Richard Featured in Inc. magazine

Feel free to click on over to the national business magazine Inc.com if you’d like, which is featuring Richard in an article called He Thought it Was Time to Shut Down, Until His Workers Cooked Up a Scheme. Subtitled: “Has this farmer gone bananas?”

Here’s how Alex Salkever’s article starts:

Richard Ha tends not to take himself too seriously. The founder of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, a 600-acre banana and vegetable farm on Hawaii’s Big Island, once showed up wearing shorts to receive an award from the state’s governor. He calls his eco-farming blog Ha Ha Ha! But earlier this year, Ha was not smiling. He had decided to shut down his banana-growing operation, a move that would leave 400 acres fallow. His costs — for fertilizer, energy, and health care coverage for his workers — had been soaring. And because banana prices were flat, there seemed to be no end in sight.

On the first Friday in April, Ha delivered the bad news to his nine full-time banana pickers. But when Monday morning rolled around, Ha was surprised to find that seven of the workers had shown up to plead their case for keeping the farm going…. (Click for more)