Tag Archives: Rory Flynn

Sustainability

Farmers, Friends & Comedians

Have a look at the  new Farmers & Friends magazine. Its tagline is always “Agriculture, natural resources, energy, livelihoods, markets, opportunities and civil society in Hawai‘i.” That pretty much covers everything.

Editor Rory Flynn’s column this issue is called “Our Ketchup Bottle Problem.” It’s about Hawai‘i’s outmigration, and it starts:

Not so long ago, ketchup was packaged in clear glass bottles. You could always tell how much ketchup was left in the bottle and that came in handy, especially at restaurants and diners. Customer and waitress alike knew when it was time to bring out a fresh ketchup bottle.

Then ketchup makers switched to squat plastic bottles and, in lieu of visible ketchup, they colored the plastic bottles red. Now you have to give the plastic bottle a squeeze or feel its heft to determine if there‘s any ketchup inside. That pretty much sums up Hawai‘i‘s shaky grasp of population and economic growth these days….

This month’s feature stories include “Study reveals the changing face of agriculture in Hawai‘i,” about the 100-page State Agricultural Land Use Baseline 2015 report. From the article:

The study team was led by Jeff Melrose, a land use planner and a seasoned observer of Hawai‘i‘s agricultural landscape.

Melrose‘s team used a combination of satellite imagery, related geospatial datasets, and on-site farm interviews to produce a new digital GIS layer showing where commercial agricultural crops are grown throughout the State of Hawai‘i. The new baseline dataset updates Hawai‘i‘s previous Agricultural Land Use Map (ALUM, 1980) produced 35 years ago.

Other articles include  “Thoughts on biotechnology,”  “Algae + papaya = biofuel,” by Jan Suszkiw,” and “Growing up with Mort, Mike and Elaine.”

That last one is about the comedians Mort Sahl, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, by the way. Fun stuff.

It’s a great issue and I highly recommend having a look. Here’s a link.

Current Affairs

‘Why Has Human Progress Ground to a Halt?’

I look back at the amazing flumes and the ditches that the sugar plantations built, and I wonder if those could even get built nowadays. We’d have a really hard time. I don’t know if we could.

Today we spend our time more time thinking of the reasons we can’t do projects like that than than actually doing them. It’s not the education of our people, it’s our attitudes. Too much “no can,” or excuses. Too much talking and not enough doing. We’ve become risk averse.

Rory Flynn wrote an editorial at Farmers & Friends called Progress and Progressives in Hawai‘i that’s a great read. It talks about how we are no longer innovative and excited about progress and big transformational change in our society.

He quotes Peter Thiel, a hedge fund manager and the co-founder of PayPal: “We wanted flying cars; we got 140 characters (Twitter).”

And he discusses our situation here in Hawai‘i:

We have niche opportunities to excel despite our far-flung geography and high cost of living. International collaboration in astronomy is one. Seed crop R&D is another. Renewable energy is one more giant niche opportunity – solar, wind, geothermal and ocean thermal conversion.

 So what are we doing? We have declared war on two of the most promising sectors of our economy, the Thirty Meter Telescope and seed companies. What good does this do us? Well, it allows us to flex the emotion-laden muscles of sovereignty and aloha ‘aina. Meanwhile, our best educated youth depart for jobs on the U.S. mainland. And, in August, onlinedegrees.com declared Hawai‘i the worst state in the nation for graduates to move into post-college careers due to “relatively low employment opportunities” and the nation’s “most expensive housing market.”

Not so long ago, progressives in Hawai‘i believed in progress. They thought that innovation boosted the human prospect. Call it the “Burns Years,” post-statehood. There was a lively sense that Hawai‘i’s people could accomplish great things as they shed the plantation era yoke of “subtle inferiority.” As equality took root, an easygoing collaborative style blossomed. It tasked the Democratic Party to develop a new, diversified economy. It gave us raucous entertainments at Territorial Tavern, spirited conversations at Columbia Inn and policy wonk breakfasts at Washington Place. People might disagree – and often did – but it was understood that bad blood was bad manners. People knew when to say, “Eh, no act, brah.”

There’s a lot more – see what Boeing and Germany have to do with it, too.

The take away is that it’s really about trust, community, honor, all of us and not a few of us, and not, no can. CAN!

History, Mauna Kea, Where We Live

10,000 Hours and a Mountain

Editor Rory Flynn wrote a really interesting editorial in the June 2015 edition of Farmers and Friends.

He talks about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory (from his book Outliers) that 10,000 hours of practice, plus determination, helps some people develop excellence in their field. He cites concert violinists, the Beatles, Bill Gates, and Hawai‘i’s Kolten Wong.

And then Flynn adds to the equation the importance of place.

He takes us through a really interesting look at what the Hawaiian islands’ geography has meant in the past – to Polynesian explorers, 18th-century British explorers, Americans, Chinese, and others, and what opportunities and livelihoods have been generated here from all those interactions.

And he writes about what advantage geography offers Hawai‘i today, Mauna Kea being one incredible advantage.

“It beckons to a fascinating cohort of 10,000-hour people – accomplished astronomers from around the world. This is where the natural resource of a mountain summit 2-1⁄2 miles high intersects with the excellence of people at the top of their game.”

There’s a lot more. Really good article; I recommend it.

It’s easy to forget all the people and opportunities and livelihoods that were here before. Like the people who came before us, we have amazing resources and we should use them in the smartest way we can.

Read Rory Flynn’s article.