On Wednesday, members of the House of Representatives’s Finance Committee, whose chair is Marcus Oshiro, visited our farm. Representative Dwight Takamine escorted the committee members as they made a series of visits in the Hamakua District, working their way down the coast to Hilo. We had a lot of fun when they stopped at the farm.

I told the committee members that we are a three-generation family operation. My mom, Florence Ha, is 82 and still works at the farm part-time. June runs the office and is in charge of Human Resources. Our daughter Tracy is our special project and marketing person and her husband Kimo, is the Farm Manager. We are all very proud of our farm operation.

I told them that June and I are mainly in charge of R&D, and we have to travel all over the world researching tomatoes, bananas and melons. It’s a tough job.

We took the group to our tomato packing house, where I gave them a quick orientation to our philosophy, which is sustainable farming as it relates to our employees, our community and the environment.

As an example of what we mean by “sustainable farming” in terms of our workers, I told them we offer profit sharing; and that although we would like to be liked by everyone, what we can control is that we are always fair. Because of my Vietnam experience, where “leaving someone behind was not an option,” we particularly focus on and look out for the most defenseless of our workers.

I told them the history of our farm in Pepe‘ekeo. When C. Brewer put all its Hamakua lands up for sale a few years ago, we had to buy the 600 acres on which we were farming bananas or it would have been subdivided and sold from under us. We made an offer to purchase the land with a very small downpayment, and then would be required to come up with a huge balloon payment in four years.

I remember going in to talk to Willy Tallett, the C. Brewer land officer. I had to puff myself up and make “big body”—like, “Oh yeah, where do I sign?”

I came out weak-kneed and sweating. Oh my God, how was I going to convince June that we could come up with that huge balloon payment in four years?

Land prices at that time had been relatively stable for years. But just a couple years later, land prices jumped eightfold. We sold off parcels, refinanced and instantly became really smart. If people only knew.

We told the committee that we are always moving in order to be positioned for the future. Right now it’s about energy cost and labor. So we are choosing cropping systems and inventing things to help us in those areas.

We all jumped into Kimo’s and my pickup trucks, and June’s SUV, and we headed out to the fields. Some of the legislators rode in the back of the trucks. We farmers have great respect for people who are willing to jump in the truck and then go walking around to see the crops. The legislators were all animated and very interested in what we were showing them. They were all right in our book!

At the greenhouses, we explained to the committee that we take the essential aspects of greenhouse growing and then adapt it to our Hawaiian style. We do very careful measurements of the plants’ environments and make precise adjustments as necessary. (It was bright and sunny that day, for instance, and Photosynthetic Active Radiation—the accumulated part of sunlight that plants use—was 42 mols.)

 

I explained to them that the most important thing to us is “taste.” We grow what we like to eat, and we measure sweetness and make adjustments weekly.

We walked through the hot and humid germination houses, and our greenhouses filled with lettuce, watercress and green onions. I explained how we are working on integrating our hydroponics with aquaculture in such a way that we control the quality of the run-off water.

The legislators were very inquisitive and asked good, probing questions. Kimo, Tracy and I had our hands full fielding their questions. We really enjoy talking to people who are engaged, as they were.

As we went along, we pointed out how our next step is to use hydroelectric power to decouple ourselves from dependence on fossil fuel energy. And how we are going to use our excess electricity to do some cutting-edge things in Hawaiian agriculture.

Our caravan returned to the banana packing house, where Tracy had set up a small display of the things we grow. She set out different kinds of heirloom and grape tomatoes to sample, as well as cucumbers. The walking must have made our guests hungry, as they enjoyed quite a lot of the samples.

We took photos and talked story. By the end, we were all like good friends. It was a great visit.