They say legends never die, and Al McQuinn’s memory will endure with every beep of a yield monitor and every green or red pixel on a variable rate prescription map.
The Ag-Chem Equipment founder, precision farming visionary, and rural entrepreneur passed away after a long, hard fought battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. McQuinn was 93 years old at the time of his passing, which came just one day after his birthday on October 22, 2024.
According to his obituary in the Minnesota Star Tribune – McQuinn lived in Edina, Minnesota – Al had a date to make on October 24: the 70th anniversary of marriage to his wife, Mary Agnes. Together, he and Mary Agnes raised four children and were blessed with many grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
More from Al’s Star-Tribune Obituary
Born October 22, 1931, on a farm near Butler, Missouri, during the Great Depression, McQuinn’s humble beginnings laid the foundation for his lifelong passion for farming. His early exposure to soil, crops, and farm life never left him, despite a career that would see him build a global agricultural enterprise from its base in Minnesota. 1954 was a big year for Al, he earned his bachelor’s degree as an Army ROTC graduate in agriculture from the University of Missouri and married the love of his life, Mary Agnes in Frankfurt, Indiana.
Following graduation, he served as a pilot in the U.S. Army. In 1963, with just $6,000, Al founded Ag-Chem Equipment Co. Inc., in Jackson, Minnesota. Over the course of 37 years, he grew it from a small shop into a NASDAQ-listed leader in the manufacturing of innovative agricultural equipment. Under his leadership, Ag-Chem developed two iconic machinery lines, Terra-Gators and RoGators, revolutionizing the way farmers and ag retailers applied fertilizers and chemicals.
His relentless pursuit of technological innovation led to the creation of precision agriculture tools, merging GPS, GIS software, and yield data to optimize crop growth, an approach that forever changed modern farming.
Al earned seven patents and had a reputation for always putting the farmer first. He believed in the power of technology to transform agriculture and was equally committed to ensuring customer satisfaction, which was a guiding principle in his company’s success.
In 2000, Al sold Ag-Chem to AGCO Corporation, securing the future of the Jackson, Minnesota plant, which remains a key hub for farm equipment production today.
Industry Colleagues Share Thoughts
Longtime ag journalist and precision farming advocate Paul Schrimpf, now director of marketing and communications with AgGateway, reported on Ag-Chem Equipment just as the RoGator was establishing itself as the top application rig for the ag retail sector.
He remembers McQuinn as an early visionary and a “true believer” in precision technology.
“Al made significant investments in variable rate fertilizer technology through the 1980s and 1990s as president and founder of Ag-Chem Equipment,” Schrimpf says. “That early work inspired an avalanche of investment in research and development in equipment, technology, and software that continues today.”
Ag industry consultant and precision ag expert Dave Swain sold TerraGators and RoGators at Ag-Chem Equipment under Al’s leadership during the mid-nineties.
“Al was the visionary. I kind of laughed at all the things that he was doing at the time when I was there, especially with soil technology – he was very passionate about that. At the time he was doing things with that (technology) that nobody was ready for,” Swain remembers.
Another innovation that Al McQuinn was ahead of the game on was per-acre pricing, Swain says.
“The vision that Al had for the technology and how it was marketed, it was way ahead of its time,” he says.
Asked what type of leader McQuinn was, Swain says he was at heart a salesman with a knack for understanding and embracing people.
“I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with him, but I will tell you that he took care of his people,” Swain recalls. “When push came to shove, he took care of his people.”
Swain fondly recalls a situation that popped up during his time with Ag-Chem. The young ag tech salesman had a sales meeting he needed to attend one week, the very week his first daughter was set to arrive. Having talked it over with his wife and with her blessing to attend the meeting and potentially miss his first-born child’s arrival into the world, Swain went to the sales meeting that week as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening back home.
But his supervisor at the time knew his wife was expecting that week and had clued Al into the situation.
“When it all came down to it, he put me on the jet (to get home for the birth),” Swain says. “So, Ag-Chem flew me home, and I wasn’t the only one that happened with. He took care of his people. Even with all of Al’s, you know, entrepreneurial oddities, he gained loyalty very quickly because you knew that when push came to shove, Al would always have your back.”
Swain remembers Al coaching and coaxing the vast array of characters around him at Ag-Chem to take their talents to higher heights. If you went to Al with a new idea, he says, he would often take pleasure in playing the role of Devil’s Advocate. It wasn’t to dissaude you, though. Al wanted to make sure you were all-in, just like he was.
“He’d argue the other side just to make sure you were committed to whatever your idea was,” he says. “He might already agree with you, but at the end of the day, he was going to make sure, he wanted to see how committed you were to the idea.”
At Farm Journal, we say “thank you” and salute Al for a life well-lived and a job well-done. And we offer our condolences to his family, friends, and anyone who knew or worked with Al over the years.
Click on this sentence to read Al’s full obituary and leave comments in his guestbook.