Tag Archives: Peak Oil

Big Island, Current Affairs, Food Security, Geothermal, Government, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Science, Sustainability

‘La La La La La’

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Richard Ha writes:

Farmers and other Ag and business people on the Big Island are in disbelief – to put it mildly – that Mayor Kenoi signed Bill 113, the anti-GMO bill, last week, without first putting together a group to research the science and investigate the serious, unintended consequences we know will result.

But farmers are very practical and play the position that exists on the chessboard, not the position they wish they had. Most of us are moving into strategic contraction mode now.

For example, we had an application in to the USDA to dedicate 264 acres of our farm into agricultural land for perpetuity. We had been going through the vetting process over the last two years and had already been told we were among the top three state projects, as determined by a Department of Land and Natural Resources subcommittee.

I just received a letter Friday asking for more information about our application, with a comment from the Western Region director stating that our project had the highest priority.

I wrote back saying we are withdrawing our application. Nothing personal; just playing the position that now exists. Instead, we will subdivide the property so we have options as we go forward into a future that has some new uncertainties.

If there’s an upside to the mayor signing the bill, it’s that maybe now we will finally take a real look at the current Peak Oil crisis and how it affects the Big Island’s food self-sufficiency situation, and come to grips with finding long-term solutions.

Being open to safe scientific advances when needed (a.k.a. biotech or “GMO”) would have been a way to decrease our dependence on petroleum products, such as pesticides and fertilizers, and increase our island’s food self-sufficiency.

Geothermal energy is another no-brainer that will protect us from rising energy costs. Utilizing geothermal energy – which according to geophysicists will be available to us for at least 500,000 years – we can have stable electricity at an affordable price. As another benefit of geothermal, we can take the currently “curtailed” (collected but unused) electricity and make hydrogen for ground transportation; and by combining it with nitrogen in the air, we can make fertilizer that doesn’t depend on petroleum products and continue to get more and more expensive.

But Senator Ruderman doesn’t see this and wants to kill geothermal energy.

Why? Where is he steering our ship? It feels rudderless.

These are turbulent times. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was on CNN yesterday saying that despite dumping money into the economy, businesses are sitting on a lot of cash and not investing, and banks are not lending because it’s too risky. 

He said that the level of uncertainty is like it was during the Great Depression. The next Fed chair will have to manage the interest rate, and too high an interest rate will roil the stock market. He said, “It’s hard to manage psychology.”

I do not see people paying attention to this, so let me extrapolate from what he’s saying: As a result, regular folk are not earning as much money. As a consequence of that, the government will not be able to tax people at a level needed to keep services going, such as maintaining roads (which, of course, requires products made from petroleum).

How far will this go on before we can no long maintain our infrastructure the way we are accustomed to, or take care of our poor people who need help?

What Alan Greenspan is talking about is serious business, and he’s certainly not the only person saying it.

This all boils down to the cost of energy, and how we utilize our resources in a smart and efficient manner.

I’ve gone to five Peak Oil conferences now, and have learned that experts there are all, consistently, saying that the net energy available to society is decreasing as it gets more difficult to get the energy. The consequence of this is less growth, which means less money for the government to perform the services we need to continue living the way we live. Where will the money come from?

Another expert who is highly respected is actury Gail Tverberg. She is as credible as anyone I’ve heard, and she too says it all boils down to the cost of energy. Not availability, nor how much oil still exists, but how much it costs to obtain it – and we all know those costs are only going higher. She writes: 

Oil and other fossil fuels are unusual materials. Historically, their value to society has been far higher than their cost of extraction. It is the difference between the value to society and their cost of extraction that has helped economies around the world grow. Now, as the cost of oil extraction rises, we see this difference shrinking. As this difference shrinks, the ability of economies to grow is eroding, especially for those countries that depend most heavily on oil–Japan, Europe, and the United States. It should not be surprising if the growth of these countries slows as oil prices rise…. Read the rest

Using GMOs to help leverage our year-round growing season was a workaround, and in my opinion, it was much less risky than what Alan Greenspan, Gail Tverberg and other experts say is coming.

We need to take action and prepare for these changing conditions. If it turns out they were wrong, no harm/no foul. If they are right, using GMO's to avoid petroleum costs in fertilizer and pesticides would have helped us immensely; and using geothermal energy will improve our lifestyle measurably.

Note that I’m not just talking about this – the whole situation scared me enough that we went and put in a hydroelectric system for the farm.

This is not about the sky falling. It’s about common sense. It’s all a matter of how much risk we are willing to take.

We need to decrease our dependence on petroleum, and our energy costs. Rising electricity costs affect the price of our food, and they take away discretionary income from the rubbah slippah folks. Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of our economy.

It’s foolish for us to put our thumbs in our ears and our fingers over our eyes and sing, “La la la la la,” but that’s what seems to be going on around here. 

We’d better have a clear-headed discussion about our future.

Government, Peak Oil

Study: Which Sectors of U.S. Economy Will Peak Oil Imperil?

Richard Ha writes:

This is what I’ve been talking about here, over and over again. We are not paying attention to this, and yet it’s the most important concern we are facing in Hawai‘i today.

Bill 113 is just moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. The issue is so much bigger:

Researchers from the University of Maryland and a top university in Spain have just done a study, and written about, “which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks (‘Peak Oil’). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors.”

The study looked at how vulnerable different aspects of the U.S. economy are to the effects of Peak Oil. In the United States, the research concludes, such sectors would include iron mills, chemical and plastic products manufacturing, fertilizer production and air transport.

Here’s the article from the University of Maryland:

UMD Researchers Address Economic Dangers of 'Peak Oil'

October 16, 2013

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks ("Peak Oil"). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors. 

While critics of Peak Oil studies declare that the world has more than enough oil to maintain current national and global standards, these UMD-led researchers say Peak Oil is imminent, if not already here—and is a real threat to national and global economies. Their study is among the first to outline a way of assessing the vulnerabilities of specific economic sectors to this threat, and to identify focal points for action that could strengthen the U.S. economy and make it less vulnerable to disasters.

Their work, "Economic Vulnerability to Peak Oil," appears in Global Environmental Change. Read the rest

It's almost like we are getting ready to launch the canoes from down in the south Pacific, in order to find another island home. That's how significant these threats are.

I wrote the following back in 2007. It’s been six years now and we’re at risk of going backward with taking care of our people and food supplies, not forward!

…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. 

It's as though soon, we’re going to have to go.

But where will we go?

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, 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.

Big Island, Hamakua Coast, History, How It All Started, Our Story, The New Ahupua‘a, Where We Live

Time Travel: Looking Back At Our Land

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Richard Ha writes:

We’re planning to landscape the area around our new hydroelectric system with canoe plants, the plants that the first Polynesian settlers brought with them from their previous island homes to help them survive and thrive in their new land.

They were the original organic farmers. They had no oil back
then, of course, so no oil technologies.

And they did not just survive in their oil-free lives, but thrived and supported a large population here well (research suggests it was a
population as large as we have now).

So as we reach the age of Peak Oil, the end of easy and cheap oil and all that came with that, I want to explore how they did it. I
want to learn from them and see what, from those times, we can focus on again to improve our lives now. Our hydroelectric system is another example of what we are doing in these regards.

There are still people, of course, who have always lived
with the old ways, and who continue to do so. I met some people at the Hawai‘i Community College who are perpetuating this culture and who have offered to help me. I’ll write more about that soon.

For now I thought I’d revisit what we know happened on this
land before we started farming it. A lot of this information comes from the Cultural Resources Review of our poperty done by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Screen Shot 2013-10-28 at 2.35.05 PM

Our farm encompasses three ahupua‘a in the district of South Hilo:

1. Ka‘upakuea at the north (bordered at the south by Makea Stream).

We don’t know much about what went on in Ka‘upakuea before the mid-19th century. In the mid-1800s, both Ka‘upakuea and Kahua were government lands, which were lands Kamehameha III gave “to the chiefs and people.” Ka‘upakuea was part of Grant 872. (Read the 1882 document A Brief History of Land Titles in the Hawaiian Kingdom for more on Hawai‘i’s historical land system.)

The area was later part of a sugar plantation, and has unpaved roadways and a west-east flume. Kaupakuea Camp was within the area of what’s presently our farm.

2. Kahua (which is between Makea and Alia Streams).

Kahua is a very narrow ahupua‘a, approximately 600 feet wide. It extends from the coast to about Makea Spring, which is at about the 980 foot elevation.

Kahonu (an ali‘i who was descended from both the I and Mahi
lines of chiefs, and who was in charge of the Fort at Punchbowl ca. 1833-34) was awarded either the whole of Kahua ahupua‘a or just the northern mauka half of it (references differ) as LCA 5663.

When he died in 1851, his relative Abner Paki (father of
Bernice Pauahi and hanai father of Lili‘uokalani) held the lands “under a verbal will from Kahonu” (Barrère 1994:138). When Paki died in 1855, the lands were listed as Bishop Estate lands.

3. Makahanaloa at its southern edge (bordered by Alia and Wai‘a‘ama Streams).

The ahupua‘a of Makahanaloa (Maka-hana-loa) runs from the coast about 3.5 miles up to the 6600-foot elevation. Kapue Stream flows from the base of Pu‘u Kahinahina down through Makahanaloa. Magnetic Hill is at the southwestern corner at the top of the ahupua‘a, which is a little over a mile wide and meets the North Hilo district boundary.

In the Great Mahele of 1848, 7600 acres of Makahanaloa and
Pepe‘ekeo were awarded to William Charles Lunalilo (an ali‘i who later became king, from 1873 until his death in 1874). Upon his death, his personal property went to his father Charles Kana‘ina.

Here are a couple of interesting facts about Makahanaloa
ahupua‘a: Somewhere within this area, though the exact location is unknown, there was (is?) an “ancient leaping place for souls.”

And according to historian Mary Kawena Pūku‘i, a sacred bamboo grove called Hōmaika‘ohe was planted at Makahanaloa by the god Kane. “Bamboo knifes used for circumcision came from this grove,” she wrote.

Sugar Plantation History

Sugar cane was one of the canoe plants; it came with the early Polynesians to Hawai‘i and they used it as food and sweetener, and chewed it to strengthen their teeth and gums.

The farm sits on land that was formerly part of a sugar plantation that had its origins in 1857, when Theophilus Metcalf started Metcalf Plantation. After his death in 1874, the 1500-acre plantation was purchased by Mr. Afong and Mr. Achuck and its name changed to Pepeekeo Sugar Company. In 1879, they also acquired the 7600-acre Makahaula Plantation. By 1882, both were combined as Pepeekeo Sugar Mill & Plantation. In 1889, Afong returned to China, leaving the plantation in the hands of his friend Samuel M. Damon.

Over the years, it changed hands several more times. C. Brewer
& Co. bought the plantation in 1904, added a plantation hospital and improved housing. By 1910, plantation fields were connected by good dirt roads and harvested cane was delivered to the mill by railroad cars and stationary flumes.

Post-1923, the plantation improved its soil every year by adding coral sand (from Wai‘anae), bone meal and guano. “The sand was bagged and hauled into the fields by mules to be spread” (Dorrance & Morgan 2000:101). Eucalyptus trees were planted as windbreaks, protecting the fields near the ‘ōhi‘a forests.

Water came from Wai‘a‘ama Stream and Kauku Hill.
 Plowing was
done to 18 to 20 inches. After 1932, tractors with caterpillar tracks were used for plowing. From 1941, trucks hauled harvested cane to the mill.

In the early 1950s, lots and houses on the plantation were sold to residents.

Under C. Brewer, there were several mergers: Honomu Sugar Company in 1946; Hakalau Sugar Company in 1963; consolidation of Wainaku, Hakalau, Pepeekeo, and Papaikou sugar companies in 1971, and a final merger in 1973 with Mauna Kea Sugar (once 5 separate plantations: Honomu, Hakalau, Pepeekeo, Onomea and Hilo Sugar Company) to form Mauna Kea Sugar Company, the state’s largest with 18,000 acres of cane (Dorrance & Morgan 2000:104).

Prior to the final merger, Mauna Kea Sugar Company had formed
a non-profit corporation with the United Cane Planters’ Cooperative, the Hilo Coast Processing Company, to harvest and grind sugarcane.

The Hilo Coast Processing Company and the Mauna Kea Sugar
Company (at that point called Mauna Kea Agribusiness Company) mill shut down in 1994.

We started farming on this land in 1994.

I’m very interested in knowing more history about this place. If you or your family know old stories about this area, I would love to hear them.

Aquaponics, Bananas, Big Island, Blog, Family of Farms, How It All Started, Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Mauna Kea, Our Story, Peak Oil, Sustainability, Video, Where We Live

Huffington & Omidyar Visit Hamakua Springs

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By Leslie Lang, blog editor

Thursday was such an interesting day. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, and Pierre Omidyar, founder of Honolulu’s online newspaper Civil Beat (and founder of eBay), spent some time at Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

The background is that Huffington Post and Civil Beat have teamed up to start HuffPost Hawaii (and they asked Richard to blog for the new online news organization. Here’s his first HuffPost Hawaii post, by the way.)

So this week, Arianna and Pierre were making the rounds in Hawai‘i for the big HuffPost Hawaii launch. They spent Thursday on the Big Island, where they were welcomed with a big reception at ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center.

The only other Big Island stop they made was to Richard’s farm. They had asked if they could come and meet Richard and learn about what he’s doing. So that happened Thursday afternoon, and Richard invited me to join them there.

What a completely fascinating day. There’s something about being around really smart people who are doing big and really interesting things, making things happen and making a difference. Richard is completely like that, too, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog. It’s invigorating to be around that kind of energy.

Both Arianna and Pierre are very friendly and down-to-earth, and both are interested in issues of sustainability and what Richard is doing.

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Richard told them about his background — flunking out of college the first time around and ending up in Vietnam, coming back and trading manure from his father’s chicken farm for bananas to start what eventually became Hamakua Springs Country Farms — about seeing prices start rising, rising, rising and wondering why; about attending five Peak Oil conferences and starting to learn what was happening. He talked about how he forces the changes needed to get to where he needs to be five or 10 years in the future.

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He talked about the current threat to Big Island farming from anti-GMO bills, and Pierre asked some very salient (and polite) questions about some common GMO fears, such as of:

  • Commercial control of seeds. Richard replied that in many cases, such as with, for instance, the Rainbow papaya, virus-resistant seeds are developed by the university and not controlled by any big business at all. This, he said, is often the case.
  • Cross-pollination, or “pollen drift.” Richard responded that due to numerous studies, we know how much drift there is for different crops. Farmers work together, he says, to plan what is planted where, plant so many lines of “guard rows” and it’s completely manageable.

They asked about Richard’s new hydroelectric system, and we took a dusty, bumpy country road drive out to see where the water runs through an old sugar cane flume, and then through a turbine.

Car

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Arianna and Pierre were very interested in this, and in how, when the switch is thrown very shortly, the farm will be saving perhaps almost half of its monthly electric bill, which now averages $10-11,000.

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Pierre asked about returning excess power to the utility, and was shocked to learn that due to a technicality, Richard will not be paid for the power he feeds to HELCO. Pierre kept returning to that and said, more than once, “That’s just not right.” Richard finally replied, “Well, at least it’s not wasted.”

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Richard Ha, Arianna Huffington, Pierre Omidyar, Leslie Lang, June Ha

Richard talked about how they have converted the farm from growing mostly bananas to being a family of farms, which brings in local farmers who then have a close-to-home place to farm. This, in turn, means the farm produces a more diverse crop.

He told Arianna and Pierre about growing their current experiment growing tilapia, to learn how to add a protein component to the food they produce and also use the waste as fertilizer. Workers can fish for tilapia there and take some home for their families.

Arianna and Pierre both seemed sincerely interested. They paid close attention and asked good questions.

Richard told them about talking with Kumu Lehua Veincent, who was principal of Keaukaha Elementary School back in the early days of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) push. He told them that he asked Kumu Lehua, “What if we ask the TMT for five, full-ride scholarships to the best schools in the nation for your best students?” He told them that Kumu Lehua thought about it for a minute and then quietly asked, “And what about the rest?”

This was a turning point, explained Richard, who said that at the time he could feel his ears turning red. He told Arianna and Pierre that that phrase, What about the rest? gives him an “unfailing moral compass.”

It always brings him back to the rubbah slippah folk, he told them. The “rubbah slippah” folk are in contrast to the “shiny shoes” folk. When he explained this, Pierre looked down at his own shoes.

“I wore my shiny shoes today,” he said, “but I meant to change into my sneakers before coming to the farm.” He mentioned his shiny shoes a couple more times during the visit.

“I felt they absolutely got what I meant when I advocated for the ‘rubbah slippah’ folks,” Richard told me, “and completely support that idea.”

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Richard’s daughter Tracy had laid out a beautiful spread of Hamakua Springs produce back by the office, where there was a tent set up, and Arianna zeroed in on the longan.

“What’s this?” she said, and Tracy explained that it’s a delicious fruit. She handed one to Arianna, along with some wipes (they are juicy and messy), and Arianna loved it.

Arianna gives the impression of being very family-oriented. “At what point did you and June get married in this long process?” she asked, when Richard was explaining how he got started farming 35 years ago. (The answer: 32 years ago, and when June joined the family she took all the farm receipts out of a big banana box and straightened out the accounting.) Arianna asked Tracy if she had siblings. When she was introduced to Richard’s grandson Kapono, she looked at him, and at his parents, and asked, “Now, are you Tracy and Kimo’s son?” (Yes.)

She gave June a copy of her book, On Becoming Fearless.

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Both Arianna and Pierre are such interesting people. One of the things Richard talks about is forcing change, and that is something that both his guests are all about, too: Looking down the road and fixing things, forcing the change instead of letting things bumble along.

It is refreshing to be in the presence of such interesting thinkers and doers. Great day.

This is a video Civil Beat did with Richard recently, before Arianna and Pierre’s visit. It’s really nicely done and you get to hear a bit about some of the topics they discussed yesterday (while seeing gorgeous views of the farm).

Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Growing Food: A Reality Check

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Richard Ha writes: 

Hawai‘i is located in the humid subtropics and it is a weed, bug and plant-disease paradise. We have no winter here to help us kill off
bugs.

Farmers are not pesticide-crazed sprayers of toxic chemicals. They use cost-effective solutions to the pest problems of their particular crops. They use what’s least toxic, because they don’t want to harm themselves. They don’t overspray, because that wastes money. Farmers have common sense.

When we send farmers into battle against the pests, don’t shoot arrows at their backs. When we send them into battle against pests that use cannons, don’t send them out with swords and clubs.

If we do not want the large biotech companies to grow corn for seed, then write a bill that prohibits that. If we do not want GMO foods at all, then start with corn flakes and soda and ban those.

Consider these facts:

• Hawai‘i imports more than 85 percent of its food. That’s almost all of our food.

• Hawaii uses oil to generate more than 70 percent of its electricity. The U.S. mainland, which is both our supplier and our competitor, uses oil for only 2 percent of its electricity – so its costs are not skyrocketing from rising oil prices as much as ours are.

• The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and will probably go higher.

• As oil prices rise, Hawai‘i becomes less and less food secure.

These are the realities that Big Island farmers face every day. We must be one of the least food secure places in the world.

From my blog post Definitions: Food Security vs. Food Self-Sufficiency:

“Food security” means being able to get adequate and sufficient food, regardless of where it comes from. These days, it comes from all over the world. We are able to buy food from all over because money comes into our economy from the outside, with military spending and tourism being primary contributors. That provides us with money to pay for general services to our society and to buy our food.

Food security involves farmers farming. If the farmer makes money, the farmers will farm. And if the farmers make money, then their products will be competitive with imported foods. And that will mean lower cost foods for all.

Try to encourage those things that gives our farmers a competitive advantage. Leverage our sun that shines all year long. Don’t ban GMO corn that can give our cattle ranchers a fighting chance.

Maybe we can grow the grain that will encourage poultry farms and fish, too.

If we had poultry and cattle manure, our organic farmers would have a nitrogen source that could help them produce food for a profit.

Let’s all sit down and talk. Farmers are not the enemy.

Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

What Our Bottom Line Should Be

Richard Ha writes:

I’ve said this before, but look at it again: The energy we use to get energy, minus the energy used to get our food, equals our lifestyle.
How much is left over – after we’ve used our energy to 1) obtain more energy and 2) feed ourselves – determines how we live.

This is the nexus of energy and agriculture.

Our bottom line right now needs to be: What should we do to ensure energy security? What should we do to ensure food security?

The cost of producing food is the cost of petroleum oil plus the technology that utilizes oil more efficiently.

The cost of the energy we use to get new energy is rapidly getting to the point where consumers are resisting paying. The estimated cost of tar sand and shale oil is close to $112/barrel. The current oil price is a little bit below that. Shell Oil just announced that last quarter it lost $4/ barrel from its shale oil operations.

If producers lose money, they will eventually stop producing the expensive new oil. If they stop production, we will keep on using the old cheaper oil until it runs out. Peak Oil will happen not because we run out of oil, but because we can’t afford to buy the new, more expensive oil. And that time is not as far off as we think.

In recent years I have attended five Peak Oil conferences, talked to many experts, and even traveled to Iceland and the Philippines to observe how they leverage petroleum issues.

Using GMOs is one way we can lower agricultural costs through technology. For example, every biotech solution to a disease eliminates the need for chemicals to control the insect spreading the disease. This results in increased saving to the farmer, in terms
of increased production and fewer labor and chemical costs associated with spray control.

And how can we leverage the Hawaiian sun for its energy? GMO corn could do that. (If you are unsure about genetically modified organisms, see my post about the American Medical Association’s stand, and about how one of the founders of the anti-GMO method has completely changed his mind.)

An added benefit of utilizing GMO corn is that this could rejuvenate the hog, cattle and poultry industries. Right now, organic farmers do not have a manure source to make compost, which limits the ability of organic farmers to feed a significant
number of people.

Bill 79 would make future GMOs disallowed on the Big Island, while other Hawai‘i counties could use them, and this would give the other islands a strong competitive advantage over our Big Island farmers.

I think we need to take a time out before making a decision on Bill 79, in order to make sure we do this right.

Biofuel, Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Nothing Is More Important Than Being Able to Afford Food

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Richard Ha writes:

How are these two things related: The Aina Koa Pono biofuel project, which is subsidized by the rate payer at $200 per barrel, and Bill 79, the anti-GMO bill submitted by Councilwoman Margaret Wille?

There is a very good chance that we will soon start down the backside of the world oil supply curve. If there is even the remotest chance this will happen, we need to be focusing sharply on the things that are crucial to us, living out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Nothing is more important than being able to afford food.

We cannot waste time subsidizing $200 per barrel oil; what is the objective there? And we cannot waste time pitting farmer against farmer. We need to focus on helping all farmers make money. Because food security involves farmers farming. And if the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.

Here in Hawai‘i, nearly 90 percent of our food is imported. We are going to need the help of all farmers to achieve food security. Bill 79 is a distraction that takes our focus away from helping farmers become economically viable. Worse, and most distressing, is that it pits organic farmers against conventional farmers.

We need the help of all the farmers to make Hawai‘i food secure.

The problem is that farmers’ customers are being squeezed by rising energy costs. The rubbah slippah folks can only go so far in supporting locally grown products. Oil costs have quadrupled in the last 10 years and electricity rates have continuously risen. It’s as if we had a massive tax hike. We’re in the middle of a crisis and we don’t even recognize it.

The small farmers on the Big Island know it, though. That’s why they are taking valuable time off from work to show support for each other.

An Interview with Steven Kopits

 | May 1, 2013

By Steve Andrews – The following is taken from an interview with Steven Kopits, managing director of the New York office of Douglas-Westwood, an international energy analysis firm.  The views expressed are atttributable to Mr. Kopits and do not necessarily represent those of Douglas Westwood.

…Peak oil does not occur when we run out of oil.  Peak oil occurs when the marginal consumer is no longer willing to pay the cost of extracting and processing the marginal barrel of oil.  And we can actually calculate what the related numbers are.

Q:  How do we do that?

Kopits: To begin with, we refer to the price a nation’s oil consumers are willing to pay as its “carrying capacity.”  For the US, carrying capacity is about $95-100 Brent [per-barrel oil price in London].  If the oil price is above this level, oil consumption will decline—which is exactly what we see and what we predicted four years ago.  But carrying capacity is not a static number.  It changes over time, specifically, with three things: GDP growth, efficiency gains in the use of oil, and dollar inflation.  So if GDP goes up, efficiency goes up and the CPI goes up, then the amount that consumers are willing to pay for oil will increase.  For China, by the way, we estimate the carrying capacity at around $115-120 / barrel Brent.  So oil consumption will increase in China at $115 Brent, but fall in the advanced economies—exactly the pattern we’ve seen in the last few years.

Q: So the story line getting a ton of ink of late—peak oil is dead….it isn’t actually quite dead yet, is it?

Kopits:   No.  But importantly, we’re going to peak out production not because we’re “running out of oil,” but because the marginal consumer is not willing to pay for the marginal barrel.  We seem to be pretty much at that level today.

We need to understand these dynamics better.  What are the combined effects of flat oil prices and rising production costs, that’s where I think the challenge is and where our professional work is focusing on the macro side…to better understand what these trends are, what they mean, and how companies in the industry should respond to it.

I’ll give you an example.  Normally, if you look at an oil production system, it tends to be symmetrical around the peak.  The rate at which you approach the peak is the rate at which you depart from the peak.  We haven’t done that.  What we’ve done is that we’ve approached the peak and we’ve leveled out production, the so-called “undulating plateau”.  But we’ve maintained that plateau by turning to non-oil liquids, by dramatic increases in upstream spend, and also by technological innovation related to hydrofracking.  All of these, as of today, look to be running their course.  Even shale oil.  Yes, it will grow for the next few years from the three majors plays in the US, but the peak of production growth is already behind us in the Bakken, for example.  On current trends, Bakken production will be increasing by single digits within two years.  Not a tragedy by any means, but not enough to move the global oil supply at that time, either.

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