thanked the members of the club for inviting him and for the meal they all shared at the Duck Inn Monday.

"I really enjoy speaking to local folks and sharing your ideas and questions," he said.

At the gathering, Quinn said the agriculture industry in the U.S. is lauded for understandable reasons, especially in the wake of World War II when the country made an effort to increase agriculture production.

He said people often tout the affordability and sheer amount of food that the U.S.'s agriculture industry creates, but there is another side to that coin, less visible and rarely talked about.

He said the way the industry is organized has caused production to become increasingly centralized into large companies that small producers are having a harder and harder time coexisting with economically, and the resulting destruction of small local outfits is harming communities like his.

"Half of my neighbors are gone because most of them went broke," he said. "... And because of that half of Big Sandy is gone."

Quinn said Big Sandy has lost almost 40 percent of its population as producers left the area, and fewer and fewer producers encourage their children to take over their farms because they see no future for them.

He said as producers leave, the economies of these towns suffer, and even more people leave, creating a vicious cycle that has damaged countless communities.

On top of the this, he said, industrialized ag production is becoming increasingly harmful to the environment, with chemicals like glyphosate now being found in rain, wells in Iowa becoming contaminated with dangerous levels of nitrates and a New Jersey-sized deadzone found in the Gulf of Mexico, all a result of an industry he said needs to change.

He said the industry has also negatively contributed to the state of the U.S. population's health which he said is, in part, a result of the industry's focus on quantity over quality when it comes to the nutrition they provide to their customers.

"We just can't keep going in this direction," Quinn said.

He said it's harder to see the industry as a success given all of these issues, but he thinks there are solutions.

He said some of these problems may be addressed by shifting the mindset of the industry at large from one focused on raising commodities to one focused on raising food.

Quinn said this may be accomplished by creating a system where producers are paid for the nutritional value of their product, not the sheer amount of it they produce.

He said he thinks such a shift in mindset will improve the vitality of producers and consumers alike and lead to a more healthy, and ultimately, sustainable industry, and a big part of that is organic farming.

Quinn said organic farming isn't just about an attitude toward pesticides, but a more complex way of thinking about how to grow, by focusing on feeding the soil, not just the plants.

He said the current mindset of the industry is primarily concerned with giving the plants everything they need to grow as much as possible, but that can sometimes come at the cost of the soil which those very plants need to grow.

He said current agriculture practices often diminish the soil's health in the pursuit of short-term gains in productivity, and changing those practices will make the industry better long-term.

Quinn said sometimes this can be as simple as rotating crops, or generally diversifying what land is used for.

"There is no monoculture in nature," he said. "And I always say diversity begets stability."

In the service of these goals, Quinn said, he and the research institutes he has worked with have been trying to teach producers how to farm organically, test new crops and generally implement practices he believes will make the industry better.

He said these are the kinds of things his book talks about while taking people through his personal history as a producer and researcher.