Tag Archives: Hurricane Iselle

Big Island, Community, Hurricane

Hurricane Iselle: The Aftermath & Human Stories

Richard Ha writes:

Soon after Hurricane Iselle hit the Big Island, the Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United (HFRU) core group called a meeting. We wanted to assess damage, and what we found was that some Big Island farmers were in desperate need.

The human stories which were told by some of the affected farmers were hard to take. One of the independent processors told about being in church on Sunday just after the hurricane and not being able to look a farmer, there with his family, in the eye. They both knew what this damage meant to the farmers. The processor told us at the meeting that it brought him to tears.

Diane Ley, executive director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, was on the phone at the after-hours emergency meeting. Scott Enright, who is chair of the Department of Agriculture, participated by cell phone. He had just landed on O‘ahu and was driving to a meeting.

Farmers and their friends pulled together to bring agencies with resources to meet with farmers at one stop. W.H. Shipman, Ltd. made their offices available to the group for meetings. Lorie Farrell did the real heavy lifting by organizing everything. And the support agencies responded.

Rally1

We met on Tuesday, on W.H. Shipman, Ltd.’s ground, with about 180 people in attendance. Chris Kanazawa, head of the USDA’s Rural Development; Scott Enright, director of the Board of Agriculture; Laverne Omori, county director of Research and Development. So was Chris Manfredi, president of the Hawaii Farm Bureau.

Rally2

Various agencies had booths where they provided information about their programs. People gave presentations. AgriLogic, which specializes in risk management insurance for farmers, was there. One of the priorities of HFRU is to increase the percentage of farmers covered by crop insurance.

Mayor Billy Kenoi announced he is hiring DayDay Hopkins to be liaison to the farmers. That is a huge deal; DayDay knows farming. I met two county council candidates for the first time that day, Danny Paleka and Ron Gonzales, and after having short conversations, it was clear to me that both are very thoughtful and know what the spirit of aloha is all about. 

Yesterday I read in the Star-Advertiser that 287,000 Hawaii residents receive aid through the Hawaii Foodbank and its agencies. I called up Ross Sibucao, the young president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association, and asked him: “How many papaya farmers are on food stamps?”

He chuckled at my even asking the question. He said, “Probably zero.”

The farmers are the ones feeding the people. They do important work.

Hurricane

What We Learned From Hurricane Iselle

Richard Ha writes:

There are a lot of things we can learn from the hurricane we just went through.

People saw what needed to be done on the ground and they just did it. Trees needed to be cut, so they cut them. Neighbors needed food and ice, so people got them food and ice. People saw the situations that were problems and they took care of them.

This is a good analogy for what we farmers want to do now. We have been dragged into a battle, and all we want to do is get back to providing food for people. We’re farmers. We want to grow things and feed people. We don’t want to be involved in lawsuits and philosophical battles.

What’s happened is that the Center for Food Safety, and Earth Justice, which is the Sierra Club’s legal arm, are fighting against farmers. We farmers are asking for clarity on this anti-GMO bill. We’re saying tell us what the rules are so we can go back to farming. But those two are fighting against us, so we can’t do that.

Here’s an analogy. It’s as if after the hurricane they said: Yeah, we see all the albizia trees are down, but we want you to focus on something that’s happening in the Midwest, or in India.

Those aren’t local problems.

Or it’s like they were saying, Yeah, we see all the trees down, but you can’t use chainsaws because they’re dangerous. You’ve got to use axes, because they’re natural.

We’re saying, look, we’ve got to use chainsaws. We’ve got to help people.

It’s really that simple. We farmers are spending too much time on all that other stuff and we really just want to get back to farming.

When the Association of Counties asked me to talk about climate change and how the farmer looks at it, I quoted Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He talks about climate change being the guy and his dog walking down the beach. The man walking straight down the beach is the climate, and the dog running back and forth is the weather.

The climate is the policy kind of stuff, and hopefully the climate people make the right decisions.

We farmers deal with the weather. If there’s a storm, or an insect, we deal with it. We’ve got to concentrate on growing food. Otherwise, we end up trying to make policy, and we’re not scientists. We’re farmers. 

We just want to get back to farming.

Hurricane

Helping the Papaya Farmers

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Today, Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United are meeting to figure out how we can help the Big Island papaya farmers who had such devastating losses in Hurricane Iselle. We are going to support them in any way we can. That is absolute first priority.

My son Brian has been making ice at our tomato packing house. He did that Saturday, Sunday and again today (using our hydroelectric, powered by the river) and then taking it down to Hawaiian Beaches where they don't have electricity.

He and his friends made 400 quarts of ice and took it down there with a sign, "Mauna Kea Banana Ice," and he said it was gone in five minutes.

We are planning to take bananas down to the papaya packing house, where the papaya farmers are packing up whatever they can, and distribute the bananas to the farmers there. The rest will go with Brian to distribute wherever he ends up in Puna. 

The most important thing is how we can help the rest of the farmers.

papaya