About 40 people gathered in a field of lentils on a recent Saturday. It’s a typical central Montana day: A clear blue sky and a slight breeze tempering the 90-degree heat.
They’re at Vilicus Farms located north of Havre and just a few miles from the Canadian border.
The group of health care professionals, agriculturists and nutrition specialists are listening to Crystal Manuel, who runs a nearby organic farm.
In the early 2000s, after years of battling health issues, Manuel became interested in how food could help improve her health. That led her to organic farming.
"So in that way, I learned that food was medicine," Manuel said.
She believes organic farming is healthier for people, free of pesticides and other chemicals. This sentiment was at the heart of the two-day summit.
Esther Smith is a co-organizer.
"We wanted to gather to see how can we move forward with this initiative to improve local food access in Montana, and the result of that being improved health in our individual ways, in our community ways and planetary health," Smith said.
As the group stood between long rows of organic lentils and flax, they noticed something. Between each row of crops are strips of hand-sewn native plants.
Co-owner of Vilicus, Anna Jones-Crabtree, says these conservation strips serve as pollinator-friendly habitat that helps their crops. But while she feels this kind of land stewardship is important, it also comes at a cost.
"It’s a little harder to farm this way, it’s not a recipe," she said.
Transitioning to organic farming can be expensive. Organic farms typically produce lower crop yields.
Federal farm subsidies can favor large operations. One study found farm businesses in the top five percent of crop sales received nearly 40 percent of all program payments.
Jones-Crabtree said some crop insurance companies view organic farms as too risky. Organic farmers can also struggle to get loans. She said that’s on top of already volatile markets.
"We have to rearrange that relationship," Jones-Crabtree told the group.
She says this pushed her and her husband to look for innovative ways to finance their farming. Vilicus sells stewardship “shares” at $100 per acre to cover the cost of their farming practices.
Despite the obstacles, some organic farms in the state have been running for decades. The group toured the Quinn Institute, founded by fourth-generation Montana farmer Bob Quinn. He’s been farming organically since the 1980s.
Today, his 600 acres provides a space for research and education on organic and regenerative farming practices. Quinn says quality nutrition starts in the soil.
"It just isn't by avoiding Twinkies and soda pop that food becomes medicine," Quinn says. "It becomes medicine by the way it's grown."
He hopes more farmers turn toward these land use practices. Quinn believes with these changes, Montanans can be healthier and more connected to the land that feeds them.
Montana Public Radio is a public service of the University of Montana. State government coverage is funded in part through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
