Richard Ha writes:
The third in my series of expert interviews.
This is Dr. Shane Burgess again, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona, talking this time about how 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived on the earth are now extinct. It's 3 minutes and 20 seconds long. Very interesting; have a listen.
Richard Ha writes:
Michelle Galimba is a rancher (at her family’s Kuahiwi Ranch, in Na‘alehu) and a member of the Board of Agriculture.
One day, on a plane, I looked across the aisle and saw her reading a newspaper. I did a doubletake when I realized the newspaper was in Chinese.
Michelle is a rancher with a PhD in comparative literature from U.C. Berkeley who knows Chinese. She’s a very interesting, gifted, thinking person. You can click into her blog Ehulepo on the right side of this blog anytime. It’s worth reading.
Here’s an article she wrote at the She Grows Food blog called What Does Truth Taste Like.
What does truth taste like? What does justice taste like?
These might sound like terribly pompous questions to ask. But they are worth asking as we learn, un-learn, re-learn the question: “What is food?”
What is food?
Food – we speak of it as good or bad, as healthy or indulgent, pretty or ugly, tasty or yucky, clever or boring,strange or familiar, pure or tainted.
What is it that we eat? It was there before each of us, like the air we breathe, and yet more complexly given to us by each other – cultural, social, ecological. It is what we have absorbed already before we became conscious; it is what we are formed from. It is what our first thoughts were bent upon, what our bodies cried out for before there were words. Food is a feeling, an interchange with the world, a necessary blessing.
Food can be beautiful and good. It should be so. Because it is the flower of the entirety of our knowledge, because it is the will of the community to nourish and sustain, to embody itself, animate itself. Because it is the form and medium of our conversation with the web of life, in which humans are but one node.
The pathway of food should be known by all – its path from earth to belly and back to earth. What knowledge is more necessary?
Truth might have a taste. Would we know it when we tasted it? …
Richard Ha writes:
Where are our local newspapers?
Why does it take the Honolulu Star-Advertiser to back up our island’s local farmers and ranchers, and to point out that agricultural policy should never be set without the participation of the people producing our food?
This is what appears to be happening in Hawai‘i at the moment.
An excerpt from yesterday’s Star-Advertiser editorial, which talks about the Big Island’s recent passage of the “anti-GMO” bill 113:
“The state Legislature may be able to undo this wrong, but it will take true leadership and real political courage. Lawmakers should assert the state government’s authority over agricultural rules and enforcement, rather than standing by as the counties continue to impose undue burdens on local farmers.”
The article also asserts: “It’s time for elected officials and policymakers throughout the state to stand up and be counted. Let’s have an ‘Eat GMO Papaya Day.’ This food is safe, it’s affordable and it’s grown right here at home.”
And why does it take the Star-Advertiser to point out that our policies are exhibiting an unwarranted distrust of University of Hawai‘i specialists in tropical agriculture?
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 12, 2014
That a Big Island councilwoman would seek to revive a bill banning all genetically modified crops on Hawaii island, even though strict limits on such agriculture were approved only a month ago under another bill, indicates just how emboldened biotechnology foes have become in their quest to control Hawaii farmers.
The measure is not expected to pass, and should be rejected. It should not, however, be ignored, especially on Oahu. Councilwoman Brenda Ford’s proposal signals that rather than taking responsible action to assess the impact on local agriculture of the newly approved Bill 113, some elected officials are willing to put productive local farmers flat out of business. Login for more…
WHY does it take reporter Amy Harmon from the New York Times to tell us what is happening on our own island?
By AMY HARMON
JAN. 4, 2014
KONA, Hawaii — From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.
Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.
Like some others on the nine-member Council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill’s proponents called a “G.M.O.-free oasis.”
“You just type ‘G.M.O.’ and everything you see is negative,” he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone’s re-election prospects.
Yet doubts nagged at the councilman, who was serving his first two-year term. The island’s papaya farmers said that an engineered variety had saved their fruit from a devastating disease. A study reporting that a diet of G.M.O. corn caused tumors in rats, mentioned often by the ban’s supporters, turned out to have been thoroughly debunked.
And University of Hawaii biologists urged the Council to consider the global scientific consensus, which holds that existing genetically engineered crops are no riskier than others, and have provided some tangible benefits.
“Are we going to just ignore them?” Mr. Ilagan wondered. Read the rest
Enough is enough.
Our newspapers need to report the news.
Richard Ha writes:
The New York Times just ran an excellent, balanced and well-received article on Hawai‘i Island’s recent GMO ban. It was written by Amy Harmon, a national correspondent for the Times who covers the impact of science and technology on American life. She’s won two Pulitzer Prizes for her work.
By AMY HARMON
KONA, Hawaii — From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.
Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.
Like some others on the nine-member Council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill’s proponents called a “G.M.O.-free oasis.”
“You just type ‘G.M.O.’ and everything you see is negative,” he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone’s re-election prospects.
Yet doubts nagged at the councilman, who was serving his first two-year term. The island’s papaya farmers said that an engineered variety had saved their fruit from a devastating disease. A study reporting that a diet of G.M.O. corn caused tumors in rats, mentioned often by the ban’s supporters, turned out to have been thoroughly debunked.
And University of Hawaii biologists urged the Council to consider the global scientific consensus, which holds that existing genetically engineered crops are no riskier than others, and have provided some tangible benefits.
“Are we going to just ignore them?” Mr. Ilagan wondered.
Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban’s sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to “act before it’s too late,” the Council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Mr. Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence…. Read the rest
Hawai‘i County Councilperson Margaret Wille, though, refers to this article as “Hogwash!”
She’s the local councilperson who spearheaded the Big Island biotech ban, and her comment on the New York Times article kind of says it all. In her second-to-last paragraph she lumps farmers in with “GMO apologists,” which makes us the enemy. We are not the enemy.
Her comment follows the New York Times article:
Margaret Wille
Hawaii Island Hawaii
The underlying message in this article is that pro-GMO is pro-science and those opposed are anti-science. Hogwash! It is the biotech corporations that politically obtained the USDA “political” exemption from being required to do premarketing health and safety tests. This political decision was based on the claim that GMO crops are “substantially equivalent” to the corresponding non-GMO crops. Instead of government required health and safety testing, uncontrolled “open field” testing is occurring right here in Hawaii on Kauai– where all the evidence points to immune disruption of the young and unborn , as well as harm to the soil and adjacent aquatic life.. At the same time these same corporations obtain patent rights based on the distinction of their GMOs, allowing the intellectual property laws to function as the barrier to obtaining the information independent scientist needed to do long term studies.
And whenever an independent study is underway, the GMO offensive position is to discredit the scientist or buy out the organization, as occurred in the case of the international organization doing studies on the adverse affects of associated pesticides on bee populations.
The bottom line is that we passed Bill 113 despite all the opposition from Big Ag GMO proponents and their on island mouthpieces.
Hopefully in the future, the New York Times will curb its biased approach to coverage of GMO related issues.
Contrast Councilperson Wille with Councilperson Ilagan. What a difference.
At this point, it’s really not a matter of who can yell the loudest, but of sitting down and deciding where we want to end up, and how we’re going to get there. We have a very serious food security issue (I’ll be writing more about this next time) that, with our Peak Oil situation, is only likely to get worse.
We are not looking at a First Amendment situation here, where everyone’s opinion matters. Everyone is welcome to his or her opinion, but at this point, when it comes to making important policy for our people and our food security, we need to sit down and form the best policy we can, using the best science.
What was not covered in the New York Times article was Big Island farmers’ concern that the ban on biotech solutions only applies to Big Island farmers, and not their competitors on other islands or on the mainland.
The president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association asked why only papaya farmers are beng required to register their crops and pesticide usage. He said that papaya farmers feel like they are being treated like sex offenders.
And why is there a blanket ban on open air testing? With bananas, flying pollen makes no difference, because they don’t have seeds.
Fusarium wilt killed off the mai‘a maoli as well as the mai‘a popoulu, two banana plants that came to Hawai‘i on the canoes. What if we could bring them back?
What if a virus threatens to kill off all our taro? Would we want to be able to try and save it? What would the ancient ones do?
Richard Ha writes:
Have you heard that Huffington Post and Honolulu Civil Beat are partnering up to launch a new online site called HuffPost Hawaii?
As part of next month’s launch, Arianna Huffington and Pierre Omidyar are coming to the Big Island, and they have asked to visit the farm to learn more about the nexus of energy and agriculture here in Hawai‘i.
They have also asked me to write a HuffPost Hawaii blog, starting during their launch week. I’ll link to that here when it’s available.
We are in such a unique position here in Hawai‘i, with our own set of energy issues, limitations and resources and how all that relates to our situation in terms of sustainability (being able to produce what we need here, vs. being dependent, for example, as we are, on 85 percent of our food being transported here from the U.S. mainland) and food security (being able to get adequate and sufficient food, regardless of where it comes from).
Both Arianna and Pierre’s farm visit, and our HuffPost Hawaii blog, will be great in terms of helping show how Hawai‘i fits into the big picture of energy and agriculture.
They are also great opportunities to continue our GMO discussion and to discuss other sustainability practices.
We might have a lot to gain once HuffPost Hawaii starts up. We will have additional, knowledgeable, people in Hawai‘i, as well as worldwide, reading about our energy/ag situations here and possibly helping us make informed decisions as we chart our course.
What an exciting venture this HuffPost Hawaii is.
Posted: 05/29/2013 12:07 pm EDT | Updated: 05/29/2013 2:16 pm EDT
NEW YORK CITY AND HONOLULU – May 29, 2013 – The Huffington Post and Honolulu Civil Beat today announced a partnership to create HuffPost Hawaii, a site that will bring together the resources of The Huffington Post and CivilBeat.com. The new site, expected to launch this fall, will give a global audience access to the wonders of one of the world’s most famous destinations and the authentic community of Hawaii, including its Aloha spirit. The site will explore Hawaii as an oasis for unplugging and recharging. It will also offer Hawaii residents local news and perspectives, along with Pulitzer Prize-winning national and international coverage…. Read the rest
Honolulu's Civil Beat came to the Big Island and interviewed Richard for this really good article on energy and Hawai‘i – and then today it was picked up by the Huffington Post. Wow.
From Civil Beat:
by Sophie Cocke 8/15/13
HAMAKUA, BIG ISLAND — Lush green fields rise and dip through the rolling hills that stretch down to the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. The verdant surroundings and tropical air suggest this farm could be one of countless others. So does the water that flows past leafy, green taro fields, stalks of corn that sway in the breeze and the sweet potato patch.
But the subtle, steady swooshing of the water signals how this farm is different. The water has been diverted from a mountain stream, down a 150-foot slope and into a small, blue shed where it sends blades spinning to generate electricity.
Yes, Hamakua Springs Country Farms has its own hydroelectric plant.
Farmer Richard Ha borrowed money to install the plant as part of a 19th-century solution to a very 21st century problem: sky-high energy rates….
There's a short video interview with Richard at the end, too.
- posted by Leslie Lang
Another article about the farm’s new hydroelectric system just ran in Pacific Business News.
Richard, the farm and the new hydroelectric system were featured in a Honolulu Star-Advertiser article that came out today.
By Alan Yonan Jr.
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jul 31, 2013
Richard Ha says he first started thinking about using alternative energy to power his Hamakua Springs Country Farms in 2008 when a temporary spike in oil prices sent the cost of electricity in Hawaii soaring.
Even when prices settled back down, the thought of getting off of oil stuck with Ha, who introduces himself on his blog as "a Big Island farmer/businessman concerned about peak oil and the nexus of energy, the economy and the environment…." Read the rest
To read the rest of the article online, you'll need to sign in as a Star-Advertiser subscriber (or you could sign up for an inexpensive 14-day pass). Or if you're here in Hawai‘i, you can pick up a copy of today's print newspaper. – posted by Leslie Lang
Richard Ha writes:
Over the weekend, Scott Bosshardt of Kea‘au had an important letter to the editor of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.
His point was that products produced and purchased locally shouldn’t be more expensive than the same product purchased abroad.
One extremely important fact that the “Think Local, Buy Local” proponents shouldn’t overlook is that local businesses need to “price local.”
Products produced and purchased locally shouldn’t be more expensive than the same product purchased abroad.
He also wrote:
“Price local” instead of as if our Big Island-grown tomatoes and coconuts were imported from half way around the world or some other planet, then people will be much more inclined to “buy local.” This holds true for everything we produce here. Think about it. When you live in Columbia, you don’t pay more for coffee than you do in San Francisco.
He’s right: Prices are higher here, and we need to lower them. It’s what I keep talking about. We need to find a way that we can lower our costs.
I first noticed our farm costs rising steadily back in 2005 and 2006. Rising costs affect every aspect of our farm, and it was very worrisome. Looking into it, I realized that the rise in price was due to the price of oil increasing.
Here in Hawai‘i, we are being squeezed extra hard. More than 70 percent of our electricity comes from oil. Compare this to the U.S. mainland – Hawaii’s primary competitor in many produce and food manufacturing categories – which relies on oil for only about two percent of its electricity generation.
As the price of oil rises, you can see how our local farmers and food manufacturers become less and less competitive with the mainland.
Farming is very energy intensive, and farmers’ refrigeration and water pumping costs have steadily gotten more expensive. Wholesalers’ and retailer refrigeration costs have gone up, too. This means food costs more.
Oil prices have quadrupled in the last 10 years, and this has put the economy into a continuous recession. Everything has been squeezed. Government workers’ pay has been cut. Electricity costs have gone up steadily. School budgets have been squeezed. Medical costs have risen.
I have so far attended five annual Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conferences trying to figure out how to protect our farm from the rising price of oil. I don’t have a degree in chemistry or the sciences – but I am a farmer with common sense. So I spent my time figuring out who I can trust for good information
I determined that the folks at ASPO can be trusted because they have no other agenda than to produce good information. It is up to me to decide if their studies are valid or not, or whether I agree with their conclusion. On the other hand, I thought that people whose livelihood depends on putting on a happy face would probably just put on a happy face.
I have learned that the world has been using two to three times as much oil as it has been finding, a trend that continues. I’ve learned that the oil being produced now is much more expensive than what they found 50 years ago. It takes more energy now to get the energy. The cost of producing oil from shale and oil sands was $92 per barrel in 2011, and the floor price of oil is probably not much lower than that.
The era of cheap oil is over. And the stuff produced in the future will be even more costly, setting a higher floor as time goes by. Unless we do something, it will squeeze us all even more.
Look around: It is happening right now, even with a banner tourism year. Imagine what it will be like if we have a significant downturn.
Also important to note is that the rubbah slippah folks have less and less discretionary income. Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of our economy. Our consumers will have more spending money when we can lower the cost of our electricity.
What about the happy news that the U.S. will become the largest producer of oil and gas in the future? In 2009, Art Berman, a petroleum geologist, showed that in a study of 4,000 gas wells in the Barnett Shale, most of the production came out in the first year. Sixteen-thousand wells later, we see that 90 percent of shale gas and shale oil wells were more than 90 percent depleted within five years. And the decline rate for all the wells is more than 30 percent. We will need to drill one third as many we have now just to keep production steady.
One can reasonably conclude that the shale gas and shale oil phenomenon may not be a game changer. It probably won’t make a large dent in world oil production.
Meanwhile, the overall trend continues. Most of the world’s oil is produced by giant and supergiant oil fields, and lots of them are declining. Folks who study this estimate that the decline rate is around 4 to 6 percent annually. That is about 3 million barrels a year. This is going on all day, every day, no matter what the stock market does.
What can we do on the Big Island to lower electricity costs, and the cost of locally produced food? Biomass and geothermal can do that today. There may be other choices maturing in the next few years, too.
Producing electricity from geothermal here costs half as much as producing it from oil. And the Big Island will be over the hot spot that provides us with geothermal for 500,000 to a million years.
Iceland is pulling itself out of the largest financial crash in history because it has cheap electricity from geothermal and can export fish.
Let’s say that one wanted to payoff an oil-fired plant that produces 60MW today. That difference in price would save $6,600/hour and $158,400 /day. This is more than $50 million per year. Seems like we could be creative with writing off stranded assets.
We are very lucky to have these options here.
Read more about this:
Richard Ha writes:
We all admire Mark Dunkerley, President and CEO of Hawaiian Airlines, and wish Hawaiian Airlines the best.
From Pacific Business News:
Speaking to a room of movers and shakers from Hawaii’s commercial real estate industry at the NAIOP Hawaii
Real Estate Symposium Friday at the Hawaii Convention Center, Dunkerley noted that without new product, such as hotels, tourists will eventually go elsewhere for their vacations.
Dunkerely says that Hawaiian Airlines, a subsidiary of Hawaiian Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: HA) is doing its part by investing $11 billion in a “superior fleet.”
But Dunkerley and Hawaiian Airlines cannot do everything by themselves to save Hawai‘i.
It certainly won’t help if we increase the cost of doing business in Hawai‘i.
The Consumer Advocate is suggesting that O‘ahu (electric) rate payers subsidize the $200/barrel cost of biofuel proposed to be produced by Aina Koa Pono (AKP) in Ka‘u on the Big Island.
From the PUC Docket 2012-0185:
Q. HELCO AND HECO RECOMMEND THAT THE COST DIFFERENTIAL BETWEEN THE BIODIESEL AND THE FOSSIL FUEL THE BIODIESEL REPLACES SHOULD BE
SPREAD ACROSS BOTH HELCO AND HECO RATEPAYERS. IN YOUR OPINION, IS THIS JUST AND REASONABLE?
The Consumer Advocate responds:
A. No. In my opinion, the entire cost premium differential should be borne by HECO ratepayers. I refer to it as a cost premium, because the price of biofuel is currently higher than the price of petroleum diesel.
O‘ahu hotels already pay high electricity costs. Let’s not price them out of the market. This does not help our tourism industry, Hawaiian Airlines or us.
For Big Islanders, our worst fear is that AKP is approved by the Public Utilities Commission. If that were to happen, we would be locked into a 20-year contract that would preclude our selecting lower cost alternatives for 1/3 of our base power electricity use.
An oil price of $200/barrel will be very damaging to the airline industry, as well as to our tourism industry.
We don’t need to be paying for $200/barrel biofuel now when we don’t have to.
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects oil will cost less than $150/barrel in their reference rate case during the 20-year period of the potential AKP contract.
Yet HECO chose to use the EIA’s highest rate scenario of $200/barrel.
What if they are wrong?
Why are we pursuing this alternative? It’s like we are choosing to go over the cliff now, in order to maybe prevent going over the cliff
later.
Why do we want to be first in the world to achieve cellulosic biofuel? There is a 90 percent chance of failure! It would be far smarter to copy someone else who is the first in the world. Then there would be a 90 percent chance of success.
• Are we pursuing this to stimulate economic activity? That’s just taking out of one pocket to put into another, and causing electricity rates to rise as we do it.
A rising electricity price acts like a giant regressive tax. Folks who can afford to do so leave the grid. And those who cannot leave, pay even more.
Two-thirds of our economy is made up of consumer spending. If folks had discretionary income, they would spend it, businesses would hire and people would have jobs.
The opposite is what’s happening now.
• Or are we pursuing AKP to better the lives of future generations? This proposal worsens the prospects for future generations.
We cannot let AKP pass. It would be a disaster for our economy for the next 20 years and beyond.
