Category Archives: Food Security

Food Security, Government, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Bill 113: It’s Not ‘Who’ Is Right, It’s ‘What’ Is Right

Richard Ha writes:

All of this hullabaloo about Bill 113, the anti-GMO bill – What it’s really about is that we need to take a little more time, so we can be sure we are making good and informed decisions.

It’s not “us against them.” It’s not “GMO against organic.” It isn't “who” is right, so much as it is “what” is right.

It’s significant that a group of farmers and ranchers who, between them, grow 90 percent of the food produced on this island, have banded together to say the same thing: We need to think this through more carefully.

These farmers and ranchers opposed Bill 113 because the bill was rushed and its consequences were not considered. We didn’t take the time to think it all through and come to the best decision for everyone.

Bill 113 looks through a very narrow prism; there is a much bigger picture that is not being considered. We are not taking into account the risk of rising energy prices. We live in the humid subtropics, where there is no winter to kill off bad insects. Our solution has been to use petroleum products to fight them off and also to make fertilizers – but now, the price of oil has skyrocketed and this is becoming unsustainable.

Use solar energy, some say. But solar energy is only sustainable right now because of subsidies, and we cannot expect that subsidies will always be there.

A leaf, though, is also a solar collector, and it’s free. Being able to leverage our sun energy year round –  assuming we have a way to control our pests – would make our farming and ranching industry, and our local food production, more than sustainable.

A solid solution to the extensive problems caused by rising oil costs is to use scientific advances. Biotechnology. It’s comparable to how we use iPhones now to replace the big walkie-talkies we used before.

This would help us get off oil, and would also give us the advantage of a year-round growing season, among other benefits. It would help us all.

We need to think through all of this in great detail. All of us need to be open to the fact that our research might prove a certain favorite plan of action unsustainable. If that's the case, we need to move on to the next idea and research that one carefully, getting input from every side.

We need to consider unintended consequences of legislation. We need to slow down, and research, and make carefully informed decisions.

Aquaponics, Big Island, Community, Eating Locally, Family of Farms, Food Security, History, How It All Started, Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, The New Ahupua‘a, Watercress

The New Ahupuaa, Revisited

Richard Ha writes:

This is a post I wrote back in 2007. I recently reread it and realized it's the same story as what's happening today. It's six years later, and people still don't realize we don't have time to fool around.

I'm going to rerun the post here.

***

October 10, 2007

I spoke at the Hawai‘i Island Food Summit this past weekend, which was attended by Hawaiian cultural people, policy makers, university researchers, farmers, ranchers, and others.

The two-day conference asked the question, “How Can Hawai‘i Feed Itself?”

I felt like a small kid in class with his hand raised: “Call me! Call me!”

I sat on one of the panels, and said that our sustainability philosophy has to do with taking a long-term view of things. We are always moving so we’ll be in the proper position for the environment we anticipate five, 10 and 20 years from now.

I told them I had a nightmare that there would be a big meeting down by the pier one day, where they announce that food supplies were short because the oil supply was short and so we would have to send thousands of people out to discover new land.

I was afraid that they would send all the people with white hair out on the boats to find new land—all the Grandmas and Grandpas and me, but maybe not June.

Grandmas and Grandpas hobbled onto the boats with their canes and their wheelchairs, clutching all their medicines, and everybody gave all of us flower leis, and everyone was saying, “Aloha, Aloha, call us when you find land! Aloha!”

I spoke about where we want to be in five, 10 or 20 years. We know that energy-related costs will be high then. And that we need to provide food for Hawai‘i’s people.

We call our plan “The New Ahupua‘a.”

In old Hawai‘i, the ahupua‘a was a land division that stretched from the uplands to the sea, and it contained the resources necessary to support its human population—from fish and salt to fertile land for farming and, high up, wood for building, as well as much more.

Our “New Ahupua‘a” uses old knowledge along with modern technology to make the best use of our own land system and resources. We will move forward by looking backward.

• We plan to decouple ourselves from fossil fuel costs by developing a hydroelectric plant, which will allow us to grow various crops not normally grown at our location.

• We are moving toward a “village” concept of farming, and starting to include farmers from the area, who grow things we don’t, to farm with us. This way, the people who work on our farm come from the area around our farm. We will help them with food safety, pest control issues and distribution.

• We are developing a farmers market at our property on the highway, where the farmers who work with us can market their products.

• We will utilize as much of our own resources for fertilizer as possible, by developing a system of aquaponics, etc.

This “New Ahupua‘a” is our general framework for the future. It will allow us to produce more food than we can produce by ourselves. It is a safe strategy, in case the worst scenario happens; if it doesn’t, this plan will not hurt us.

It is a simple strategy. And we are committed to it.

My assessment of how we came to be here and where we need to be in the future is this: In the beginning, one hundred percent of the energy for food came from the sun. The mastodons ate leaves, the saber tooth tiger ate the mastodon and we ate the tiger and everything else.

The earth’s population was related to the amount of food we could gather or catch. And sometimes the food caught and ate us. So there were only so many of us roaming around.

Then some of us started to use horses and mules to help us grow food. As well as the sun, now animals provided some of the energy for cultivating food. We were able to grow more food, and so there were more of us.

About 150 years ago, we discovered oil. With oil we could utilize millions of horsepower to grow food—and we didn’t even need horses. Oil was plentiful and cheap; only about $3/barrel. We used oil to manufacture fertilizer, chemicals and for packaging and transportation.

Food became very, very plentiful and we started going to supermarkets to harvest and hunt for our food. Hunting for our food at the supermarkets was very good—the food did not eat us and now there are many, many, many of us.

But now we are approaching another change to the status quo—a situation being called “Peak Oil.” That’s when half of all the oil in existence is used up. Half the oil will still be left, but it will be increasingly hard to tap. At some point, the demand for oil—by billions and billions of people who cannot wait to get in their car and drive to McDonalds—will exceed the ability to pump that oil.

Food was cheap in the past because oil was cheap. Five years ago, oil was $30/barrel but now it’s over $80/barrel. Now that oil is becoming more and more expensive, food is also going to become much more expensive.

In the beginning the sun provided a hundred percent of the energy and it was free. Today oil is becoming very expensive, but sun energy is still free.  The wind, the waves, the water—they are all free here in Hawaii. It’s the oil that is expensive.

For Hamakua Springs, the situation is not complicated at all. We need to use an alternate form of energy to help us grow food!

With alternate energy, we should be able to continue growing food—and maybe local food can be grown cheaper than food that is shipped here from far away.

I told the Food Summit attendees that we farmers need to grow plenty of food so that others can do what they do and so we continue to have a vibrant society. If we don’t plan ahead to provide enough food, and as a consequence every family has to return to farming to feed themselves, it would be a much more limited society. People would not be able to pursue the arts, write books, explore space. We would have way fewer choices – maybe only, “What color malo should I wear today?”

There was a feeling going through the Food Summit’s crowd that we were a part of something very important and very special. What I found different about this conference is that people left feeling that this was just the beginning.

We are going to take action.

***

Big Island, Community, Current Affairs, Food Security, Government, Peak Oil, Science, Sustainability

Big Island’s Bill 113 (Anti-GMO) Passes

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

There are strong signals all around us that the era of cheap oil is over and we will soon face enormous social consequences – but we choose, instead, to focus on banning biotech solutions to our farming challenges. Where is our common sense?

We say that the Monsantos of the world are evil, and then we turn around and beat up our own small farmers.

Where is King Kamehameha when we need him?

I keep saying it because it’s true and it’s important: If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm. Bill 113 will, without a doubt, make Big Island farmers less competitive. Bill 113 will make the future of farming even more difficult than it is today.

It is going to have a huge, very negative, impact on our island’s agriculture industry.

People are angry at Monsanto and are willing to punish their own, local, small farmers – their family, friends and neighbors. It’s hard to understand.

I am very disappointed that Bill 113 passed. And I am truly concerned about what it says for our society that people have come to distrust and even fear science.

But coming out of the council room after the vote, I felt so much better when two ladies I had never met told me they respected our point of view, and that we all need to work together.

I told them how much I appreciated them reaching out to say that. The most important thing we will need for an uncertain future is our spirit of aloha.

Big Island, Current Affairs, Eating Locally, Food Security, Government, Science, Sustainability

Snatching Defeat from Jaws of Victory

2 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

Tomorrow, the Hawai‘i County Council will make the most important decision of our time.

Bill 113, the “anti-GMO” bill, would make it illegal for Big Island farmers to plant new, federally-approved biotech plants. We would be in the first farmers in the U.S. with such a ban. This bill would criminalize Big Island farmers who chose to plant what is legal in the rest of the country.

It would also prevent open-air testing of new biotech plants, which is required before biotech varieties are approved. This is a lawyerly way to ensure that biotech solutions will never be allowed on the Big Island.

This bill does allow biotech solutions to be used in cases where it can be shown there has been economic damage. That sounds good, but it is no help to the farmer – he or she would go out of business first, because it takes years to find a biotech solution. Farmers are not dumb.

Fundamentally, this all boils down to whether we are going to continue to avail ourselves of the scientific method, which allowed us to discover, for instance, the structure of DNA. From Wikipedia:

The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: “a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”

The scientific method puts a solid foundation beneath our ideas, and we selectively ignore it at our own peril.

Farmers know that nothing is perfectly safe; it’s all a matter of risk and reward. So when every major scientific organization in the world says that biotech crops are as safe as conventional crops, farmers take notice. These scientific organizations represent thousands of front-line scientists. The Nobel Prize is awarded for finding something different, not for going along with the crowd, so it is very significant that there is such consensus among scientists.

Somewhere between the scientific and the non-scientific method lies common sense. Farmers have common sense.

  • Farmers see that Bill 113 would make farmers on the Big Island less competitive with the rest of the world. This is not good.
  • Farmers know that if the farmers make money, the farmers will farm, and this bill would eventually cause farmers to lose money.
  • Farmers have seen the bad effects of rising oil prices on farm expenses. They know that people have less money to support farmers when oil price goes up.

So this bill would make Big Island farmers less competitive, and our community would depend on cheaper food imported from elsewhere. Common sense tells us this is not good.

On the other hand, we could ask our local scientists to help develop biotech solutions to help us leverage our year-round growing season. Leveraging our Hawaiian sunshine will help farmers lessen their cost of production, protecting themselves from rising oil prices.

Any solutions in this direction will help farmers compete and increase our food security.

Will our County Council kill Bill 113 and move us in the right direction? Or will it snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Big Island, Community, Food Security, Government, Science

Bill Walter on Bill 113

3 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

In this letter to the Hawai‘i County Council, Bill Walter of W.H. Shipman expresses very well what we farmers are trying to articulate.

Councilwoman Wille points to a stack of testimony, taller than the stack opposing Bill 113, and says, "The people have spoken."

If we used "tonnage of food produced on the Big Island" as a means to compare, though, the stack representing the folks opposed to Bill 113 would be 10 times taller.

But they did not bother to listen to the farmers.

Click to listen to what the farmers producing food on this island think.

Pg1
Pg2

Big Island, Eating Locally, Food Security, Geothermal, Government, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Let’s Adapt To Change, And Survive/Thrive

Richard Ha writes:

What we’re doing on the Big Island with Bill 113 is trying to make a law that prohibits us from helping ourselves. It is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

The biggest problem we face today is at the intersection of energy and agriculture. In a nutshell: As petroleum prices rise, there’s a direct consequence on agriculture and everything that goes into it (fertilizer, chemicals, packing materials, etc.).

We rely on oil here far more than does the U.S. mainland. We generate 78 percent of our electricity from oil, whereas on the mainland, it’s only two percent. As oil prices rise, everything that has electric costs associated with it gets more expensive. We already see this happening.

Our farmers and food producers on this agricultural-based island are becoming less competitive, and our food prices are skyrocketing.

We need to find a way to be more competitive, which will not only keep our farmers and food producers working, and make us more “food secure,” but will also make our food costs go down instead of continuing to increase.

It’s energy and technology that determine agricultural costs, and fortunately we have two ways to solve this big problem:

Energy

We are extremely fortunate here on the Big Island to have a resource that most places don’t have: We have the gift of geothermal energy. Geothermal costs only half as much as oil, and the resource will be stable (we will be over the “hot spot” that makes it possible) for 500,000 years.

If we increase our use of geothermal over the years as the price of oil rises, we will be more competitive with the rest of the world. This will be good for our island’s ag industry and also for our people, who will see prices go down, instead of up.

Agriculture

Biotech solutions generally lower costs. They can help increase production, whether it’s with university-developed solutions that help plants resist diseases and pests, or biotech solutions that allow plants to manufacture their own nitrogen so we don’t have to import fertilizer (which requires electricity to produce and oil to get to Hawai‘i).

Then we will be able to rely on natural sunlight for our primary energy, which gives us a tremendous, and not common, advantage – we can grow crops here all year around. Insects, pests and weeds grow all year around too, though, and biotech can safely help us with those problems so we will become even more sustainable and competitive.

Using geothermal plus appropriate biotech solutions can give us a huge advantage over the rest of the world, and make life better for us here at home, but we don’t have much time. We have to let science and technology prevail so we can move forward, not stagnate nor fall behind, and we have to get on this now.

There is some unwarranted fear about using biotechnology, but know that all the major scientific organizations in the world say foods created with biotechnology are as safe as those created otherwise.

Oil is a finite resource, and its cost will rise. There is no question about this. It’s a predictable consequence of what’s happening now, and this is not just my take on it.

Gail Tverberg, who is an actuary and an expert on Peak Oil, says it’s not the physical oil that’s a problem, but it’s whether or not we can afford it – because, of course, the harder it is to find the oil, the more expensive it becomes. This is what’s happening right now. She predicts that in two years we’ll be in really serious trouble.

Citibank recently put out a report predicting that Saudi Arabia will no longer export oil by year 2030 – only 17 years from now – because they will be using all their oil within their own country. The consequence of this would be rising oil prices, and the effects would be felt much sooner than 2030.

Many, many other reports agree that the price of oil will continue to rise. The whole prospect is pretty scary.

Michael Kumhof of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the IMF can’t even model what will happen if oil hits $200/barrel, because that would be entirely uncharted territory.

I have been to five Peak Oil conferences now, which I started attending in order to figure out how to position our farm for the future. In the course of learning about the oil situation, I realized I was the only person from Hawai‘i attending, and realized I needed to share what I was learning here at home.

What I learned is that the world has been using two to three times as much oil as we’ve been finding, and that this trend continues. Over the five years I attended the conferences, we started to hear predictions of when unparalleled high oil prices, the kind the IMF cannot even model, could occur.

It might be two years from now, or it might be 20 years, but it will happen, and it might happen soon. We need to start preparing now.

Charles Darwin said it’s not the strongest nor the smartest who survive, but the ones that can adapt to change. Let’s survive, and more.

Big Island, Food Security, Government

GMOs, Fears & Reality

Richard Ha writes:

Click and listen to these short radio spots while you’re reading (they will open in a new window). They are succinct and really tell the whole story about what’s going on here on the Big Island right now.

The anti-GMO battle that has been imported into Hawai‘i is largely being fueled with outside money, and the people behind it do not care about any of the collateral damage they could cause – whether it’s to youngsters who are going blind or dying from Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries, rising food costs for the rubbah slippah folks here on the Big Island, or that their actions will cause local Big Island farmers harm in the future.

It is Hawai‘i County Councilmembers Margaret Wille and Brenda Ford that have allowed the radicalization to take place on the Big Island. They propose to pass Bill 113, the “anti-GMO bill,” without thoughtful consideration for unintended consequences.

This is really a huge decision our County Council is trying to make, and one that is based on fear instead of reality and science and looking ahead to the future. We cannot go ahead with this bill. There would just be way too much collateral damage.

Please call or email your council representative and demand that Bill 113 be killed. Insist that a task force of stakeholders and experts be convened to research and study how we can come to a place where we achieve food self-sufficiency for the future, and where the final solution benefits all of us, not just a few of us.

Here are a couple of interesting, enlightening articles about the use of GMOs:

Bill Gates does not make excuses for supporting biotechnology in agriculture.

Bill Gates Calls For More Agriculture Research To Fight Hunger

DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP   01/24/12 

KIRKLAND, Wash. — Bill Gates has a terse response to criticism that the high-tech solutions he advocates for world hunger are too expensive or bad for the environment: Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve.

When he was in high school in the 1960s, people worried there wouldn’t be enough food to feed the world, Gates recalled in his fourth annual letter, which was published online Tuesday. But the “green revolution,” which transformed agriculture with high-yield crop varieties and other innovations, warded off famine.

Gates is among those who believe another, similar revolution is needed now. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent about $2 billion in the past five years to fight poverty and hunger in Africa and Asia, and much of that money has gone toward improving agricultural productivity.

Gates doesn’t apologize for his endorsement of modern agriculture or sidestep criticism of genetic modification. He told The Associated Press that he finds it ironic that most people who oppose genetic engineering in plant breeding live in rich nations that he believes are responsible for global climate change that will lead to more starvation and malnutrition for the poor….

Read the rest

And read this Slate article about golden rice and its creator, Ingo Potrykus. He says: “One of the cleverest tricks of the anti-GMO movement is to link GMOs so closely to Monsanto.”

Is Opposition to Golden Rice “Wicked?”

The genetically modified organism could save millions of lives.

By Andy Coghlan

Ingo Potrykus is a co-inventor of golden rice, which is genetically engineered to combat blindness and death in children by supplying 60 percent of the vitamin A they need in a typical daily helping of rice. His project has been opposed from the outset by environmental groups. 

Andy Coghlan: Why did you develop golden rice?


Ingo Potrykus: I got involved because I’m concerned about food security. I realized it’s not just about calories, but also about the quality of food. I started working on it in the early 1990s with Peter Beyer. We started on the problem of iron deficiency, but that work didn’t pan out, so we switched to tackling vitamin A deficiency.

By 1999 we had solved the problem. It was a surprise it worked because from the outset it looked totally crazy.

AC: But environmental groups, including Greenpeace, opposed it?

 
IP: They were against it from the beginning. They said it was fool’s gold because children would need to eat several kilograms of it to get their daily requirement. Children only eat around 300 to 400 grams a day. We worked out that Greenpeace wasn’t right, and that the rice contained enough to meet children’s needs, but we couldn’t prove that because we didn’t then have data from an actual trial.

AC: That didn’t kill off the project, though?

 
IP: Indeed no. The next big step was in 2005 when a group at biotech company Syngenta replaced one of the genes intended to produce beta carotene. The original gene, which makes an enzyme called phytoene synthase, came from the narcissus flower, and they replaced it with one from maize that is far more efficient. It produced 20 times more beta carotene, the molecule from carrots that combines with a second molecule of itself once inside our bodies to make a molecule of vitamin A. It was a big success….

Read the rest

I do not grow any GMO crops, and I don’t have any interest in any companies that do. I want to keep this bill from passing not because I hold any ideological convictions about GMOs, but because I’ve examined every angle of it and it’s clear to me that this is what will best serve our farmers, our people and our island. If I’d studied the facts and ramifications and found otherwise, then I would absolutely be trying to lead us in another direction.
Food Security, Government

If The Farmers Make Money, The Farmers Will Farm

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Though there are 820,000 acres of farmland on our agriculture-based Big Island, our island’s farmers were not consulted when Bill
113, the anti-GMO bill, was drafted.

There is no question: Bill 113 will harm the livelihood of Big Island farmers. It also means they will have to use more pesticides. It will drive up their costs and make them much less competitive. It means our island will be less food-secure.

Is this what we really want? Call or write your councilperson and tell him or her to kill Bill 113.

Ask him or her to create a task force so we can thoughtfully determine our way forward, in the spirit of aloha – so we can provide affordable food for the rubbah slippah folks and move toward food self-sufficiency.

When new biotech seeds are developed, people will be able to buy small packets of them over the Internet. But not here. Bill 113 will make it a crime for Big Island farmers to use those same seeds. Farmers using those seeds, which will make farming less pesticide-oriented and more affordable, would become criminals.

Such seeds are being developed right now by the University of Hawai‘i and other universities and will help our crops become virus- and disease-resistant. This will result in less pesticide usage and lower cost. With Bill 113, only Big Island farmers will be banned from using them. This will force Big Island farmers to use more pesticides than farmers off-island. Farmers are responsible stewards of the land, and this is a depressing and discouraging thought for Big Island farmers.

More than 90 percent of the food grown on the Big Island is
grown by conventional farmers. Bill 113 will drive their farming costs up, not down, and this is going to discourage farmers from farming. When farmers’ costs go up, they are less able to pass those increased costs on. Farmers are “price takers,” rather than “price makers.”

As costs go up, farming becomes less attractive and fewer farmers continue to farm. Bill 113 makes the Big Island less food-secure.

Organic farmers elsewhere will benefit from new biotech animal feed crops, because these will increase the source of manure for
composting. Nitrogen is important for protein and this is a crucial weak link for organic farmers. Bill 113 means organic farmers on the Big Island won’t have these benefits that other farmers will.

There are people that want to believe GMO crops are not safe, but they are ignoring the evidence. The science. All the world’s major health organizations endorse the use of GMO crops as safe.

More than two trillion meals made of foods containing GMOs
have been served over the last 20 years. In spite of all those meals, here in Hawai‘i we have the longest life expectancy in the nation for those 65 years and older.

Since ancient times, farmers in Hawai‘i have been respected in the Hawaiian culture. Bill 113 will forever change that relationship and will, instead, criminalize farmers. Some folks may even feel justified in taking matters into their own hands. Is this really what we want?

Please contact your councilperson and tell them you want them to kill Bill 113 and form a task force to carefully, intelligently study how we move forward.

It’s not a matter of who is right. It is a matter of what is right.

Big Island, Current Affairs, Food Security, Government

Bill 113 & The Big Picture

Richard Ha writes:

Yesterday at the Hawai‘i County Council meeting, the anti-GMO Bill 113 got a positive recommendation, meaning it now needs two votes by the Council and the Mayor’s signature to be adopted.

From this morning’s Hawai‘i Tribune Herald:

GMO bill heads to council

By TOM CALLIS

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A County Council committee gave a bill that would restrict the use of genetically altered crops a positive recommendation Tuesday, ensuring that the legislation would survive nearly five months after the committee first took on the controversial issue.

The legislation, Bill 113, was moved forward to the council level in a 6-2 vote with Puna Councilman Greggor Ilagan voting no and Council Chair J Yoshimoto voting no with reservations. Hilo Councilman Dennis Onishi was absent….

Read the rest

At yesterday’s meeting, Councilperson Zendo Kern said the County has spent almost $20,000 on meetings regarding this topic. He said, “We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different result. That’s insanity.”

Councilperson Dru Kanuha said, “I think we are completely wasting our time, the committee’s time and taxpayer dollars on something that should have been talked about first and foremost.

Kanuha said a task force should have been formed first, in order to investigate and suggest action, and then a bill written.

But, instead, a bill was written first. And the predictable outcome was people yelling and screaming at each other.

Bill 113 exempts GMO papaya and corn now in cultivation – but outlawing future biotech crops, while giving GMO papayas and corn growers an exemption, de facto criminalizes those papaya
and corn farmers.

The bill’s sponsors say we need to move fast before the big seed companies come to the Big Island. But there are economic reasons they are not here. The Big Island is geologically young and has not eroded enough to develop flat, fertile lands. Tractors make money on the straightaways and lose money on the turns. Where we do have limited areas of flat and fertile lands, there is no irrigation infrastructure.

Maybe now, in picking up the pieces, we can focus on the big picture. We need to have, in the spirit of aloha, a serious discussion about food self-sufficiency for the island. We will need everyone’s contribution to this effort.

  • How can we achieve affordable food self-sufficiency?
  • How can we leverage our year-round growing season?

The downside of the wonderful gift of a year-round growing season is that weeds, insects and diseases thrive here, too.

In the past, we used pesticides almost exclusively to increase production. Now, there are new, biotech options that can help us increase production while decreasing pesticides. We can lower food costs and decrease the pressure on our environment at the same time.

Remember, food self-sufficiency involves farmers farming. If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.

Bananas, Food Security, Government, Tomatoes

‘So God Made A Farmer,’ And Now The Hawaii County Council Wants To Make Them Criminals

5 Comments
NOTE: I do not grow any GMO crops, and I do not have any financial or other affiliation to any large seed or other companies that advocate the use of GMOs. My interest in this topic is in finding the right direction for Big Island farming and in being able to feed our future generations.
 
The Hawai‘i County Council meets again tomorrow regarding the anti-GMO bill.

I sent a letter to the editor of the Hawaii Tribune-Herald and West Hawaii Today asking that we take a sincere look at the big picture.

We need to know what we want for the Big Island, and then formulate a plan to get us there.

We need to leverage our resources so as to provide affordable food to the rubbah slippah folks while also working toward achieving food self-sufficiency for future generations.

We need to identify how we can achieve a competitive advantage over the rest of the world.

We need to realize that the Big Island is young, geologically, compared to the older islands. We do not, therefore, have alluvial plains, which form after many years of erosion. We do not have the conditions that would support industrial-scale agriculture – flat land, a dry climate, strong sun energy, deep soil and irrigation.

The seed companies are not arriving here tomorrow to set up shop. Their tractors make money on the straightaways, and they lose money on the turns. It’s counterintuitive, but in spite of its size, the Big Island is an environment best suited for small farmers, not large one. Let’s not let a fear of industrialization cause us to make decisions that kill off our small farmers.

Margaret Wille has now suggested we do an ad hoc study group as part of the Bill 113 discussion. This is an excellent place to begin. Let’s place Bill 113 on hold while we do a fair and impartial study of how we will get from here to there. Who is right is not as important as what is right.

Kumu Lehua Veincent always asks: “What about the rest?” and that is the key question. How do we come to a solution that takes care of the rubbah slippah folks as well as everybody else?

There are a thousand reasons why, No can. We must find the one reason why, CAN!!

Some of my thoughts about all this:

Q. How is farmers’ morale now that Bill 113 is out there?

A. Big Island farmers are demoralized. Paul Harvey narrated a commercial during the last Super Bowl that said, “And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.

It’s less than a year later, and now Big Island farmers are at risk of being criminalized.

Q. What do farmers think of Bill 113?

A. They feel it is unfair. They feel that they would not be able to use biotech solutions for insect and disease problems in the future, as will their counterparts on the other islands. They feel they would not be able to compete.

Farmers want to be good stewards of the land, and they are very distressed that they might be forced to use more pesticides than the rest of the state’s farmers.

Q. What biotech solutions are being developed for bananas?

A. Resistance to Race 4 Fusarium wilt, the biggest threat right now to banana farming worldwide, and resistance to Banana Bunchy Top virus. Both are taking place at the University of Hawai‘i right now.

Q. What biotech solutions are being developed for tomatoes right now?

A. Resistance to Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, which could devastate a tomato farm.

Q. As a relatively large farmer, do you think the big seed companies will come to the Big Island?

A. No. They’d lose money, which is why they are not already here. They need flat land, low humidity, high sunlight, deep soil and irrigation. Because the Big Island is so young geologically, these conditions are very rare here. Big tractors make money on the straightaways and lose money on the turns.

Q. Will Bill 113 increase our island’s food self-sufficiency?

A. No. Food self-sufficiency involves farmers farming. If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm. Bill 113 would make Big Island farmers less competitive. So it would result in less food self-sufficiency.

Q. Would Bill 113 result in less pesticide applications?

A. No. It’s biotech solutions that result in fewer pesticide applications. Big Island farmers would have to use more pesticides as compared to the rest of the State.

Q. What do farmers think of registering GMO farms?

A. They worry that this would make it easy for ecoterrorists to locate them.

Q. Hector Valenzuela suggested that organic farmers seek high-end markets. Would that help provide food for the masses?

A. It won’t. That solution anticipates a niche production for people who can afford high prices.

Q. Can organics provide sufficient affordable food for the masses?

A. No. There is no winter here to kill off bugs and provide an automatic reset. There isn’t sufficient manure for compost to provide the nitrogen fertilizer, which is the basic building block for protein.

Q. How can biotech solutions give Hawai‘i farmers a competitive advantage over the rest of the world?

A. They leverage our Hawaiian sunshine, which allows us to grow food year round. Also, reducing the cost of controlling insects and diseases that thrive in the humid subtropics gives Hawai‘i farmers a competitive advantage over the rest of the world.

Q. Do you think GMOs are safe?

A. Yes. Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the use of GMOs. Two trillion meals have been served with no harm done. Hawai‘i seniors have the longest life expectancy in the nation.

Q. Do you think RoundUp is safe?

A. Yes.

Q. Why do you think RoundUp is safe?

A. We know that the herbicides we used 25 years ago were much more toxic. Today, we have the ability to detect minute amounts of chemicals, and we must put things into perspective. One could take a sample of sea water and detect gold. But that doesn’t mean we would invest money in a business to mine gold from the ocean. We farmers have been taught, over and over, that the dose makes the poison. We need to use common sense.

Q. In your 35 years of farming, what do you consider to be the most important trend that will affect our future?

A. The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, which has caused farmers’ costs to rise. Farmers cannot pass on their costs as efficiently as others can. Farmers are price takers, rather than price makers. Because it is a finite resource, the oil price will steadily rise and food price will steadily rise as well.

But we can leverage our sun resource with new biotech solutions. We can take advantage of our year-round growing season and lower our cost to control pests and diseases and therefore lower the cost of food production. This will increase our Big Island residents’ discretionary spending, which makes up two-thirds of our economy. By doing this, we take care of all of us, not just a few of us.

Q. What do you suggest?

A. Defer Bill 113 and form a committee of stakeholders and experts to focus on Big Island solutions to future food security. It should not be political. It should be a solution that takes care of all of us, not just a few of us.