Bananas, Science

Might We ‘Have No Bananas?’

Richard Ha writes:

My friend Nate Hagens forwarded me this story yesterday. I’d been aware of this peripherally, but now this is serious and we are putting the issue front and center. 

The gist of it is that a massive Chiquita banana plantation in Mozambique has a deadly banana disease that will likely spread, and probably already has.

From Popular Science.com:

Has The End Of The Banana Arrived?

Researchers fear that a relentless and virulent fungus could cripple the world's banana monoculture.

By Dan Koeppel Posted 05.13.2014 at 8:30 am

Two weeks ago, at a conference in South Africa, scientists met to discuss how to contain a deadly banana disease outbreak in nearby Mozambique, Africa. At fault was a fungus that continues its march around the planet. In recent years, it has spread across Asia and Australia, devastating plants there that bear the signature yellow supermarket fruit.

The international delegation of researchers shared their own approaches to the malady, hoping to arrive at some strategy to insulate Mozambique and the rest of Africa: a continent where bananas are essential to the lives of millions. They left the Cape Town-based meeting with an air of optimism.

Only days after the meeting, however, a devastating new survey of the stricken Mozambique farm was released. Scientists at the conference assumed that the fungus was limited to a single plot. The new report suggested the entire plantation was infested, expanding 125 diseased acres to more than 3,500. All told, 7 million banana plants were doomed to wilt and rot.

“The future looks bleak,” says Altus Viljoen, the South African plant pathologist who organized the conference. "There’s no way they’ll be able to stop any further spread if they continue to farm.” Worse, he says, the disease's rapid spread endangers banana crops beyond Mozambique’s borders…

Read the rest

The Mozambique banana plantation has what veteran banana farmers know as “Panama Wilt.” Long-time banana farmers in Hawai‘i remember when “Race 1, Panama Wilt” killed off Hawai‘i’s Bluefield bananas, the main variety grown here back then, as well as the banana varieties that the ancient Hawaiians brought in their canoes.

This disease in Mozambique is a variant of that one, called “Race 4, Fusarium Wilt.” This one affects and kills many banana varieties, including the Cavendish varieties, which are the main bananas in the world trade.

What’s most disturbing in this story is that Chiquita seems to have done a lot of things wrong when it started its new banana plantation in Mozambique. The company sent workers back and forth from Mozambique to Central America, when this disease easily spreads by soil on boots and clothing. The writer speculates that the disease is probably in Central America right now! As a long time banana farmer who knows about banana diseases, I too believe that it is probable.

The possiblity of this disease arriving here and decimating Hawai‘i’s banana industry is very real, and very scary. Our local banana industry is working closely with the University of Hawai‘i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. I sent them this article, and the wheels are turning. This is no longer business as usual!

This same thing happened in Taiwan. They have the Race 4 disease there, and all their farmers now source their new plantings from Race 4-free tissue culture. They are selecting for resistance as they go along. The director of Taiwan’s lab is a graduate of UH Manoa and we visited that tissue culture facility once.

I’m debating whether I should start up our tissue culture lab again. In the meantime, we are relying heavily on the College of Tropical Ag. This is a very, very serious situation and it’s bigger than any of us alone. But I’m optimistic.

Current Affairs, Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

What Monterey Shale Oil?

Richard Ha writes:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) made a dramatic announcement recently: it is revising its estimate of the Monterey Shale Oil supply downward by 96 percent.

Ninety-six percent is a lot.

Especially when you consider that the Monterey Shale Oil supply presented two-thirds of the United States’s oil reserves. It was estimated that we had 100 years of oil reserves left in this country altogether, but now that we know 66 percent of it doesn’t exist, there must be only 34 percent, or 34 years, of oil reserves remaining in the U.S.

However, the cost we would have to pay for oil companies to retrieve it would exceed what it would cost them to do so. In other words, if we consumers were willing to pay $1 million/barrel, all of those 34 years’ worth of oil could probably be recovered. But if we the people can only pay $150/barrel, we might only see ten years’ worth drilled. Hmm.

Those of us who attend Association for the Study of Peak Oil conferences (I’ve attended five now, the only person from the Big Island to do so) have known that the claim that the U.S. has a 100-year supply of oil was way overestimated. We are never going to be Saudi America.

Kurt Cobb writes about this at Resource Insights:

The great imaginary California oil boom: Over before it started

Sunday, May 25, 2014

It turns out that the oil industry has been pulling our collective leg. 

The pending 96 percent reduction in estimated deep shale oil resources in California revealed last week in the Los Angeles Times calls into question the oil industry's premise of a decades-long revival in U.S. oil production and the already implausible predictions of American energy independence. The reduction also appears to bolster the view of long-time skeptics that the U.S. shale oil boom–now centered in North Dakota and Texas–will likely be short-lived, petering out by the end of this decade. (I've been expressing my skepticism in writing about resource claims made for both shale gas and oil since 2008.)

California has been abuzz for the past couple of years about the prospect of vast new oil wealth supposedly ready for the taking in the Monterey Shale thousands of feet below the state. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) had previously estimated that 15.4 billion barrels were technically recoverable, basing the number on a report from a contractor who relied heavily on oil industry presentations rather than independent data.

The California economy was supposed to benefit from 2.8 million new jobs by 2020. The state was also supposed to gain $220 billion in additional income and $24 billion in additional tax revenues in that year alone, according to a study from the University of Southern California that relied heavily on industry funding.

But that was before the revelation by the Times that the EIA will reduce its estimate of technically recoverable oil in California's Monterey Shale by 96 percent–almost a complete wipeout–after taking a close look at actual data for wells drilled there already. The agency now believes that only about 600 million barrels are recoverable using existing technology. The 600 million barrels still sound like a lot, but those barrels would last the United States all of 40 days at the current rate of consumption….

Read the rest

We need to take a step back and reevaluate where we are and what we need to do. As I’ve been saying for years now, we need to get on with geothermal. For the Big Island, the path we need to take is clear.

A byproduct of the oil operations is natural gas, and it would be helpful if natural gas prices rose to help with the costs of development.

It’s kind of like curtailed electricity. If it could be sold at any price, it would help lower the bid price of geothermal and wind operations and would result in lower electricity costs for the rubbah slippah folks.

If curtailed electricity could be bought at a cheap enough price, it could also enable a hydrogen storage option. Then we could get a hydrogen fuel cell option for various motors. And we could look at converting hydrogen to ammonia, so we would have nitrogen fertilizer to help with our food security. 

Big Island, Geothermal, Hydrogen, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

Toyota Shifts Focus to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Toyota made a major announcement today: It will stop focusing on pure electric vehicles, and begin focusing its attention on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. This is huge.

Do you know that here on the Big Island we throw away (“curtail”) tons of electricity from geothermal and wind every night? We can turn this energy into hydrogen fuel cells, for transportation, and this can help us solve our transportation fuel problem. It can also be used for nitrogen fertilizer.

Solar energy projects do not provide curtailed electricity. We need to think about the big picture and be careful about running like lemmings after solar.

Hydrogen fuel cell for transportation is a very good opportunity for the Big Island to use its curtailed electricity. It’s a free resource that already exists; currently, we are just throwing it away.

From Audioguide.com:

“Toyota will forgo further development in pure electric vehicles in search of what it sees as more promising alternative fuel vehicles.

The automaker will focus on the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles according to Toyota North America CEO Jim Lentz….”

 Read the rest

Big Island, Water

About the Big Island’s Water Quality

Richard Ha writes:

The State of Hawai‘i tested 24 sites throughout the islands for pesticide residue, and the Big Island tested the lowest. Of all the islands, we had the lowest amount of pesticide residue.

It’s interesting to note that “the USGS laboratory methods used for this study measure compounds at trace levels; commonly 10 to 1,000 times lower than drinking water standards and aquatic life guidelines.”

The document is called the 2013-14 STATE WIDE PESTICIDE SAMPLING PILOT PROJECT WATER QUALITY FINDINGS, A Joint Investigation by the Hawaii State Departments of Health and Agriculture.

From the executive summary (there’s lots more detail within the study itself):

Surface water samples collected from 24 sites statewide were analyzed for a total of 136 different pesticides or breakdown products. All locations had at least one pesticide detection. Only one pesticide, a historically used termiticide exceeded state and federal water regulatory limits. Five other pesticide compounds were detected at levels exceeding the most conservative EPA aquatic life benchmark. All other pesticides detected were lower than the most stringent aquatic or human health guideline value.

These findings represent a snapshot in time from a single sampling event within watersheds with multiple upstream inputs. While they provide useful information about pesticide occurrence across different land uses, they may not be representative of typical conditions or identify specific sources.

Key findings:

  • Every location sampled had a trace detection of one or more pesticides; however, the majority of these represented minute concentrations that fall below state and federal benchmarks for human health and ecosystems.
  • Land use significantly impacted the number and type of pesticides detected. Urban areas on Oahu showed the highest number of different pesticides.
  • Oahu’s urban streams had the highest number of different pesticides detected. Manoa Stream at the University of Hawaii showed 20 different pesticides and breakdown products.
  • Dieldrin, a termite treatment that has been banned from sale in Hawaii since 1980, exceeded State and Federal Water Quality standards in three urban locations on Oahu.
  • Fipronil detected in Manoa Stream and Waialae Iki Stream exceeded aquatic life benchmarks for freshwater invertebrates. Fipronil is an insecticide commonly used in residential settings and applied by commercial pest companies to treat soil for termites.
  • Atrazine and metolachlor, two restricted use herbicides, were detected on Kauai at agricultural sites downstream of seed crop operations. One location had levels that exceed aquatic life guidelines, but remain below regulatory standards.
  • The number of pesticides detected in water samples on Hawaii Island was lower than that of Kauai and Oahu.
  • Atrazine, a restricted use pesticide, was the most commonly found pesticide in the study. Of the sites tested, 80 percent had atrazine detections. Only two sites, one on Kauai, and one on Maui, reflected elevated concentrations suggestive of current use of atrazine. All of the remaining detections were trace level concentrations far below state and federal benchmarks.
  • The pilot study tested stream bed sediment at seven sites and found glyphosate, in all samples. Glyphosate (trade marked as Roundup) is widely used for residential, commercial, agricultural and roadside weed management.

Read the rest

Lowering Electric Rates

A Real Danger: The Rising Cost of Food

Richard Ha writes:

The rising cost of food is a real and present danger.

  • Last month the price of meat in the U.S. rose at the fastest rate in ten years.
  • The cost of shrimp is up 61 percent from a year ago.
  • It’s predicted that pork production may be down ten percent this year, due to a widespread virus, and the cost is already up 13 percent this year.
  • As all these costs go up, many people have turned to eating chicken, but even the price of chicken breast is up 12 percent since a year ago.

Right here on the Big Island, our Pahoa school complex has the highest percentage of students in the entire state participating in the free/subsidized school lunch program. EIGHTY-NINE percent of the students in the Pahoa school complex qualify for, and receive, free or subsidized lunches.

There are socioeconomic consequences to all of this, and it’s exactly why the Big Island Community Coalition is advocating so strongly for lower electricity prices, which will directly lead to lower food costs.

From peakoil.com:

As the price of meat continues to skyrocket, will it soon be considered a “luxury item” for most American families?  This week we learned that the price of meat in the United States rose at the fastest pace in more than 10 years last month….

The price of beef has also moved to unprecedented heights.  Thanks to the crippling drought that never seems to end in the western half of the nation, the size of the U.S. cattle herd has been declining for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that is has been since 1951….

And we already have tens of millions of people in this country that are struggling to feed themselves.  If you doubt this, please see my previous article entitled “Epidemic Of Hunger: New Report Says 49 Million Americans Are Dealing With Food Insecurity.”

So what happens if drought, diseases and plagues continue to cause food production in this country to plummet?

Read the rest

Science

Risk & How We Live Our Lives

Richard Ha writes:

The College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources at the University of Hawai‘i has a good article out right now about risks, and how we make decisions about them. They point out that we fly in airplanes, even though they could crash, because we consider the risk and know that it’s very low. We enjoy the sun, although we know it could cause melanoma, after considering the risk and take necessary precautions such as long sleeves and sunscreen. It's all about the risk and the benefit.

They point out that it’s the same with agricultural technologies, and it’s really all just common sense. Everything we do and every decision we make is about risk assessment.

From Biotech in Focus:

Risks and Decisions: How We Live and Farm

In our last bulletin, we discussed the regulatory framework that the United States uses to evaluate genetically engineered crops. Are these regulations too lax? Too restrictive? Appropriate for current circumstances? Before we examine issues of biotechnology and safety, we’ll consider the process by which people assess safety in their daily lives….

        Read the rest

It’s just common sense, and this article makes that point nicely.

Education

Why Our Agriculture Sector Is so Strong

Richard Ha writes:

Before there were land grant colleges, only the socially advantaged got a higher education. There were no public colleges.

Land grant colleges were formed in order to educate the masses; president Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation that created them. I wrote more about the history of land grant colleges here.

They are probably why the U.S. agricultural sector has led the world in food production for so many years. This blog post below asks a very significant question.

From the Western Farm Press blog:

Where would agriculture be without university research?

by Todd Fitchette May 13, 2014 

My fascination with agriculture developed when I was assigned the Ag beat with a daily newspaper. I quickly learned just how important agriculture was to the area I was living in at the time and the different things those who worked in it had to accomplish on a regular basis….

American agriculture owes much of its success to the land grant institutions and the work of cooperative extension. In my state that institution is the University of California. The farm advisor has proven to be an invaluable part of the commercial farming operation, regardless of its location in the United States….

Read the rest

Geothermal, Iceland, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

HECO Needs to Match Output to Customer Needs

Richard Ha writes:

Our electric utility needs to match up its output with customer needs. Renewable sources of electricity such as wind and solar have short- and long-term problems with fluctuation. That’s why the utility needs to have electricity generation units on standby.

We are so fortunate here to have geothermal electricity, which is not only stable but is also cheaper than wind and solar, all things considered.

And we know that geothermal works in Iceland. In spite of that country’s recent economic crash caused by irresponsible bankers, Iceland is one of the highest-rated countries in the world in terms of quality of life issues.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Hawaii confronts ‘green’ energy’s bugaboo: batteries

Hawaii and California utilities are moving to add storage on their grids to accommodate ‘green’ energy and better match production energy production and consumption. But storage is still expensive. 

By Ken Silverstein, Contributor / May 11, 2014

Hawaii Electric Co. – no stranger to solar power – has a problem with the sun.

When it shines, so much energy from utility and home-based solar panels comes surging in that it can overload some circuits in the grid and, potentially, cause a power surge that damages home and office equipment. When the sun goes into hiding, the utility has to generate power from somewhere else. That’s why the utility is casting a net to find vendors that could supply it with the technology to store electricity….

Read the rest

Bike, Lowering Electric Rates, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability

Bad: Change Just for the Sake of Change

Richard Ha writes:

Things are moving fast in terms of energy, and nobody knows, right now, where we are heading. Where we end up will not only shape our own futures, but it will also determine how easy or hard our children’s and grandchildren’s lives are.

The PUC just told HECO that the utility had better change what it’s doing, and HECO responded that it will. But there are lots of moving parts to this situation, and none of us know where things are going. 

Change merely for the sake of change is not wise, and it’s worrisome. We need to conscientiously adapt to conditions with careful consideration and purpose. We must have a smart vision, and work toward that vision.

Henry Curtis wrote that Energy Futurists Need Open Minds:

“…stakeholders and regulators need open dialogue on a variety of future scenarios.

And yet, although there are at least four different ways the future can unfold, many are gambling their careers by assuming that the Smart Grid scenario is the future and therefore all other scenarios can be ignored.

Later this month the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) would hold public meetings to discuss their Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement.

The feds want to use the 1300-page document to develop guidance on how the DOE can fund the Smart Grid future.  They too have ignored the alternatives at their own peril….”

Being “first in the world” at something is a risky proposition. It’s far better to copy the first in the world. Folks who attempt to be first in the world frequently fail, and the question here is, who is going to pay if we try something and we fail?

From my perspective, it seems clear that we want a future that leaves no one behind and makes us competitive with the rest of the world.

Take mountain bikes, for example. Nowadays they have shock absorbers, multiple gears, lightweight material and instrumentation that aids the rider. The tool kit is very light and efficient. But the heart of the system, the wheels, are still round.

Say we want to improve a bicycle to win a race. Do we make a unicycle? A bicycle with every innovation but only one wheel? 

We need to be clear about what we want. It’s better to carefully consider the heart of the bike, which is its rider and energy source. Do we want the leanest, meanest bicycle rider – i.e., the best and cheapest energy source? Or a one-wheeled bicycle? Do we want a bicycle with fenders, flaps, mirrors, titanium saddlebags and just an average or slow rider?

Mina Morita, Chair of the PUC, likened the electric grid to an ‘auwai. It’s the irrigation system that keeps a lo‘i alive.

Certainly what we are looking for as we reshape our energy future is a combination of things. We need to make careful choices that make good sense in the long run. We can’t change merely for change’s sake. It’s going to be a long race, and we want to come out ahead.

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

‘Behind the Plug & Beyond the Barrel’

Richard Ha writes:

I spoke on behalf of the Big Island Community Coalition (BICC) at the Hawai‘i Island Renewable Energy Solutions Summit 2014 on April 30th, which was titled “Behind the Plug and Beyond the Barrel," and here's what I said: 

BICC mission

Good morning. Thanks for the introduction. I will use just this one slide, and you can read our mission statement on it, which is to lower the cost of electricity. “To make Big Island electricity rates the lowest in the state by emphasizing the use of local resources.”

I would like to spend some time talking about who makes up the BICC.

Dave DeLuz, Jr. – President of Big Island Toyota.

John Dill – Contractors Association, and Chair of the Ethics Commission

Rockne Freitas – Former Chancellor Hawai‘i Community College

Michelle Galimba – Rancher, Board of Agriculture

Richard Ha – Farmer

Wallace Ishibashi – Royal Order of Kamehameha, DHHL Commissioner

Kuulei Kealoha Cooper- Trustee, Jimmy Kealoha and Miulan Kealoha Trust.

Noe Kalipi – Former staffer for Sen Akaka, helped write the Akaka Bill, energy consultant

Kai'u Kimura- Executive Director of ‘Imiloa.

Bobby Lindsey – OHA Trustee

Monty Richards – Kahua Ranch

Marcia Sakai – Vice Chancellor for Administrative Affairs, former Dean of UH Hilo, College of Business

Bill Walter- President of Shipman, Ltd., which is the largest landowner in Puna.

These folks are all operating in their private capacities. I'm chair of the BICC, and the only person from Hawai‘i to have attended five Peak Oil conferences. I've visited Iceland and the Philippines with Mayor Kenoi's exploratory group.

As you can imagine, the BICC has strong support all across political parties and socioeconomic strata. People get it in five minutes.

Oil and gas are finite resources, and prices will rise.  One note about natural gas: the decline rate of the average gas well is very high. Ninety percent of the production comes out in five years. This is worrisome.

Hawai‘i Island relies on oil for sixty percent of its electricity generation; the U.S. mainland only two percent.

As the price of oil rises, our food manufacturers and producers become less competitive, as we all know. Food security involves farmers farming. And if the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.

What can we do?  By driving the cost of electricity down, the Big Island can have a competitive edge to the rest of the world.

Since rising electricity rates act like a giant regressive tax, lowering electricity rates would do just the opposite. And since two-thirds of the economy is made up of consumer spending, this would be like "trickle up" economics. If the rubbah slippah folks had extra money, they would spend and everyone would benefit.

 The lowest-hanging fruit:

1. Geothermal. Allows us to dodge the finite resource bullet. It is the lowest-cost base power. The Big Island will be over the hot spot for 500,000 to a million years.

2. We throw away many lots of MW of electricity every night. Hu Honua will probably throw away 10 MW for ten hours every night. PGV, maybe 7 MW for ten hours.

3. Wind, too.

Maybe HELCO will allow us to move the excess electricity free. They don't make any money on the throwaway power now, anyway. What if we used it for something that won't compete with them? Then people could bid for the excess, throwaway power for hydrogen fueling stations, to make ammonia fertilizer, and to attract data centers. Hawaii could become the renewable energy capital of the world. People would love to come here and look at that. As airline ticket costs rise, the walk around cost in Hawai‘i would not.

The BICC call for lowering electricity costs could leave future generations a better Hawai‘i.  And that is what we all want.