Category Archives: Sustainability

Hawaiian Role Models, History, Hydroelectric, Sustainability

A Journey Back

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Richard Ha writes:

We had no idea there was a stream running under the green sugar cane in the foreground of this picture. This is near our new hydroelectric plant. 

Cane

Here’s what we saw after we cleared some of the cane. Amazing!

Another great natural resource!

Awhile back I was asked to speak to students in the Hawai‘i Life Styles program at Hawai‘i Community College. The program has three tracks: hula, fishing and farming. Since then, I’ve kept in touch, and recently Keone Chin and Keali‘i Lilly came and helped clear the cane away. Keone is outreach specialist and Keali‘i is mahi‘ai (farming) support for I Ola Haloa, the Hawai‘i Life Styles program.

Though on the one hand we are using our property at the farm in a modern way, as in with the hydroelectric system, on the other hand, we are looking back at how the land was used in the past.

We have decided to plant canoe plants around the hydro area, to get a feel for how Hawaiian sustained themselves and what they used. I’ve also been talking to Gary Eoff, who’s a well-known expert in making traditional cordage, and we’re talking about planting some of those plants. Eventually we’d like to make plant materials available for others who want to use them.

Gary also grows gourds. You know what I think of when I think about gourds and cordage? I think Tupperware. You can use them to carry things around, and store food. Imagine – Hawaiians even had Tupperware back then. They really didn’t lack for much.

Everything comes down to net energy minus the cost of your food. What’s left over determines your lifestyle. It’s a little more complex than that, but it’s valuable in that it gives us a way to compare how people lived in the old days compared to now. If you use your energy efficiently, maybe you can sit around and go surfing a lot.

So we are just starting the process of figuring out how to use the land around the hydro plant, and going through the exercise with the folks from the HCC Hawai‘i Life Styles program. We are going on this journey together. It’s truly exciting.

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

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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

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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, Hamakua Coast, Hydroelectric, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability, Water, Where We Live

Energy On The Farm

Richard Ha writes:

We’ve had two days of rain and Wai‘a‘ama Stream is a raging torrent. Incredible amounts of water running down the flume!

In addition to using the water that’s all around us, we utilize the energy of the sun. Because what drives plant growth? Sun energy in a certain range.

Photosynthetically active radiation
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia

Photosynthetically active radiation, often abbreviated PAR, designates the spectral range (wave band) of solar radiation from 400 to 700 nanometers that photosynthetic organisms are able to use in the process of photosynthesis….

 Read the rest

We use a sensor that measures the sun energy per meter squared and gives a number for the total accumulated in a day. We keep track of the total.

The sun energy total was low these last two days. This is something we expected, because the river has been raging.

Farmers routinely use scientific information. This is why I say farmers have common sense.

Geothermal, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Robert Rapier & Tar Sands

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Richard Ha writes:

I talked to my friend Robert Rapier yesterday. He had just returned from seeing the tar sands in Canada.  

Robert Rapier is a chemical engineer with 20 years of international engineering experience in the energy business. He holds several patents related to his work. Robert is the author of Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil. He is also the author of the R-Squared Energy Column and is Chief Investment Strategist for Investing Daily’s Energy Strategist service. Robert has appeared on The History Channel and PBS, and his articles have appeared in numerous media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and Forbes.

Here’s a blog post he wrote just before he went.

He told me some interesting stuff about the energy return on energy invested, which was better than I had thought, and about the break-even point of tar sands, which were lower than I expected. He had some interesting ecological observations, too, and will be writing about this soon. He’s also going to appear on national television, soon.

One of the reasons I like Robert is because, in local Hawai‘i terms, he’s a "scrappah.” He’s like our mayor, Billy Kenoi – he is both smart and tough.

I asked him what he thought of the Big Island’s energy prospects, and he said that geothermal appears to be one of the lowest-hanging fruit. I agree!

In a previous blog post, he pointed out that leveraging the sun has promise, nationwide, and observed that solar panel prices are steadily declining.

I agree about leveraging sunshine. As a farmer, I think of plant leaves as solar collectors. We have a year-round growing season here, and we have been using petroleum-based pesticides to help farmers control the year-round pests. If we can use biotechnology in a smart and safe way to help us control pests, it will lower food production costs and help our whole economy.

Instead of losing ground as oil prices rise, we can position ourselves so that all farmers have a competitive advantage to those on the mainland.

Right now, our state goal is to reach 10 percent self-sufficiency. We have to do better than that.

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.

Bananas, Big Island, Hamakua Coast, Hawaiian Role Models, History, Sustainability, The New Ahupua‘a, Where We Live

Room With a View

Richard Ha writes:

This is the view from my “office” window.

View

I took it from the air-conditioned cab of my bulldozer, where I can even charge my iPhone. I was on a conference call yesterday while I was in the middle of clearing some brush that we are going to replace with something more productive. Not bad, huh?
Bamboo

We’re busy putting our marginal lands into production. While we’re at it, we need to provide safety barriers using dual-use plants and trees. We need to protect the streams by preventing erosion and runoff over the long term. If we can accomplish this with plants that provide food, so much the better.

On the land surrounding the hydro generator, we want to highlight the modern and the ancient. The hydro generator represents the modern, and the plants the Polynesian navigators brought with them in their canoes are of particular interest to me.

Being a banana farmer, I am familiar with the cooking bananas, the mai‘a maoli and the mai‘a popoulu. The mai‘a maoli produced a large, heavy bunch. I remember thinking, I would have put that in the canoe as well. The mai‘a popoulu was probably a backup. It was susceptible to wind and not very strong, relative to competition from grasses, etc.

Anybody have those varieties? I don’t see them aroundanymore. They succumbed to the fusarium wilt, like the Bluefield bananas did in the 50s. That caused the world banana trade to shift to the Cavendish type of banana, which are starting to succumb to another race of the fusarium wilt. That is the biggest threat overhanging the world banana industry today.

More pictures from my bulldozer. That’s bamboo in the distance. It’s less than three years old, and I’m guessing it’s 60-plus feet tall and 5 feet in diameter now. That’s with only two applications of fertilizer.

We have ‘opae in this healthy stream on our farm.

All the rose apple trees on Wai‘a‘ama Stream succumbed to a fungus a short time ago. We are going to plant other trees here, which will keep invasive species down and also help to keep the river cool.

This soil was fallow after a banana crop, and as I was walking along I saw earthworms. Healthy soil.

(I videotaped an earthworm!)

I am fascinated by our Hawaiian ancestors’ ability to survive, well, in a world without draft animals and metals.

I’m planning to write more about all this from a farmer’s point of view.

Hydroelectric, Sustainability, Water

Water, Water Everywhere

Richard Ha writes:

We have so much water flowing to our new hydroelectric system. On average, more than two billion gallons of rain falls out of the sky and onto our farm each year.

We have one area with four acres of overgrown cane so thick you cannot touch the ground unless you hack your way through. The plantations put in a culvert there, at the lowest part of that field, and periodically a significant amount of water flows there.

Patchofcane

There is the sound of rushing water coming from somewhere in this patch of cane. This happens every time it rains upslope.

There’s no water flowing at the top of that field, where we have bananas planted. The water is coming from somewhere within that overgrown cane, and we notice that the more rain we have upslope, the louder the sound of the water.

But I just hacked my way 20 feet into that top part of the parcel and I heard the sound of water there, too. I’ll find out what that is in a few days.

Bamboo

I wonder what that looks like? What can we use this land for?

I plan to plant bamboo to line the south side of the water source, which will throw a shadow on the stream and help us access the water.