Spray Once a Week, Price It High: Growing Farmers on Oʻahu

27:43 You guys want to see some pictures real quick? Yeah. So one of the things we're trying to do is move beyond input making. I'll introduce you to the rest of the guys in the class later on. You'll probably see the pictures in here. It's about time we get beyond inputs. I think inputs is just the first stage we got to start doing. But we've also run into some challenges when it came to, okay, so what's next? We made all these things, what do we do? So let's share just a little bit about this. So Korea, where Korea is in comparison to Hawaii, we're kind of far from Korea.

28:30 There are some similarities though between the two cultures of the places. Korea has a really strong cultural heritage, actually a really strong agriculture heritage in terms of farming. very similar to Hawaii. Hawaii is surrounded by water, we're on islands. Korea is surrounded by water on three sides, so some similar things there happening. But in terms of where we're at, in terms of north and south, Korea is kind of up here, so they have winters, the snows. Hawaii, we're a little bit down here, we have a warmer climate,

29:00 the snows. Hawaiʻi, we're a little bit down here, we have a warmer climate, One chance. If your crop doesn't grow well, winter comes. Guess what? You die. No food. So you gotta get them right. Here in Hawaii, stuff doesn't grow well. Let me try again. So, looking at Korea, you gotta get it right to survive. So that's one reason I've been really interested in the farming practices in Korea. This is my proof that natural farming works. These are my three keiki. I have one more. one girl who was actually born on Master Cho's birthday this past February 14th

29:38 Master Cho is a Valentine's baby and so is my daughter and actually both of them are Year of the Rooster as well. I have some kalo that my keiki have been growing. They absolutely love kalo for us. I realized that if I wanted to feed my children kalo, I couldn't afford to buy it at over three sometimes four dollars a pound so and even the stuff that they were selling it wasn't that good anyway. So growing kalo with natural farming has been a passion of mine. And also getting back to the traditional ways of preparing kalo. So what you see here is a traditional way of preparing poi,

30:15 where the kalo is actually mashed on a board and stoned. The commercial industry did horrible things to taro because they were buying taro from taro farmers based upon weight. So what taro farmers would do is let the crop sit in the field longer than it should have, those healthy starches converts to sugar, converts to water, which means more weight, and it'll get easier to run through the poi machines. So this poi that they make in the machines isn't the rich, nice starches, it's mostly sugar that's overripe. And you wonder why people get diabetes and are sick.

30:53 But, you try to take that overripe sugary taro and try to pound it, guess what happens? It doesn't pound because those starches aren't there. But you spray WCA on your taro, it's amazing. So here's some stuff that we've been doing. This is for me personally. Growing up on Oahu has been tough because in my lifetime, I did some research and I found that when I was born in 1977, there was roughly about 200,000 people on Oahu. There's about five times more people than there now. So now there's over a million people. So in less than a hundred years, at one time, this is what Oahu looked like.

31:37 Mostly flooded taro patches, rice fields, agriculture. We grew our food. And in less than a hundred years, this is kind of what it looks like now. And my grandfather, Joe McGill, was taken too early from his life. he died of cancer. In many ways I look at this I think it's what humans are doing to the land is almost like a form of cancer. Uncontrollable, un-consumable growth. And the only thing that I can think about to combat this is to do natural farming. I have to credit my mentor, Dr. Hoon Park. If not for Dr. Park, I don't think any of us would be here right now.

32:24 A couple of friends of mine were going to this workshop and I was running a little bit late. They said, oh, I don't want to go. And my wife said, no, you go. I said, no, I don't have to go. Darla and Casey guys are going. They can go. I go find out from them what I missed. She said, no, I want you to go right now. So when I went to this workshop, it forever changed my life. All the questions that I had in my life soon had answers for me. Thank you, Dr. Park. These are all the guys from the last advanced training we did six years ago. I think you know some of these guys. Oh, that beard. Same.

33:04 Hopefully when we're done, we'll take a picture like this. We will be the next group of natural farmers to share this with the world. So a few days after this, a few months actually, I jumped on a plane to Korea six years ago to take a look at some natural farming stuff. And I was so excited with this, I really wanted to find all ways to talk about it, learn about it and do it. And I was frustrated because I couldn't. Because I didn't speak Korean. I cannot read Japanese, who am I going to talk to about this? So I was really lucky where I reached out to Kim.

33:42 I reached out to Mike DuPonte, and Mike DuPonte at this time was getting a lot of opportunities. People were interested and they wanted to know about it. So we actually went almost on a tour from literally from Hilo to Hanalei where Kim was really lucky and fortunate to have invited me to her University of Hawaii class, HEC. And this is actually us when we were teaching at Kauai Community College. So we've actually went from sharing natural farming all along the way. But the real reason I talk about this is to reach out to the other people who are in here right now.

34:20 We are the support for each other. We are the ones who will help this grow. So building the relationships within here and amongst us I believe is really, really, really important. This was the HCC class. I'm driving. Hold up the IMO, hold on. Dangerous. And also taking every opportunity I can just to talk about and share natural farming. Do you remember Pablo? So Pablo was on Kauai. They had a problem over on the Waimea River. Waimea Farmers Association, their pig pens essentially drained off right into Waimea River. But the crazy thing about it was they test the pig pens.

35:06 pig pens, okay, there's kukai in the pig pens, but they test the water in the river and there's no kukai in the water. It's kind of weird. Are you guys familiar with apple snails? I've never seen apple snails that big before in my life. So between the pig pen and the Waimea River there's this trough, just apple snails upon apple snails upon apple snails. They were collecting the kukai before it went into the river, and they were actually cleaning the river. So it made me think differently about apple snails. Wow, so if apple snails can

35:37 actually have a biological function, you know, I just hear about the bad things that they do in the taro patches. So maybe, wow, respect all life forms. But oh, but Pablo, we just did a one, was it a two-day class on the pig pen farming? Pablo said, I got this, boom. Was it like two months later, we went back to Kauai. He built an odorless pig pen. We're actually standing under the pig pen right now. And he was actually going to go back to the Philippines and share this technology back in the Philippines where he's from.

36:12 So, natural farming classes. This is Auntie Chris Kobayashi. She's a taro farmer on Hawaiʻi. She grows unreal kalo. And she's always done it organically, or more recently done it organically, and she's making the transition towards natural farming. These are my keiki. We've been able to raise keiki, chickens, natural farming works, and on all forms of life. Take that. Dr. Koon-Hui Wang, she's been doing some pretty killer research on natural farming.

37:05 So she has published some information if you want to understand the science behind natural farming, she can help you with that. She does some cool stuff with soil samples. What you see here is how she takes her soil samples, she also tests for compaction. This is at Windward Community College in the Nurses' Garden with Dr. Jamie Boyd, where where we did a side by side trial of Korean natural farming versus their existing organic methods that they were doing in the garden and trying to do soil tests, compaction tests, to see the difference between the two. The University of Hawaii, CTAHR,

37:37 actually had some funds left over and these guys, without even telling me what they were doing, they asked for some natural farming solutions. So I said, here. Not knowing that these guys who took these solutions and they sent it to a food safety lab to have it tested. Oh, you guys, that was nothing. But just so you guys know what's involved with at least that test that they did, they tested for three things. They tested for E. coli, coliform, and... Nitrates. No, not nitrates. E. coli, coliform, and... Salmonella? Giardia? No, not giardia. Oh, shoot.

38:17 But anyway, the good news is most of them came back safe. The only one that we actually had a problem with was the LAB. So we actually sent in two samples of LAB. One was made from commercial milk and one was made from raw milk from Ginger John's Farm. And both of them tested warning levels for coliform. So coliform is a bacteria that's found in the feces of cattle. So Mike DuPonte said, oh, I know why. Why? He said, well when they get milk from a cow in a commercial situation, if they don't wash the udders with it.

38:58 If there's kukai on the udders, they put the [milkers] on there, guess what happens to the entire milk supply? It gets contaminated with coliform. So he said, it's crazy that Ginger John's sample of LAB was contaminated. No, it was like 90% less than the commercial milk. He said the cow had mastitis, so the cow had an infection on top of being from a natural source, but it tested ten times lower than the LAB from commercial milk. Raw milk kills E. coli. It does? Okay, yeah. Wow.

39:28 Just from experimenting with that, what I can tell you is that if you're fortunate enough to even get raw milk, because it's not easy, skim the cream. Yeah, that's what we had to do all summer. Skim the cream because you can make wonderful things with that cream but for some reason if you don't skim the cream when you make the LAB it's almost too thick. The cheese doesn't really form when you're using raw milk. But raw milk is awesome if you're lucky enough to find it. (unclear) Oʻahu, just to share. Yeah, okay, these are the things that are going good for us. This is how we did them.

40:02 This is how we're doing them. These are some of the challenges that have come up. and again the challenges really the biggest challenge is actually doing it If you can commit right now to making an FPJ and getting seawater. How many of you were at Master Cho's last training, back in January of last year? February, right? Yeah. He said, if you're in Hawaii, if you have FPJ and seawater, there's no reason you cannot be successful at farming. So you just have FPJ and seawater, you spray your plants, (unclear). But being able to spray on a weekly basis becomes tough because, you know,

40:47 something comes up, you forget to spray one week, then another week comes by, oh, spray tomorrow. Oh, you don't spray. So being committed to actually doing it, you can get on a regular schedule and build that into your routine of doing it at least once a week, feeding them your natural farming inputs, you will have incredible, incredible results. But the reality is it's tough. Life comes up and oftentimes we get distracted. So if you can build in a system where I guarantee your plants, your soil, your animals get sprayed once a week, you will have success.

41:21 A challenge for us has been actually taking natural farming products to market. I believe that we as natural farmers should command a higher price for our product, both because of the care that we provide for our plants and animals, in addition to the higher nutrient density, and its overall value. Remember one thing, price is artificial. Let me say that again, price is artificial. Costs are real. We know what our costs are, but by setting a price that makes people respect our product, I believe it's best for all of us to have a high price for natural farming products.

41:58 Now think about it now, okay? I'm approaching this not from the mindset of a consumer, but the mindset of a producer. All of you people in this room are now producers. And it is in our best interest to have a high price for our product. Because it communicates different things. And one of the biggest things it communicates to people who use their money to make their decisions, is that it communicates value. So if we undercut our labour, we go lowball and we price our products below what other natural farmers are charging, we're actually hurting all of us.

42:31 So by charging a fair price to take our product to market, it preserves the integrity of both of what we're doing and the integrity of our products. But the reality is economic feasibility. And we've been doing this for six years now. There were 50 other people who were in that class who were also doing this. and there are less than, how many people would you say, producing natural farming products right now? Lots, but not enough to get to market. So these were the things that we're taking a look at and trying to find ways to overcome.

43:05 If we can find ways to help people to keep doing this consistently so we can have success, finding ways of actually, you know, pooling our resources so we can collectively bring our products to market and of course have economic feasibility for all of us doing this. so the next generation and others like yourselves who want to do this have an opportunity. So these are the challenges that we're faced with on Oahu and we're working to overcome these things. Some of the breakthroughs we made is taking a look at being place appropriate.

43:35 So a lot of people I run into today who are farming and struggling here in Hawaii, they go, They go, oh, my kale, my kale. It doesn't want to grow. It's getting hit by white flies. It's full of pukas. And I ask them, where's kale from? Not here. Russia. Yeah, so it's a cold weather place in Eastern Europe. So you want to take a cold weather Eastern Europe plant, you want to grow it in the subtropics, in a warm, hot tropical environment. It doesn't make too much sense of either being culturally relevant

44:11 or place appropriate. Try growing some plants that are appropriate for this place, that are appropriate for this culture. I'm sure you'll have a different success. So not only with the plants that you grow but what you do in the place and making sure that it's place appropriate and culturally relevant. One thing we try to do is focus on the farmers being farmers. So I shared with you some of the people in this room. I think I left off with Steven Boloson back there. Brother Mike is now working with Kenji, who's sitting to his right. Kenji was on a field trip with us in Korea looking at eggs.

44:45 Brother (name unclear) in the back has been doing amazing stuff. There's Auntie Roberta sitting next to him. Go talk to her. I hear she's having some tremendous success with her products. Is it okay if they come talk to you about your teas? Can they find your teas in the stores right now? Hopefully. Not in the stores. No. Okay. So Auntie's having some unreal results. This is one thing we try to do rather than focus on the products, focus on the people. We need to grow more farmers so focus on growing the farmers and having them have success. And of course sharing best practices.

45:23 If this works, I'm going to share it with you. Or if it doesn't work, I'm still going to share it with you and tell you why I think it didn't work. And hopefully you will try and get it to work for you and then you come back to me and say, and say, hey look, I'm down for work. This is what I did, how about you try this? And this is the way we have innovation occur. When we can open source our technology. We're not trying to hide the coding, we're not trying to hide what's going on behind the scenes. We're saying, okay, it's exactly what we're doing. But, because we're in different places,

45:53 might not work in my place. But I could try them, you could try them, and we'll see what works out. I'm gonna share it with them, and see how we can figure it out. This is our class we did up at SEMA space with Uncle Daniel, giving some FPJ, hands-on. Getting down with IMO 3. This is over at Hui Kū Maoli Ola. They're a plant nursery on the windward side of Oʻahu that specializes in native plants. And one thing we try to do with our natural farming classes is make it Ohana friendly.

46:30 So we tell people first day of class, we notice that the people who have success in this often have a partner with them that they have. Whether it be a husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, or even a couple of good friends, or even aunties and uncles. And for people who have children, we encourage them to bring their children around. Because you don't have to worry with any of this. They're not going to get sick. They spill it, they taste it, they drink it. Guess what? They'll probably be stronger as a result from it. So we encourage all of our families, all of our keiki,

47:05 grandmas, aunties, uncles, everyone who participate. This is the Estrella Ohana. They're on Maui right now. Jenny was just at the natural farming or the advanced training, swine workshop in Korea. These are her friends who came in from the Middle East. So we tell people, your friends, anyone interested, come, bring them. So one thing we try to do is it's really about support and connection so building that within our class and within our community support. So one of the most expensive things and time-consuming things is OHN.

47:45 So with every class that we do, we make one big batch of OHN, and then always one portion goes ahead to the next class. So the next class that we do has a set of OHN to help with getting our foliar feeds down, it helps getting our IMO going, but also the people from that previous class, we divide up what's made and people have no excuse. They have OHN, it's free, they can start going right away. But doing it on a larger scale like this makes it feasible because I tell you what, you as an individual have to pay for these things. I think it's close to just under $1,000.

48:24 Probably like seven, almost $800. You have to buy all of this brand new. So with the class, you spread that out amongst 10 people. About 40 bucks. Kind of makes it a little bit more, a little bit more in reach. Is that a gallon? Yeah, one gallon. Okay, thank you. We have been pretty lucky where we've been able take some of our product to market. This is Chef Troy Terorotua. He used one of our pigs in the culinary gala at Leeward Community College. They call it Luke Luke. And he actually took this pig,

49:04 smoked it, shredded it, rolled it like a corn dog, and deep fried it. So it was a natural farming beer-grain-fed corn dog that he matched with the beer. So one thing we've done is there's been about five or six breweries pop up for a while. So we build relationships with them and so this is a beer-grain-fed (unclear) that he paired with a beer and served at this culinary event. Is there KNF beer yet? Is there KNF beer yet on the island? Is there what? Korean natural farming grains turned into beer.

49:37 The hard part, what the brewery guys tell me, is growing hops is the challenge. I guess it's gotta grow in a cold weather climate. But I don't know how true that is, because they've been told all this other stuff cannot grow in Hawaii but I found out that we grow strawberries, we can grow onions. So I don't know if that's true or not. I haven't tried but at least that's what the brewery guys tell me they would love to get locally grown hops for their beers. All those grains are shipped in right now. We did a pig tasting with Chef Kamahoe where we took a few

50:03 of our pigs and he prepared it 11 different ways just to see what you can do with pork. The one way I never had pig done before was sashimi. It was unreal so raw pork slice really thin Pretty good. And this brother, Steven Boloson, right there, his kalo in Waialua. One-foot kalo. It's a little bit not fair because the variety of this kalo, some people call it Kobayashi Moi, or the AKMs, the (unclear) Moi. It's unlike any other Moi kalo that is out there. You go talk to old taro farmers, the Roppun family have been growing taro on Oʻahu,

50:46 they grow Moi and their Moi isn't like this Moi. So a little bit not fair we're getting really good genetics but if you think about it in life and in farming we only have control over two things that's genetics and feed. So we start with good genetics and we have the feed which is our natural farming solutions. We got the best possible weather. Kalo is unreal. Steven, is that correct? This is a place where we have, one thing we tried to do was have natural farming workshops on farm. So this was back in, when was this? This past summer, last year, 2016.

51:24 And what we asked is the farms then become hubs or community supports for people in their area. So we can go up to your farm, we can take you to making all of these inputs, but guess You have to support these people. If they have questions and they need support, they're gonna come to you, because they're in your area, you support them. So that's Mark Hamamoto, he's over across the way in Mohalo Farms in Wai'uwa, a certified organic farm. Chai back there, she has a farm north shore side. Pam, she does a lot of work with the farmers markets on the wall.

52:03 One thing we started to do is home processing. The natural farming works if you're growing pigs and raising pigs, they work. But to take your pigs to market, if you're under American law, it is very difficult. Because in order to sell meat to a supermarket or to a restaurant, as meat, it needs to be processed in a USDA facility. So for us, that means taking our pig that's raised in this loving, warm, clean, caring environment, throwing it into a trailer at 3 o'clock in the morning, jumping on the freeway in traffic to get to the slaughterhouse before 7 to drop it off where there's

52:39 other pigs over there squealing, screaming, completely filthy and what they're not telling you at least on Oahu at least four times in this past year the facility has been shut down because of disease coming from pigs from the outside. So even though we raise our pigs as healthy as can be, we bring our pig over there for processing, say they don't wipe a blade down or a table down, a pig touches it, potential for contamination. So one thing we try to do is have people in their own homes begin processing. So you use your own table, use your own knife,

53:10 use your own microbes, we bring the animal to you. So this is actually in Honolulu across from Punahou High School, a block away from Punahou High School, in Makiki. Right in front of this house, father and son, they killed two pigs, they processed them. Some other examples. But that's just for the ʻohana to eat, you can't sell that? Technically, yeah. He helped us do some processing. This was done at his farm in Pahuluku. This is another community we had in the Taro farm in Pro City on his farm and his children. One thing that surprised us is a lot of women want to (unclear).

53:48 So mothers who want to be able to provide a higher quality of meat for their families, they want to take food back into their control, back into their positions. both in terms of raising animals and so on as well as doing the processing. And we have actually found that women, I think, have a little bit better attention to detail than men. The pigs in the cleaner for some reason, are the women doing. Here's another group shot of our OHN making, some of our classes. So the biggest thing is love, right?

54:35 That's the secret to all of this, is the reason why we do this. So one thing we like to say is, Me ke aloha pau ʻole. For us, the love that we share never ends. Pau ʻole. Never ending. So we share what we've done to be successful. Hopefully you guys can have your success and share with us so we can continue to grow and continue to allow the love to grow and never end. But that's about all I've got for now. If you guys don't mind, let us know where you're from. Just go right where you're from. Put your name, where you're from. And so maybe some other people want to connect with you

55:12 and also what you want to learn. Put your name so we can say, oh, we'll get back to you specifically with your answers. That'll help us when you guys have some time. And mahalo nui. If you guys want to talk some more, I'd be happy to share about what we're doing. And I'm excited for a lot of you. Thank you guys very much. Very good, Joe. That was awesome. Do you want to ask a question? Do you have any questions? Maybe two questions. Sure. Because you guys wrote them all down, right? What is the benefit of doing the pig farming?

55:58 If you're not going to eat them, is there a benefit? Yes, there is. It is, um, it's like... Better for the item. Yeah, no, it's like a microbial generator. It's constantly producing microbes. But if given what I know now, if I have to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't start with pigs. Does it go into the air or do you... Everywhere. When I'm not feeling good, I go into the pig pen. I take off my shoes, I bury my feet in the pig pen, I dig down into the pig pen, I smell the bedding on the pig pen. I instantly feel better. Because I would love to have them as pets. Yeah.

56:38 They're a good pet. Oh yeah, totally. Clean and intelligent. But you have to dig the pits, that's a lot of work. Well, Mike DuPonte here actually did a trial where they compared a below-the-ground pig pen to an above-the-ground pig pen. And they actually found with everything down to the litter size, how many pigs were born, the actual growth rate of the pigs. For some reason, the pig pen built above the ground performed way better than the pig pen built above the ground. Well, it's aerobic microbes, so I'm assuming that has something to do with the air. What animal would you start with?

57:13 I'd start with chickens. Chicken, yeah. So Master Cho writes about that in his book. He doesn't say too much, but he does say it. He's doing it for the chickens. What about rabbits? I love rabbits. I do too, but as far as doing it in a natural farming way, the best thing I've been able to do is we feed a lot of greens. You know, all different kinds of trees and things that are just weeds, which are great to feed. And I'm spraying everything all the time. I'm spraying everything all the time. And feeding as much greens as I can, but you can't really ferment the pellets that come

57:51 from the mainland because they're not chickens or pigs. So I put sometimes LAB and sometimes OHN in the water, but other than that, you can't really raise them in the same way that you do chicken. Yeah, there's some legal things with Hawaii with rabbits where they can't be on the ground. So you run into all kinds of issues. I just wonder if there's anything else I can do besides what I'm doing. That sounds like you got it all. You're growing your plants with natural farming. So your feed that you're feeding them is local, right? In that five kilometer radius. You're using it to water.

58:21 Everything under the rabbit fence is all my ceiling. Everything under the rabbit fence is all mycelium. The poop from rabbits, I know, is excellent. Going back to the other question, I would start with chickens just because Master Cho said start with chickens. But what I'm realizing now is there's a reason he said that, to start with chickens. And unfortunately the guys I learned from, and Mike DuPonte and all these other guys were so excited when they seen the odorless pig pen. They came back and said, oh, it's gonna save the world. Everyone's gonna raise pigs. No, no.

58:53 You're just starting off as a small family farm, especially like a lot of us are. We don't have the capital investment. We don't have the land. We don't have the labor. We don't have the machinery. But if you start with chickens, yeah. Start with broiler chickens, start with some layers. And guess what? Chickens that you don't eat or that only get to market, even the eggs, that becomes your protein source. Protein source for what? Protein source for your pig feed. So only have as many pigs as you need to clean up after your chickens. So it's thinking about the pigs differently.

59:28 You don't think about the pigs as money making, oh $100 each pig I sell. No, it's the function of the pig on the farm. That's how you clean up the farm. It's also how you produce wonderful manure and microbes. one more question and I think we're going to wrap up. Does anybody ever use pig milk or goat milk or other milk to make LAB? I can. Maybe with goat milk. Goat milk is awesome. How come nobody's doing the pig milk? I don't know anyone who can milk the pig. I don't know. Well, thank you guys. Good talk story. Happy to share anytime.

1:00:10 Why people don't do other milks: other milks have higher market value, so powdered milk is actually cheaper. Or we actually learned another way that we can get milk at all. So there's a lot of other ways of somebody to come to these events, sharing stuff, I love this stuff, even like how expensive it's done. And on the comment, I believe Master Cho had us raise pigs in the beginning because it was kind of a trick. The pigs are easy, you get in, and then it demands that you grow the plants to feed them.

1:00:40 And you know, you just wouldn't grow the feed without the pigs, so it's kind of a little bit of a trick on us, but it's okay, we're cool. So the presentation I wanted to do was, I just went to the, I'm also part of the Hawaii Farmers Union, and I just went to the state convention,