Monthly Archives: October 2007

Government

Farm Bill

I just read an interesting opinion article by Mladen Golubic. It begins:

As a medical resident working in one of the poorest cities in the country, I see firsthand how poverty can contribute to poor health.

The hospital where I work is filled with people suffering from uncontrolled diabetes, high blood pressure, and other problems often exacerbated by a lack of health insurance or income. These problems and their origins are complex, of course. And millions of words have been written about how to fix them. But there is one thing the government could do right now that would make a tremendous difference to my patients and to all the nation’s poor: Reform the Farm Bill currently up for reauthorization in Congress.

Currently, he explains, “this subsidy system rewards farmers for growing foods that contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases I treat every day. Wouldn’t our taxes be more wisely spent promoting healthier foods such as fruits and vegetables?”

It’s an interesting topic because there has been very little in previous Farm Bills that benefit fruit and vegetable producers.

But if the present Farm Bill were to benefit the Women, Infant and Children, Seniors and Food Stamp program recipients by providing fruits and vegetables, this would be a good thing for the recipients. And it would be positive for local farmers. All in all, a good thing.

History

The Old Days

Richard said something the other day about how people used to live—they knew their neighbors; they often planted ‘ulu trees so they always had delicious breadfruit; they shared their mangos with someone who, in return, shared some of their fish.

He wrote about plumbing a house so the wastewater runs into the vegetable garden, and that made me think about the Kona Coffee Living History Farm. From their website:

D. Uchida Farm – A 5.5 acre historic coffee farm first homesteaded in 1900

The Kona Coffee Living History Farm brings the coffee pioneer’s story to life by depicting the daily lives of early Japanese immigrants during the period of 1920-1945. Visitors are guided through the coffee and macadamia orchards, the many historic structures, and are greeted by costumed interpreters along the way.

It’s fascinating to walk through this family’s restored coffee farm—and especially, for me, its farmhouse, maintained as though it’s the early part of the 1900s, complete with costumed interpreters working in the house.

One thing I noticed when I toured the farmhouse was the “filter” (an old tobacco filter) at the kitchen sink. It let the water flow, but not food bits—and the water flowed out a pipe and right into the garden just outside the kitchen.

How smart is that? Our grandparents, and their grandparents, knew what they were doing. Yet many of us have gotten so far away from that these days.

Macario and I live on the Hamakua Coast land where my family has lived for several generations. It’s still rural here, but as opposed to when my great-grandmother lived here, Hilo-town is now just an easy 15 or 20-minute drive away.

Back in my great-grandmother’s day, even though she lived here in this very same place, town was far away. Once a month she would get dressed up and ride the train to Hilo, where she would get the family’s supplies for the entire month. Her daughters would beg to be allowed to go along, because it was a big exciting day to go to town.

I think about that when I occasionally find myself having to zip into town more than once in a single day, and I feel sheepish and wasteful. Our lifestyles are so different now.

I know a lot about what went on in this house in 1939. That’s when my great-grandmother left here bound for Columbia University in New York, where she earned a master’s degree. While she was gone that year, her 28-year-old daughter (my grandmother), who had a 7-year-old son at the time (my dad), sent her long, interesting letters about what was going on.

My great-grandmother apparently brought those letters back home with her, because I found them tucked away in this house one winter day 50-some years later, when my then-elderly grandmother—formerly the 28-year-old—was still around. It was wonderful to read them aloud together in front of the fireplace, a few each night. It took us several days to get through them all, because we’d stop as she remembered what she’d written about so long before and filled in details.

From those 1939 letters about life here at this place I learned that they used to have chickens and that my grandmother sold eggs in town at Kwong See Wo store. That my grandmother made mango chutney when she had a lot of mangoes (but I already knew that). And that my grandfather poked holes in a Crisco can to water the strawberries once when it was particularly dry.

They grew kalo (taro) then. They planted ‘ulu trees, which we still eat from, and ate ‘ulu as well as ho‘i‘o, tomatoes, oranges, tangerines, mangos, bananas and vegetables from their garden.

In one letter my grandmother wrote about friends coming over—they all rolled up their pants and went up the stream to catch ‘opae. Sometimes my grandparents would go stay with family and friends at the beach house for an extended, relaxing time of play. They would fish for their meals.

It was interesting to read how often good friends came by to visit. They’d show up with coolers full of fish and Chinese food and their backseat full of fruit from their trees. It was a long journey out here to the country, so they’d stay for four days or maybe a week. Everybody pitched in to cook, etc., while they were here and it was a party the entire time. Pictures show that they played music and some danced hula. Always in those photos there is good food everywhere and kids are playing together and everyone is smiling.

I think about those letters and that lifestyle. Though I realize that my grandmother was writing about the fun times, and not the day-to-day stuff, it still seems like life was a little bit simpler then, and pretty nice. They planted and grew food, and ate well. They had friends over a lot—dear friends that my grandmother remained close to for her entire life—and lots of times they made their own music. It’s a lifestyle I admire.

We grow some of our food these days, and we too have good friends, though we don’t get together as often as they did. We should.

One year we had family and friends here for Thanksgiving dinner, and later in the evening my brother said it reminded him of one of my grandmother’s parties back when we were kids. “Every room I walk into,” he said, “there are little groups of people talking and laughing.” He even pointed to two little boys who were playing a little rambunctiously and said, “That would have been [our cousin] David and me, getting into trouble.”

I liked that. I also like the occasional reminder that we need to have good food around us, some of it we grew outside, and have our friends over more often, and remember to live our lives well while we’re here.

Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Food Is More Important Than Oil

At the ASPO conference I just attended, it was projected that the peak of the world’s oil production (after which time, demand will exceed supply and prices will rise sharply) may occur in 2011 or so. As do some others, though, I think the peak may have already taken place. This article, entitled Our World Is Finite: The Implications of Resource Limitations, is bleak.

A graph in this article projects a permanent decline in the United States’ gross domestic product because of limitations on oil and natural gas. This assumes it would not, at that point, be “business as usual.”

At the conference, I met Gail Tverberg, who wrote that article. She is a very soft-spoken and thoughtful person. She made this complex subject easy to understand.

I mentioned to her the connection between oil and food and she included it in this morning’s post. She wrote to me yesterday saying that, in some ways, food is more important than oil. RIGHT! No more food, no more people.

We are incredibly fortunate to live in Hawai‘i, where the sun shines all year long. In the old days, the sun provided 100 percent of the energy we needed to grow our food. Cheap oil has camouflaged that. But as oil prices rise, sunshine is still free.

Farmers can use some help in developing alternate energy sources to help them with their work. The Hawai‘i Farm Bureau has included in its legislative package a new Department of Ag farm loan program that gives them this help.

Farmers cannot wait for public utilities to bring down energy costs. I trust individual farmers more to do what they need to do. Think small-scale bio diesel. There are other ways as well—things like windmills, hydroelectric, solar, etc.

The more one farmer can produce, the more vibrant our society will be post-oil decline. We do not want to go back to where everyone has to fish, or farm, to feed their family. It all has to do with how much help a farmer can get from alternate energy to help him with production.

Our challenge now is to see how we can get Hawai‘i farmers to grow more food for our people. As imported food prices rise, I believe that local farming will become more profitable. That, and the proliferation of farmers markets, will make farming profitable.

I am very aware of the Cuba and North Korea models. Both were dependent on oil supplies from the former Soviet Union. When it collapsed, they had to fend for themselves. As a result, North Korea has widespread famine and crop failures, while Cuba has survived quite well. I think that the basic difference is that Cuba has more energy from sunshine than North Korea. Still, I think that we can improve on the Cuba model.

I believe that we should send a hopeful message that although oil is becoming more scarce, and prices of our imported food are rising, there are things that we can do. Such as:

• Landscape with plants that make food. Garden where possible and plant fruit trees, etc. ‘Ulu trees come to mind, because they provide an abundant supply of a tasty starch food.

• I think houses should have waste water lines plumbed in, so people can reuse the water for gardens. Then farmers will produce for people who cannot grow food themselves.

• People need to start thinking about getting to know their neighbors, plan what they can trade, and get closer to their families. Kids can have chores taking care of the plants. This is not a bad thing. We kids in my family fed the chickens before we went to school.

No problem; we can do this.

The Sustainability 2050 project that the state of Hawai‘i is preparing right now will be very valuable. But it needs to include Five Year Plans, because things are moving fast. The sustainability council also needs a strong Ag person on the council.

And food should be the top priority. We need to do an assessment of the number and composition of calories necessary to maintain a population of 1.5 million. Andrew Hashimoto, Dean of the University of Hawai‘i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, mentioned something like 2 billion calories per year. We should compare this number of needed calories to what we are able to provide now—how many calories’ worth of food we grow in Hawai‘i now—from the point of view of human nutrition. This will give us a road map to follow.

I am optimistic that we can successfully achieve these goals and show the rest of the nation the Aloha way.

Bananas, History

Old Bananas

From Hawaiian Annual, Hilo Fifty Years Ago, by J.M. Lydgate (published in 1923, this refers to events of 1873):

A bunch of the largest bananas ever produced in Hawaii, according to the report of the government experiment station, was taken to the mainland this past summer by Dr. W. E. Slater, grown by him at his home on Dole street, and destined for Minneapolis.

The individual bananas averaged eight inches in length and three inches in width, and the entire bunch weighed seventy-three pounds. There have been heavier bunches of more hands of the ordinary sized fruit, though this may be the record, as stated, for individual bananas. Unfortunately the kind or variety was not given.

 

Current Affairs, Peak Oil, Sustainability

ASPO Conference

I’m in Houston to attend the Produce Marketing Association tradeshow, which started last Friday.

I decided to stay on for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference, which started Wednesday. ASPO is a non-partisan, non-profit association dedicated to the study of “Peak Oil.” That’s a term describing the last point at which the world’s supply of oil can accomodate the demand for oil. After that, demand will permanently exceed supply.

I became aware of ASPO while scanning the Internet. Its supply-and-demand, common sense approach to the problem resonated with me, so I started to read its daily report. I followed those reports and came to the conclusion that ASPO does offer a balanced approach.

When I learned ASPO’s U.S. conference was occurring just after the PMA trade show and in the same city, I decided to attend. So here I am.

This conference is, by far, the most interesting and important one I have ever attended. Its panel members and presenters have stellar credentials—they are former CIA officials, executives from major oil companies, investment advisors, university researchers, etc. The presentations have been full of substance. I’ve sat through presentations from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. without wanting to skip out.

I am now absolutely certain that ASPO is credible and that its web information update on the Oil Drum is also credible.

A relatively few giant oil fields produce most of the world’s oil. There have not been any significant new oil fields discovered in the last 20 years, and the older, super-giant oil fields are declining in production. Discoveries of new, smaller oil fields are barely keeping up with the fields that are declining.

The big problem is that the demand for oil is increasing at an alarming rate. China is growing at an incredible rate. It has 10 times our population, and right now only 16 percent of its people own cars. And then there’s India, too. Soon we will reach the point where oil production cannot keep up with world demand for oil.

No one knows when, but ASPO feels this will occur around 2012, which is just over four years from now. Others think it will occur 10 years later. Many think that it has already happened.

No one debates whether or not Peak Oil will occur—they only disagree about when.

Regardless of when, it is prudent to take action before we get to that point. We need to spread the word that we are close to a serious turning point regarding our oil supply. And we need to get people’s advice about what actions we should take.

More than 60 percent of America’s oil use is for transportation. Can we adjust to our gas prices rising four-fold? Agriculture, too, depends on fossil fuels, as do fertilizer, chemicals, packaging and transportation. Therefore, imported food prices will start to rise.

Can we make the adjustments we need to do? Will we be able to feed Hawai‘i’s people?

In Hawai‘i, I believe we can make the adjustments we need to keep our food distribution dependable. But it is going to require thinking “outside the box.” We all can do this!

Eating Locally, Sustainability

Edible Hawaiian Islands

There’s a new magazine out there—Edible Hawaiian Islands. Have you seen it?

Here’s a description:

“Filled with engaging stories, enticing photography and art, our mission is to celebrate family farmers, bakers, fisherman, ranchers, poultry farmers, local chefs and the rest of the community for their dedication to producing the highest quality fresh and seasonal foods. We want to highlight those efforts towards a more sustainable and safe food system in The Hawaiian Islands.“

Sound familiar? The magazine has already featured Hamakua Springs, and writes about many others who practice the same sorts of things we preach.

Check it out. And if you’re interested, subscription information is here.

Sustainability

Suppy and Demand

The Houston Chronicle just ran this op-ed piece titled Don’t Drain Our Energy Lifeblood, with the subtitle: “Domestic exploration is energy security 101.” It says that Americans burn nearly a half billion gallons of gasoline every day, and that 65 percent of the oil that makes this gasoline is imported. Also, that worldwide energy consumption is anticipated to increase by 40 percent in the next 25 years—while the widespread use of alternate energy is still decades away.

The article argues for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, as well as in the offshore continental shelf. The revenue generated, it says, could be used for alternative energy development.

“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may offer oil reserves of as much as 16 billion barrels — which is comparable to the world’s largest oil fields. Even though the environmental impact would be minuscule, Congress insists on keeping the refuge and other potential domestic resources off-limits and ignores the fact that modern exploration techniques could limit drilling in the refuge to a 2,000-acre footprint, or not even half of 1 percent of the refuge’s 19 million acres.“

It concludes that our country’s energy dependency makes us dangerously vulnerable in economic terms and compromises our national security.

Public policies that support, rather than impede, efforts to increase responsible domestic production are what America needs to retake control of its energy lifeblood from rogue dictators and banana republics.

The article’s author is Elizabeth Ames Jones, immediate past chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas, propane, mining and intrastate pipeline industries.

It got my attention, appearing as it did the Sunday immediately before the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference will be held in Houston — and just before oil prices reached more than $86/barrel, a record high. It strikes me that as world demand for oil rises in the years ahead, there may well be a gap between the energy our country can get from oil and the energy we can get from alternate sources.

The Queensland, Australia government also just published a report acknowledging that “Peak Oil” — “the potential peaking of world oil supplies caused by natural field decline” — is a real concern and will happen within 10 years. Together with the op-ed piece above coming out of the gas and oil capital of the U.S., as well as the upcoming ASPO conference, I think these are all significant indicators.

Education

Keaholoa

Last year I was appointed to the board of advisors of the Keaholoa STEM program at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.

This is a program that aims to increase enrollment, support, and graduation rates of Native Hawaiian students at UH-Hilo in science & mathematics disciplines, and increase familiarity and the use of related technology.

It’s a valuable program, which also does outreach to Hawaiian students from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Its existence is in jeopardy because it may lose its primary source of funding—the National Science Foundation. This program needs dependable local funding. We cannot depend on the National Science Foundation for such an important program.

The name “Keaholoa” means “the long fishing line” and is “a metaphor for the academic tools mentor-teachers will provide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics),” with which students “will learn how to plumb the depths of academic inquiry.”

An ‘olelo no‘eau, or traditional Hawaiian saying, goes like this: He lawai’a ke kai papa’u, he pokole ke aho; he lawai’a no ke kai hohonu, he loa ke aho. (A fisherman of the shallow sea uses a short line; a fisherman of the deep sea has a long line.)

It means, “A person whose knowledge is shallow does not have much, but he whose knowledge is great, does.”

Shortly after being appointed to the Keaholoa STEM board I was invited to a Ho‘ike, where the students gave reports on their internship projects.

I didn’t know what to expect and I was surprised—and impressed—by the imagination and careful thought that went into choosing topics to study, and by the execution of those projects.

Some of the presentations at the Ho‘ike:

• One student studied the effect of fog on Lana‘i’s aquifer. Lana‘i lies in the lee of Maui and is relatively dry. However there is a fog that comes through, condenses and runs down trees into the aquifer. There was a significant effect based on condensate that was caught and measured.

• Another student studied the health of coral at the ponds off Vacationland at Kapoho. This involved putting on scuba gear and taking periodic measurements of the health parameters of the coral.

• One student chose to do a DNA comparison between coqui frogs found in Hawai‘i and coqui frogs in Puerto Rico. Those in Puerto Rico could be identified by the elevation they lived at.

• A student studied the health of Hilo Bay by measuring dissolved oxygen, turbidity and other parameters at various locations around the bay.

There were many other presentations that were just as imaginative, relevant and very well executed.

I came away from the Ho‘ike feeling confident that Hawai‘i is in good hands with these young students. It was an uplifting feeling.

From the Keaholoa STEM website:

Keaholoa STEM uses an Outreach Program that builds a strong sense of identity, raises career goals, educational aspirations, and provides meaningful learning experiences through STEM courses and other activities. Keaholoa will reach into the local community in a way that respects and values Hawaiian culture and builds upon the potential for academic achievement in Hawaiian youth. We are partnering with Na Pua No’eau- Center For Gifted and Talented Native Hawaiian Children at UHH, to take advantage of the proven educational practices and statewide resources developed by them over 11 years of successful outreach to native Hawaiian communities.

Outreach Program Elements:

•Super Enrichment Saturdays (K-12 students)
•Summer Institute (K-12 students)
•Hawaiian Family Affair (entire families)
•High-School Mentoring/Tutorial Program

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, The New Ahupua‘a

The New Ahupua‘a

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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?”

**

Some of the speakers from the conference were videotaped and are up on the Kohala Center’s webcast, if you’d like to listen.

There is also an online slideshow of photos from the Food Summit.

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.

History

A Peek Backwards and a Peck

There’s an interesting timeline of the history of agriculture in Hawai‘i on the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture’s website. See it here.

Did you know:

• That the orange is thought to have first arrived in these islands in 1792?

• That coffee and pineapples were brought to Hawai‘i by the Spaniard Don Marin in 1813?

• How much money 15,000 pecks of pineapple brought in, when they were exported from Hawai‘i in 1897?

Do you even know what a “peck” is? As in, “a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

That’s beyond the scope of the History of Agriculture in Hawai‘i page. But here you go.