Quinn Institute: Healing the Earth By Growing Food As Medicine

07/21/2025
By: Kathy Webster and Wendy Millet

We were fortunate to have Bob Quinn from the Quinn Institute in Montana present at our Healthy Food + Healthy Planet workshop to discuss research on ancient grains and their connection to health and nutrition. Bob established the Quinn Institute, a 700-acre farm dedicated to research and education to promote regenerative organic farming practices across the country and help farmers produce more nutritious food. 

Bob is a fourth-generation organic farmer and a plant biochemist. He is best known for his ancient grain, Kamut, and his work with Kamut International, which he and his family established several decades ago. Kamut is a family-owned trademark used to promote and protect a particular strain of wheat whose common name is Khorasan—an ancient grain recognized for its beneficial nutritional qualities and ease of digestion.

Bob has long been a pioneer in the regenerative organic agriculture movement, envisioning a rise in the number of successful regenerative organic producers growing nutrient-dense foods. He also served on the first National Organic Standards Board. The Quinn Institute works on five pillars for system change:

1. Create a partnered environment and build an engaging community to address challenges.
2. Advance the science, understanding, and promotion of food as medicine.
3. Lead place-based agriculture research and the practice of regenerative organic agriculture and healthy food production.
4. Understand and promote solutions that regenerative organic agriculture has for mitigating climate change and reducing chemical pollution on our planet.
5. Model a regional approach with far-reaching, national, and global implications.

The Quinn Institute has many plans. It will feature small gardens, orchards, a teaching kitchen, and modest processing facilities. Currently, it is divided into various fields to showcase agricultural systems and highlight interactions between livestock, native pasture, and different crop rotations. One of the Institute’s projects is small plots of dry-farmed potatoes, which local school children helped harvest and then enjoy throughout the school year. (An effort to reconnect children with food by allowing them to help grow the food that will be on their lunch plates.)

To conclude, we offer words from Bob Quinn himself:

“The whole object of the institute is to help farmers grow better food, that can be used medicinally to stem the tide of chronic disease and other problems we have in this country, mostly because of the kind of food that we’re eating, with the lack of nutrition and all the additives and chemical residues that we have. Wouldn’t it be great if farmers were paid for nutrients per acre rather than bushels per acre?”