Food Safety Certification, Health, Hydroponics, Lettuce

Safe Salad

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An article in yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser caught my eye. The headline was Produce We Eat May Not Be Safer. Its subheading: “Government has failed to increase inspections after deadly outbreak.”

Coincidentally, we just had our Food Safety inspection two weeks ago by Craig Bowden of Davis Fresh. We passed the inspection and Craig told us he is pleased that we continue to show constant improvement. Nearly five years ago we were one of the first producers in the state to voluntarily participate in an independent, third-party Food Safety Certification program.

A few months back, when CNN ran a special about the deadly E. coli outbreak in spinach, we wrote a post explaining what we do to prevent disease at Hamakua Springs. We planned our production systems from the beginning to prevent these problems from happening. We feel confident that we are on the right track.

Leafy greens are especially vulnerable to disease because, unlike with some other vegetables, people actually eat the leaves. The plant grows low to the ground and is vulnerable to contamination from rain splattering off contaminated soil, flooding, or improperly treated compost. It is also vulnerable to contaminated spray water, employee sanitation problems, sickness, rodents and more.

Large bagged salad processors “mow” the lettuce, catch leaves and move them along conveyors in the packing house, where the product tumbles through a sanitation process—but there is no way to decontaminate leafy green in the packing house once they’ve been contaminated in the field. Worse, the packing house process actually serves to mix and spread the contamination. So it is most important to have safe field operations.

At Hamakua Springs, our hydroponic operations always begin with chlorine-treated water. After we treat the water, we measure it for E. coli colony forming units (CFU), and we have always found it to be zero.

After that we plant. The plants get their nutrients from this treated water. Since we grow our produce hydroponically (without soil) in covered houses, there is no risk from rain splattering the plants or contaminated spray water. We address other possible contamination issues as a part of our food safety program. We are very comfortable with our safety methods and you can be, too.

Although we hope we don’t hear about any more E. coli-contaminated lettuce on the Mainland, we will not be surprised if it happens again.

Current Affairs, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Peak Oil 2

The United States’ Government Accountability Office (GAO) has an interesting report about peak oil concerns here.

This is a time of increasing concern over the security of our oil supplies—in particular, the fear that, after 150 years of growth, the industry is now facing what is known as “Peak Oil.” That’s the point at which the production of petroleum reaches its maximum before entering a terminal decline.

The big question right now is “When will demand permanently exceed supply?” It used to be that the year 2030 seemed a reasonable estimate. Now, more than a few people are saying it could be as soon as two years from now. Some are even saying we may have already passed the peak.

It is not a question of whether or not we have oil reserves. There is a lot of oil in the ground. It’s more a matter of whether we can replace expiring oil fields with new production in a timely manner. Many of the professionals feel that we cannot. Furthermore, oil reserves of the OPEC producers are suspect. There are indications that they don’t have the reserves they say they have. We don’t know because they won’t show us proof.

And so what will happen? Likely, prices will rise slowly and steadily as oil supplies decline. People will probably adjust their behavior and conserve. Whatever happens, it seems certain that supply will not be able to keep up with demand.

Fertilizer, packaging and other farm expenses have risen steadily over the last few years. I wonder if we have already reached “Peak Oil.” If that has occurred, there’s no better place to be than here in Hawai‘i. We are fortunate to have abundant natural resources that we can use to generate electricity. If we react in a smart way, we should be fine.

Maybe we should hedge our bets and start to position ourselves for “Peak Oil” sooner, rather than later.

Eating Locally, Food Security, Music, New York City, Sustainability

Farm Aid

Last night’s Farm Aid concert took place in New York City.

Remember Farm Aid? The first annual Farm Aid concert, organized by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, was in 1985. Since then, the musician Dave Matthews has also joined the board. The nonprofit organization (mission: to keep family farmers on their land) has raised more than $30 million to “promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture.”

I enjoyed this New York Times article for quotes like this one, from Willie Nelson.

For Mr. Nelson, Farm Aid’s ideals are a reminder of his childhood in Abbott, Tex. “We had organic food and didn’t know it for a long time,” he said. “It tasted great, and we only know that we grew it out in the back garden, and we had a lot of great potatoes and tomatoes and all our own vegetables. Then I left home to go on the road and I couldn’t find that food any more.”

The article goes on to say that there will be no “factory-farmed junk food” sold at the concert. All food offered at the 25,000-capacity venue will be from family farms.

“People have to take over their own food supply,” Mr. Nelson said. “They have to make sure whatever they eat is healthy and do whatever it takes to do that: shopping locally, farming locally, consuming locally.”

And I liked reading this, too, which is something we talk about here a lot:

Why New York? The city brings renewed news media attention to the long-running event, of course. Farm Aid was also invited here, said its executive director, Carolyn Mugar, by an assortment of environmentalists, politicians (including the mayor’s office) and chefs. Over the years Farm Aid has become part of what’s known as the Good Food Movement, alongside organizations working from various angles to roll back industrial farming and promote organic and sustainable food production — and consumption. While the city itself may not be farm country, it’s full of people who eat.

“Farmers are never going to survive if they don’t have as allies the people who want this good food,” Ms. Mugar said. “New York has a huge density of eaters and a density of people who are doing excellent things. There are restaurants, farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture programs, even people who are growing food in the city and teaching people how to grow it.”

The Farm Aid website talks about how to find Good Food, as the organization defines it. Worth checking out.

Food Security, Government, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Looking to the Future

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Yesterday, the House of Representatives’ Agriculture, Economic Development & Business and its Tourism & Culture committees visited us at Hamakua Springs. First I gave them an orientation and then we took them on a tour of the farm.

The overriding theme of my orientation and tour was a look at how we are positioning ourselves for events that will happen five or more years from now. Along that line, our main topics these days are 1) food security and 2) decoupling ourselves from energy costs.

I included this note in the booklet we prepared for each member:

It will take all farmers—big and small, conventional and organic, rainy-side, dry-side, low elevation and high—to make Hawai‘i secure in its food supply.

As our contribution to the food supply, we have chosen intensive hydroponic production. From 15 acres we produce more than 2 million pounds of tomatoes. We have 600 acres, which we own. Land is not a limiting factor.

We think that the decreasing supply of fossil fuels is opening up a great opportunity for all of us here in Hawai‘i. We have the prospect of using our natural resources to generate electricity.

In our case, we are developing a hydroelectric plant. And we plan to utilize the “free” electricity we generate to replace as many internal combustion engines as possible. We could install labor-saving devices, such as conveyors. We could even install pumps for water filtration, temperature control, etc. We could probably duplicate many of the conditions at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) with our “free” electricity.

But our main stumbling block is financing. It is true that there is a 100% state tax credit for some energy projects. And it is so attractive that we know we could easily get investors who would jump at the chance to be a part of a “guaranteed” investment. But then the value would flow to the investors, not toward our goal of producing cheaper food.

Perhaps funding a state farm loan category specifically for renewable energy would work. This would, in effect, be betting that oil prices rise, making the payback of the loan safer as time passes.

As oil prices rise, renewable energy sources become more attractive and local farmers utilizing these resources would become more competitive and produce more food on less land. This is doable.

Hawai‘i’s lack of food security — our extreme dependence on imported food — may truly become a crisis as fuel prices continue to rise. But our concentration in the present on developing renewable energy sources can only pay off in the future as we both remove ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels, and ensure that Hawai‘i will always have easy access to the food we need to feed our people.

Alan Wong, Salads

Salad Dressing 201

This past Saturday, I had one of my most enjoyable days ever as a farmer. I was invited to sit in on a class Chef Alan Wong taught called Salad Dressing 201.

I had previously taken Salad Dressing 101, so I met the prerequisite.

Chef Alan loves to teach and he’s very good at it. He explained that fruits can be used as an emulsion—something to keep the solution mixed.

After using mango to make a vinaigrette, he asked, “And what else could we have used? Guava? Okay, good. What else?”

He started demonstrating how to make a spicy tomato dressing. Halfway through he said, “Notice this is the tomato soup that we do. You can do different colored tomatoes and pour them in glasses, side by side. Now add miso, roasted garlic, apple cider vinegar and blend in extra virgin olive oil. You now have spicy tomato dressing, using the tomato as the emulsifier.”

He asked, “Isn’t tomato a fruit?”

“What other fruit could you use?”

He took ½ cup of rice, salt and  ½ cup of water. Blended until syrupy. I’m thinking, “Rice? What is he doing blending rice?”

Rice is a starch, he says, and he asks: “What other kinds of starches could one use?” The class answers, “Sweet potatoes.” “Taro.”

“Good,” he says. “What else?”

“Add 2 tablespoons rice vinegar and rice oil. Blend.” Did I hear that right? Rice oil?

He says, “Make shoyu vinaigrette and add it to the rice mixture with wasabi. That’s the shoyu rice cream wasabi vinaigrette.”

The students tried a spoonful of each dressing. All the while, Chef Alan asked for opinions and suggestions. One had no choice but to be engaged. It was great!

By the way, try this, he said: Hamakua Sweet Tomato raisin. Dried with Balsamic vinegar and sugar.

I need to ask about this. I need to know how to make it.

At the end, Chef Alan made a dish with caramelized tomatoes. Cocktail tomatoes caramelized with one part sugar to one part sherry vinegar. Cook down in sauce pan.

He also smashed a cocktail tomato down in a dish. Put goat cheese on top of the tomato, and parsley and basil on top of that. It was beautiful to look at and delicious to taste.

I came away from the class with so many ideas floating around. I understand the general picture now and am thinking of a thousand delicious possibilities.

Hamakua Coast, History

The Story of Hamakua

Hamakua Springs is located in, well, Hamakua, and today I thought I’d tell you a little about the Hamakua Coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i.

Hamakua is one of the ancient districts of this island. It spreads just north of Hilo for about 50 miles up the coast to Waipi‘o Valley, which is a beautiful, deeply historical valley that was settled in the 13th century or earlier. Several powerful chiefs hailed from Waipi‘o.

The book Place Names of Hawai‘i, citing Nathaniel Bright Emerson’s Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, says “Hamakua” (poetic) means “kuhi loa.” “Long corner.” I’m assuming that refers to its physical location.

Here’s something to chew on: Almost no one pronounces “Hamakua” correctly. It’s properly pronounced HAA-MAA-KUA. There are kahakos—macrons, or stresses—on the first two As, meaning you hold them a little longer.

Few people even know that anymore. It’s as though we lived in Nevada and called it “Las Vee-gus” all the time.

Anyway. If you were to travel the Hamakua coast long ago, you would have walked along winding paths, up and down through gullies and streams. You’d have seen Hawaiian families living here and there, their grass homes tucked into the valleys and gulches, many of them growing kalo (taro).

In more recent years, the crop in Hamakua was sugar cane. The coast had sugar plantations and mills and the plantation villages that sprung up around them, and cane growing seemingly everywhere. And there was a railroad that ran where the main highway (19) is now, but which was destroyed in a 1946 tsunami and not rebuilt.

This island’s, and Hamakua’s, sugar chapter is over now, and now the story is about diversified agriculture. And that’s where Richard, and Hamakua Springs Country Farms, comes into the picture.

Rural Hamakua is a lovely, scenic place of much rainfall and therefore luxurious green rainforest. It is a coast of waterfalls, rivers, springs and streams, with prawns in them for the catching. Hamakua is also a place of swimming holes. Of sweet guavas that squish between your barefoot toes, or taste delicious if you get them before they fall. And waiawi, which are little strawberry guavas, both yellow ones and red ones. Right now the waiawi are abundant and fallen fruit is covering backroads like bright carpets.

On one side of the Hamakua coast are cliffs that reach down to the ocean, where you can watch whales pass by during their migrating season. Along the other side we see Mauna Kea, the volcano that stands magestically over us, and which is sometimes covered with an amazing cloak of snow in the winter.

There are probably other places as beautiful, but you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince me that there is a place MORE beautiful than Hamakua.

Biofuel, Current Affairs, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Peak Oil

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Lately there has been much discussion about energy security—or lack of security—and what, if anything, we can do about it. The term “peak oil” means we are at or very near the point where maximum oil production equals our oil demand. After the peak, demand will outstrip supply.

We all agree that this is true. We differ only about how bad it will be. Some people are predicting the collapse of civilization. Others think we can make the necessary adjustments.

We in Hawai‘i are especially vulnerable. In addition to the prospect of having to pay unbearable fossil fuel costs in the future, we currently import more than 70 percent of our food—a highly fossil-fuel-dependent method of taking care of the basic need of feeding ourselves.

We have abundant natural resources available to us that could help us find a solution to the “peak oil” problem. But we need to take action NOW!

Solar, hydro, wind and geothermal power are available to us on each island, in varying degrees, and they are not tied to fossil fuel costs. They can all be converted to electricity. With electricity, we can produce food and get work done. And with electric cars, we can also get from one place to another.

What about bio-diesel and ethanol?

It does not look as though farmers would work for the returns that these fuels would bring. For example, ethanol and biodiesel can be brought into Hawai‘i for approximately $2 per gallon. Presumably that is what a farmer would be paid for a gallon of bio-fuel, which weighs roughly 8 pounds.

Therefore a farmer would get approximately 25 cents/pound of liquid bio-fuel. If it took, say, two pounds of a farmer’s product to make one pound of bio-fuel, that would mean a Hawai‘i farmer would get 12.5 cents per pound for growing bio-fuel crops. Under those conditions, farmers would not grow bio-fuel crops.

We may have to be content with buying them from overseas.

Truly, the answer is that we should be focusing on our natural resources as sources of electricity. And we should focus on supporting our farmers, as well—on every island, at every elevation: windward and leeward, big and small. We need to know that we can produce the food we need here.

We can do this.

Sustainability, Water

Power Play

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A while back we found out that we could generate 75 kilowatt-hours of electricity from a flume on our property. That’s enough electricity to power 15 refrigerated 40-foot Matson containers continuously.

Ever since then, we’ve been asking ourselves, “What does free electricity mean?” “What could we do with all that free electricity?” (Keeping in mind that we also have 6 million gallons of water per day that the sugar company had in its water system.)

We’re thinking wildly right now, and not worrying about the practicality of our ideas at this point. We just want to have fun with it. So here are some thoughts. Feel free to send us your ideas as well; we’d love to hear them.

We could have countless types and numbers of water fountains. After all, we are located just a few miles outside of Hilo, where we measure rain in feet, not inches, per year. There is approximately 10 feet of rain annually.

What about bug lights to control moths?

Could we simulate the seasons and fool plants into producing off-season? My friend Ralph, who lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, wonders if we couldn’t grow peonies. What are peonies? What about grapes? Or berries? ‘Ohelo?

And then there is the idea of aquaculture. Could we add salt and minerals to the water and simulate an ocean? Circulate the water through a filter? Or what if we grew freshwater prawns and fed them lettuce leaves or tomato leaves or bananas? The best bait is coconut. Maybe we run water from the prawn tanks through watercress beds and pump it back around?

What about taro lo‘i, where we use the same water by pumping the water back uphill and spraying it back in, oxygenating it at the same time?

Kevin Hopkins, director of the aquaculture center in Keaukaha, mentioned growing sturgeon. He asked how much free-flowing water we have. Could we install aerators?

Someone told me a funny sturgeon story recently. Sturgeons are associated with caviar. You know, the ultra, high-end caviar from the Caspian Sea. Well, a person who was growing sturgeons lost them in a flood. So when he found a few of them he knew he had to try to salvage the eggs.

He went to a high-end restaurant at one of the Kohala Coast resorts and asked the Executive Chef if he was interested in buying some caviar. The chef, assuming the man was a food purveyor, asked him where the caviar came from. He was thinking Caspian Sea.

The fish farmer replied, “Hilo.”

Comment here, or email me, with your ideas of what we should do with our free electricity!

Government

A Trip to the Farm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food and Drink, The Good Life, Tomatoes

Tomato Revelry

Melissa Clark has a delicious article in today’s New York Times about cooking with tomatoes. After I read it, I actually had to go in the kitchen and prepare a snack.

Her summary:

“After purchasing bags of summer tomatoes from the farmer’s market, I spent the next week in decadent tomato revelry. Here’s a chronicle of my grand tomato tour.”

My summary:

Ummm. Pan con tomate (trust me; it sounds great); baked stuffed tomatoes with goat cheese fondue; multicolored tomato tartlets; instant tomato-ricotta “soup” with capers; red and yellow cherry tomato confit; gazpacho with watermelon and avocado; and green tomato and lemon marmalade.

My conclusion:

Tomorrow I am going to make gazpacho with watermelon and avocado. Or maybe I’ll roast some tomatoes, which “condenses and caramelizes the juices, turning a juicy, salad-worthy fruit into syrupy tomato candy.”