Tag Archives: Farming

Aquaponics, Family of Farms, Food Security, Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, Water

State of the Farm Report

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Richard Ha writes:

Yesterday at the farm I had a meeting with all our workers. It was an update on where we have been and where we are going.

Where we’ve been

The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and those who could pass on the cost did. Those who could not pass on the cost ended up paying more. Farmers are price takers, not price makers, so farmers’ costs increased more than their prices.

Anticipating higher electricity prices, we lobbied for and passed a law that the Department of Agriculture create a new farm loan program that farmers could use for renewable energy purposes. Then we started to design a hydroelectricity program to stabilize our electricity costs.

Where we are today

The hydroelectricity project is within weeks of completion. With the combination of a farm loan and a grant from the Department of Energy, we will stabilize our electricity price at 40 percent less than we pay today.

The pipe that transports the water appears to me like it will last for more than 100 years. After the loan is paid off, our electricity will be practically free for more than 60 years.

Where we are going

We are taking advantage of our resources – free water and stable electricity costs – by working with area farmers to help each other grow more food.

What kind of food? Responding to consumer demand, we want to
produce food with a wide variety of nutritional content, including protein, via aquaculture.

In order to be sustainable, the feed-based protein must be vegetation-based. And since the building block of protein is nitrogen, we are looking for an adequate nitrogen source. Unused, wasted electricity can be used to make ammonia, which is a nitrogen fertilizer and, like a battery, can be used to store energy.

What does the future
look like?

Other than stable electricity, which would help us, our serious
concern is the anti-GMO Bill 79. It seeks to ban any new biotech solutions to farmers’ problems on the Big Island. The result is that the rest of the counties and the nation would be able to use new tools for more successful farming, and the Big Island would not.

What would happen is that Big Island farmers would become
less competitive, which would put even more pressure on those already at the bottom of the pay scale. It would result in higher food costs, making consumers less able to support local farmers.

The folks pushing for the anti-GMO bill have not talked to farmers, and they have no clue that this bill would make Hawai‘i less food
secure. The bottom line is that food security involves farmers farming. If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm. If not, they will quit.

Food Security, Government

We’re On The Right Path; Let’s Not Veer Off

Richard Ha writes:

Here in Hawai‘i, we are first in the country for senior citizens in life expectancy and quality of life. We must be doing something right.  

From the Hawaii Tribune-Herald:

Golden years shine brightest in Hawaii

By MIKE STOBBE

Associated Press

ATLANTA — If you’re 65 and living in Hawaii, here’s some good news: Odds are you’ll live another 21 years. And for all but five of those years, you’ll likely be in pretty good health.

Hawaii tops the charts in the government’s first state-by-state look at how long Americans age 65 can expect to live, on average, and how many of those remaining years will be healthy ones. Read the rest

This is one powerful reason why we should not rush into passing Bill 79, the anti-GMO bill. 

We need to plan for our future generations. The first requirement for food security is figuring out how we are going to provide affordable food for Hawai‘i's families, especially kupuna on fixed incomes and single moms.

The farmers need to be at the table. How do we enable farmers to farm? If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm. So far, the originators of this bill have not had a conversation with the farmers who grow most of the food.

We need our leaders to take charge and LEAD!

My letter to the editor on this same subject just ran in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald:

Dear Editor,

Bill 79, the anti-GMO bill, has brought out a lot of concern
and a lot of anxiety.

I say that we need to slow down. It would be premature to
rush into a decision on this bill without taking the time to hear everybody’s
input and address all the issues on the table.

Before we make big decisions – any of which could have
unintended consequences – we should set up some sort of task force to look at
the bigger picture of Hawai‘i’s self-sufficiency, and how we are going to
achieve that.

How are we going to get there, all of us together? We need
to end up at a place where we aloha each other, and take care of everybody.

Let’s not rush to pass this bill without fully understanding
the bigger picture.

Richard Ha,

Owner, Hamakua Springs Country Farms

History, Maku‘u Stories, Science, Sustainability

Grass Roots Farming

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Richard Ha writes:

Science is great, but there are kids now that go to the
supermarket and think that’s where food comes from.

For me, it all goes back to Uncle Sonny and all the layers of technology that have cropped up since then.

Wheelbarrow

 

 

 

 

 

When I first thought about farming, I spent hours and hours
talking to Uncle Sonny Kamahele down the beach at Maku‘u.

I’ve written about Uncle Sonny here and here. He was my Pop’s
cousin, and I learned the basic principles of farming from him.

I had just graduated from UH Manoa with an accounting degree.
I had cost benefit volume analysis and market share on my mind.

 

Uncle Sonny drove to town once a week. He did not have
electricity or running water, but he always had a stack of U.S. News & World Reports with the current copy on top. He made his living farming watermelon by himself.

One day he told me that he needed to open up a new plot of land because he could not stay at the same place for too long; he didn’t want to get a virus or a wilt of some sort.

Over the days and weeks, I watched him cut grass in the new plot with a sickle and pull it into a roll, and then cart the grass out of his plot in a wheelbarrow. When he wasn’t doing that, he would take a hoe and remove the roots of the grass, because he knew that otherwise it would regrow.

The other types of weed were dormant seeds of broad-leaved weeds that would germinate and pop up. Uncle Sonny would remove these with a hoe, only on dry days, without disturbing too much of the soil. After awhile the seeds would stop germinating.

Uncle Sonny knew that certain weeds could continuously regrow if the roots were not removed, and that others only grew from seed. I noticed that, after awhile, hardly any weeds grew in the new plot, and I thought about how amazing that was.

The lessons I learned from Uncle Sonny? Know what your problem is. Also: no waste time.

My grandma Leihulu lived with us for several years as I was growing up in Waiakea Uka. She grew taro and made poi, and she did the same things as Uncle Sonny. She always had a stack of California grass smoldering, even when it was raining – they were weeds she’d removed the same way he did. It was second nature to her. It was just her lifestyle.

Whenever I see a plot of ground that’s clean like that, it’s pretty obvious to me that they did that with a hoe, and that that is somebody that knows what they’re doing.

As Uncle Sonny got older, he started using pesticides, but because they cost money he was very very careful with them. It saves that part where you have to go and hoe the weeds out and go and pull the seeds out. It saved him a lot of time. It wasn’t very many years later that he started to use Roundup.

When I started farming, we were using skull & crossbones types of poisons like Paraquat. When we switched to Roundup, we didn’t have to use that anymore. It made spraying herbicides so much safer for the farmer.

When you use a chemical like Roundup in conjunction with a 100-hp tractor, you can do 1000 times more than one human can do. That means you can produce that much more food.  But now that herbicides kill everything, you start losing that knowledge; you don’t have to know what the old guys knew.

When Uncle Sonny used herbicides, he always stuck the leaf into it and saw if it worked. If not, he’d add a little more.

He followed the instructions, but he never relied on the instructions for the final result. He knew the formula, but he checked to make sure the result was what he wanted. It showed me that he knew what he was doing. He knew why that particular spreader was in there, and checked the proportions for sure. Not that he doubted, but if he wanted it to work very well, he’d check it himself.

I haven’t seen anybody, not anybody, do that. But I think it was common knowledge with the old folks.

We are so far removed from our food now that we don’t really have a connection with why we’re doing what we’re doing. But we need the basic knowledge. You’ve got to know why you’re doing what you are doing.

Government, Lowering Electric Rates

Farmer: “I’m Tired of Defending My Life’s Work”

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Richard Ha writes:

Yesterday I testified before the Hawai‘i County Council. I was testifying against Act 79, which would prohibit GMOs not already growing on the Big Island.

Note: We do not grow any GMO on our farm.

But the point I was wanting to make is that farming used to be an honorable profession where you could make a living. Now farmers are losing money right and left, wondering whether they will continue to farm, and they are not encouraging their children to do so.

If we farmers are going to survive, we are going to need access to the most modern techniques and technologies. This Act would cut off our ability to use modified crops that are resistent to disease, if needed. It would mean foregoing potential help, like when the banana industry faced a virus 15 years ago. At that time, they started working on genetically modified techniques that would have helped the banana industry greatly, though ultimately it didn’t happen.

Genetic modification also saved the papaya industry here in Hawai‘i; without the Rainbow papaya, we would no longer have a papaya industry at all.

Jason Moniz also testified yesterday. He was representing the Hamakua Farm Bureau and requested the bill be killed, saying it threatens the “well-being” of farmers and ranchers.

“Frankly, I’m sick and tired of having to defend my life’s work,” he said.

This feeling is increasingly being discussed at dinner tables in the farming community. They are asking themselves, “Is it worth it” to continue farming?

What will happen when all our farmers get out of the business?

My testimony:

My name is Richard Ha, and I’m representing Hamakua Springs
Country Farms. 

Hamakua Springs Country Farms is a 600-acre, fee simple,
diversified Ag farm. We have produced multi-millions of pounds of fruits and vegetables over the years. We have 70 workers who work with us and have more than 30 years of experience in producing food 

1. Farmers are being pitted against each other. This is not good. We need all farmers to help provide food for an uncertain future.

2. Farmers have been losing ground, not gaining ground. Even if you give farmers free rent, it is not guaranteed that they will make money. A UHERO report shows that ag, as a percentage of GDP, has been steadily declining. Food security depends on farmers farming. If the farmers made money, they would farm.

3. Farmers are right now making plans to quit and sell their lands. They cannot tell their children with a clear conscience to carry on, when all they see is conflict and no support. 

Here is a solution. Cheaper electricity can give us a competitive edge. The mainland uses oil for only two percent of its electricity
generation. We use it for more than 70 percent. That is why farmers have a hard time doing value-added. Any food manufactured on the mainland with electricity embedded in it has a competitive edge over us. 

Seventy nine percent of the students at the Pahoa School complex take advantage of the free/reduced lunch program, and qualification is determined by family income. That means the Pahoa area has the lowest family income in the state! Pahoa is number one in the state. Ka‘u is second, and Kea‘au is third.

Our electricity rates have been higher than Oahu’s for as long as anyone can remember. That means less of our education dollar is going to actually teaching Big Island students. Yet, education is the best predictor of family income.

If we could lower and stabilize our electricity cost, farmers,
distributors and retailers would have lower refrigeration costs. Food costs would go down. Farmers could manufacture value-added food products and increase their income stream. Lower cost electricity means people would have extra spending money to support local farmers. More of our education dollar would go to kids’ education, thereby increasing his/her chance of gaining a higher family income. 

Two-thirds of the economy is made of consumer spending. If the people had extra money, they would spend it. Businesses would benefit and there would be more jobs.

There is no free lunch. Let’s concentrate on finding out where we can give ourselves a competitive advantage and go do it. We need to look at the bigger picture. Not “no can.” CAN!

Peak Oil, Tomatoes

Out Of Business


Tomatoes

Farming is a challenging business, and getting more challenging every day. That this tomato company in Southern California just halted operations is a good example of that.

Oceanside Pole Tomato Sales Inc., the marketing arm of Harry Singh & Sons, is one of the country’s largest tomato suppliers, packing and selling 4.5 to 5 million cartons of tomatoes a year. Harry Singh & Sons was one of nine companies that make up a Fresno-based cooperative that grows about 90 percent of the country’s fresh tomatoes.

It’s noteworthy that they had to shut down operations so suddenly. According to the article in The Packer, it was due to a “perfect storm of issues,” including labor and water costs, competition from Mexico, California’s regulatory climate and urban encroachment.

As I have often said, “If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.” As oil prices rise, I am curious to see if other mainland farmers are feeling economic pressures as well.

From The Packer:

Oceanside focuses on 2012 return with tomatoes

Published on 04/14/2011 06:40PM

Southern California’s Oceanside Pole Tomato Sales Inc., one of the nation’s largest suppliers to retail of vine ripe tomatoes, abruptly halted operations April 12, as did grower Harry Singh & Sons because of “a perfect storm of issues” related to costs.

Barbara Metz, a spokeswoman for Harry Singh & Sons, said April 14 that the company had not gone bankrupt. She said “a perfect storm of issues” including costs of labor and water, competition from Mexico, California’s regulatory climate and urban encroachment had caused the shutdown.

“I’ll be closing down the company in the next few weeks,” said Bill Wilber, Oceanside Pole president, on April 13.

Krishna Singh, general manager of the growing company and grandson of its founder, sent a message to that firm’s employees the same day, explaining that the company would not be operating for the 2011 season.

“I regret to inform you that effective immediately, Harry Singh and Sons Farming Partnership will not be in operation for the 2011 season. … We will work diligently and explore all options in our efforts to reorganize and resume farming operations for 2012,” according to the e-mail message.

The closures of Oceanside Pole and Singh’s growing operation could put a dent in the upcoming season’s vine-ripe category.

Read the rest

Food Security, Government, Hamakua Coast

A Possible Template For Rural America – Right Here In Hamakua

One of the exciting things going on right now in Ag is taking place right here on the Hamakua Coast.

The Pacific Basin Ag Research Center (PBARC) is supporting a zero waste program that will help farmers in a very practical way.

It’s an ongoing program involving the Pa‘auilo slaughterhouse and anaerobic digestion. Waste from the slaughterhouse will generate gas and fertilizer by-products. It will increase the slaughter capacity of the facility and reduce/remove the problem of burying the waste. This helps ranchers save/make money.

As we all know, food security involves farmers farming. And if the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm. Save money, make money. They are the opposite sides of the same coin.

PBARC is exploring the possibility of using heterotrophic algae to generate oil, which eats plant waste instead of photosynthesizes it. This system is scalable so that small entities can use the resulting product. This is hopefully an alternative to industrial scale biofuel production, which cannot operate without subsidies and which is, up to this point, unsustainable. The waste product from this operation, hopefully, will end up as animal/fish feed.

PBARC is hiring specialists in the area of practical, value-added food technology. The emphasis will be on first level conversion, so that farmers can use their throwaways or divert production in case of oversupply. The idea is to convert farm products into forms usable by the military and the food procurement system for schools, etc.

If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.

At Hamakua Springs, we are using our abundant water supply to sustain oxygenation for our fish. We use falling water for oxygenation instead of energy. With the aid of PBARC scientists, and using our farm waste as food for the (vegetarian) fish, as prices rise ours will, sooner or later, become competitive with imported fish.

If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.

The Federal government is supporting this PBARC program as a possible template for rural America.

What I like about it is that it’s practical on the farm level. And, most importantly, it puts the control of individual, group and community destinies into their own hands. And that is what gives people hope.

Food Security, Government

Food Safety Legislation

There is food safety legislation in the pipeline, which would have increased costs to smaller farmers when they are the most vulnerable.

Let’s encourage new and small farmers to become larger farmers. Let’s not kill them off before they can get started.

Remember: Food Security has to do with farmers farming. If farmers make money, farmers will farm.

A revised amendment by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. (see below), which exempts smaller operations from some requirements under the legislation, was included in the final bill presented for debate. I think this amendment, which helps small farmers, is reasonable.

From today’s New York Times:

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

A Stale Food Fight

By MICHAEL POLLAN and ERIC SCHLOSSER

Published: November 28, 2010

THE best opportunity in a generation to improve the safety of the American food supply will come as early as Monday night, when the Senate is scheduled to vote on the F.D.A. Food Safety Modernization bill. This legislation is by no means perfect. But it promises to achieve several important food safety objectives, greatly benefiting consumers without harming small farmers or local food producers.

The bill would, for the first time, give the F.D.A., which oversees 80 percent of the nation’s food, the authority to test widely for dangerous pathogens and to recall contaminated food. The agency would finally have the resources and authority to prevent food safety problems, rather than respond only after people have become ill. The bill would also require more frequent inspections of large-scale, high-risk food-production plants…. Read the rest here

Both national produce trade associations and 17 other fruit and vegetable industry groups said, on November 18, that they were forced to oppose the Senate food safety bill because of the Tester language being folded into the main bill.

Tester Amendment – Qualified Exemptions

Food facilities would qualify for an exemption from the preventive control/Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point provisions in section 103 of S. 510 if:

            • They are defined as a “very small business” under FDA rule making or under certain conditions:

            • The average annual monetary value of all food sold by the facility during the previous three-year period was less than $500,000, if the majority of the food sold by that facility was sold directly to consumers, restaurants or grocery stores in the same state or within 275 miles of the facility.  Source: Senate Health Committee

When things go wrong on large, industrial-sized farms, lots of people are affected. If something goes wrong on a tiny farm, few people are affected. We need resilience and redundancy in our food supply; we should not depend on a handful of large farms.

This is why we need to support small farms.

Renewable Energy Sources

West Meets East, and BioTork

We are trying out some Korean Natural Farming methods at the farm. We are also using commercially available micro-organisms when we start from seed, and that has eliminated our dieback problems. It’s only an observation so far, not science. But it’s working.

I found this video interesting:

Bruggeman.jpg

It’s a video interview with Terrance J. Bruggeman, executive director of BioTork. He discusses BioTork’s natural solution to the BP oil spill clean-up, using variants of naturally occurring organisms. Watch the video here.

BioTork is an bio-engineering company focused on three things: waste-to-biodiesel, using microbes to control agricultural pests and oil remediation. What they are doing sounds like what Korean Natural Farming does – using micro-organisms, instead of chemicals, to produce food. If so, it’s a game changer.