{"id":20174,"date":"2022-10-27T13:53:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T17:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=20174"},"modified":"2022-10-28T14:33:23","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:33:23","slug":"on-business-sustainability-and-full-harvests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/on-business-sustainability-and-full-harvests\/","title":{"rendered":"On business, sustainability and full harvests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Quir\u00f3s \u201979 attended law school after graduating from Furman, where the economics major began the groundwork for his career as a successful corporate attorney.\u00a0Little did he know that his undergraduate studies would also be useful in the business he took up decades later \u2013 running a large, flourishing Georgia pecan farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great experience to go to (Furman),\u201d said Quir\u00f3s. \u201cIt was a very lively and engaged community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Stacy ’80 and Paul Quir\u00f3s ’79<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to providing a rich intellectual and social life, Furman also led him to the woman he would marry, music major Stacy Shuman Quir\u00f3s \u201980.\u00a0A native of Atlanta, Quir\u00f3s attended Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia, then spent 35 years practicing in Atlanta, the last two decades with King & Spalding.<\/p>\n

When he had the chance to retire early, he and one of his law partners, Dwight Davis, began to look for another opportunity. In 2011 they bought some land and started planting pecan trees.<\/p>\n

Quir\u00f3s recalled how U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), a law partner of Quir\u00f3s and Davis, and a large pecan farmer in Houston County, advised them: \u201cIf you\u2019re going to do this well, you need good land, big water resources, and the right varieties of pecans. You guys ought to look in Houston County.\u201d<\/p>\n

“And he was right,” said Quir\u00f3s, “this will be our seventh full harvest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nearly 1,000-acre farm, situated about two hours south of Atlanta, became King Spring Pecans. It is dotted with 21,000 pecan trees, said Quir\u00f3s, adding that they manage additional trees and acreage for a friend, and are in a cooperative with three other farms.<\/p>\n

Their business is built around the principles of intentional community, sustainable farming and Christian stewardship, said Quir\u00f3s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe \u2026 act in ways that honor the Lord,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s his, and we get to run it for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

That perspective extends to everyone who works at King Springs, said Quir\u00f3s.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t be a successful farm without making a profit, but people need to have living wages,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to feed people healthy food at fair prices and treat the land and the people who work for us a certain way. They\u2019re not just employees, but part of a very valuable team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Harvester<\/span>s shaking a pecan tree<\/p><\/div>\n

The farm also practices integrated pest management, which eschews the use of chemicals in favor of providing habitat for beneficial insects such as lady bugs that eat the pests they\u2019re trying to control, said Quir\u00f3s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have sprayed very little insecticide in the past 11 years,\u201d he said. \u201cYou kill the beneficial insects as well as the pests by blanket spraying, and this just encourages a jump in the pest populations when the insecticides wear off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

A sign from King Springs Pecans<\/p><\/div>\n

Though he no longer practices law, the father of four and grandfather of three still serves on corporate boards. And last year, he hosted a Furman intern, Artem McCall \u201920, at the farm and taught a sustainability class at The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities, as well.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Clover, vetch (both legumes that naturally fix nitrogen in the soil as opposed to synthetic fertilizers) and indigenous wildflowers on the farm<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt was nice of them to ask me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was fun to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quir\u00f3s was happy as a lawyer but no longer wants to be sitting in conference rooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be outside working on the trees,\u201d Quir\u00f3s said.<\/p>\n

He grows large, early-season pecans that are prized around the world and sprinkles them on his salad every day.\u00a0Quir\u00f3s is also an officer of the American Pecan Promotion Board that markets pecans worldwide. Sales of pecans in the United States have increased 32% in the last four years, primarily by increasing awareness of the health benefits and the different ways pecans can enhance meals.<\/span><\/p>\n

But can Quir\u00f3s settle the age-old debate? Is it pea-cans, emphasis on the first syllable, or pi-cahns, with the stress on the second syllable? He chuckled and recalled what someone once told him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThem that grows \u2019em calls \u2019em pea-cans,\u201d said Quir\u00f3s, \u201cand them that tries to sell \u2019em for more than $2.50 a pound calls \u2019em pi-cahns.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sustainable pecan farming in Georgia became a second career for attorney Paul Quir\u00f3s \u201979.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":20179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-economics","category-shi-institute-for-sustainable-communities","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}