 with Dennis Isaki on Think Tech Hawaii. Today we'll be speaking with Jerry Ornelis, a longtime Kama'aina farmer on the island of Kauai. He's a strong proponent locally grown produce and ag sustainability on Kauai. Jerry grew up and ran a dairy in Kapa'a Homesteads and still farms there. He was also a research technician at the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture. He has been very supportive of the agricultural industry and other farmers and ranchers by serving on the Hawaii Board of Agriculture, Kauai Ag Advisory Committee, the Farm Bureau as an officer on the statewide level and the Kauai level and the founding member of the East Kauai Water Users Cooperative, among other things. Jerry, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you for having me on the show. Please tell us a little more about your background on Kauai and your passion with agriculture. Well, you know, I grew up here on the east side of Kauai and I lived here my entire life and started farming in high school and ended up running the family dairy farm here and have been a lifelong farmer. I moved that generation that actually had to leave the farm because, you know, farming became financially unstable and, you know, when I started having a family I had responsibilities and needed to work off of the farm. So I moved that sort of like that lost generation that left the farm and then, you know, worked through the University of Hawaii for a number of years and retired about 11 years ago and now back to full-time farming which I considered to be my true profession. Yeah, so you mentioned, you know, like there was hardship at one time, what's the difference between then and now? You know, Dennis, I think the, and I think you saw some of this yourself, the golden era of agriculture as I see it, you know, was probably somewhere between 1870 and 1970. And what changed was technology, right? Especially containerized cargo. So, and what happened around 1970 is of course, you know, tourism came its to its own. So getting labor for agricultural work was hard. And I think even your dad and those people of that generation realized that because if you look at when they started the farm bureau here on Kauai, you know, your dad was a charter member and they started in 1968. So I think it was around that time that people started to realize that farming was not what it used to be. Yeah, I remember working in the 50s and 60s as a kid on the farm, you know, that's all we had to do. We got a lot of issues. You need the land, of course, water is a big thing. It's with the plantation going out of business, plantation used to control it. You had good system of irrigation, which is gone when they went out of business. And you guys stepped up, can you tell us a little about the East Kauai water users co-op that you guys founded? Yeah, sure. In 2000, New York Plantation Company announced that they were going out of business. So of course, you know, as farmers and ranchers, we were somewhat alarmed as to what was gonna happen through the water. And like your family property up in Kapahi, we also have a ditch that runs through our farm here in Kapahi, Homesteads. And so, you know, being concerned, I recall calling the land agent at DLNR and asking, you know, okay, so what becomes of the ditch system? Are we still gonna be able to access water? And the answer I got was that they were in no way obligated to provide us with water. So, you know, we had to take matters into our own hands and we got a facilitator over here from Oahu and she was very good at what she did. And we held a community meeting at the middle school in Kapahi. And it was attended by about 60 or 70 people and it was decided then that, you know, we really needed this water. And we that night, in fact, decided we would form a cooperative. So, you know, it took us a year of meetings every single Monday, meetings among ourselves as well as with, you know, just an incredible number of government organizations, everything from county, state, even at some federal people that we talked to. So the upshot of that was that we formed a, we formed the East Kauai Water Users Cooperative, which was a 501C12, the 12 designation being specifically dealing with cooperative that deals with irrigation water. So, you know, we charged a small fee of our members. A lot of the work we did was voluntary in maintaining the system. And, you know, we did go to the legislature as per stipend to help ends meet. Yeah, which leads to, you know, what prompted me to talk to you about this because I guess they stopped funding the $75,000 a year, two, three years ago. So, you guys stopped operating it and understand now they have a half a million dollar study on the system, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry, if I can back up a little bit, Dennis. You know, the reason we went out of business primarily was because of the regulatory burden. What happened was some of the large entities here in Hawaii, the remnants of the Big Five A and B in particular was drawing a lot of water, even though they're forming operations were winding down. And a lot of people felt a lot of the environmental community felt that as well as members of the Hawaiian community felt that that wasn't right, that they were operating for over 20 years on a revocable permit, as were we, by the way. And that, so they took it to court. The courts determined that revocable permits were not meant to be open-ended. In other words, there should be a definitive time when the permit ends. So what happens was the state told us, we are no longer issuing revocable permits. All permits have to become permanent. Well, in order to get a license or a lease on a water system, there were several requirements. One of them being an environmental assessment of each watershed in which you operate. And we had multiple watersheds in which we operated our particular system. You also had to do a watershed plan and pay for it. And after you've done that, then it would go out to auction to bid. So you could meet those criteria, spend a lot of money doing that and still not be assured of getting a lease or a license. So for us, that was just too heavy a burden as a small cooperative of farmers and ranchers, we just didn't have that kind of money. We didn't have the legal team to take on a challenge like that. So we decided we would close and in 2019, we dissolved the co-op. Yeah, that, you know, left a lot of farm, while the remaining farmers, you know, without the steady water source for the farms in the homestead area, including our family farms, which originally, you know, were large strikes, some of them subdivided with both egg dwellings on. But as we know, all the egg dwellings supposed to be in association with farming use on the land. So everybody's supposed to be farming, but there's no irrigation water. So I don't see much farms out there in that area. Even the cattle, we had a pretty dry spell recently. It was, the pastures were all dry, unless you get it running. There's a ditches, you know, remains of the ditch were at least on paper, but no running water, ditches and streams running dry. So that's a big issue with regards to farming, right? With regards to farming, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that ditch system that you were on, your family was on, it's called a farmer's ditch. And in fact, it was specifically designed to provide water to non-plantation users. So, you know, the plantation did take care of, they were actually mandated to buy the territorial legislature when they first went to the legislature during the territorial days, they said, okay, you can build all this elaborate system on government land, a lot of it on government land. And the deal was when you go out of business, it reverts back to the territory. Of course, now we're a state, but at the time they said, we reverse back to the territory, right? And that's what's happened. In the interim, you know, when they knew they were gonna go out of business, they stopped maintaining the system, as you know. So a lot of the infrastructure, ditches, flumes, reservoirs, tunnels are not in very good condition. So yeah, and then as to your other point, very interesting point, you know, when you build a house on agricultural land here in Hawaii, you have to sign a farm dwelling agreement, which says, in effect, that you will farm the property and then you're allowed to build a house on it. Of course, farm dwelling agreement is probably the biggest joke there is because it has never, ever been enforced. Right, I don't, I think they don't know where to start. Although it is on paper, you know, that you got to do it. And like you said, everybody get a sign. But I think you mentioned this before in one of your reports, the water, lack of water is no secret, you know. They're reaching reservoirs, the plantation kind of ponded the water, it went in the ground, a lot of ground water, and now it's kind of going down to the ocean, right? But the street to the ocean. That's correct, you know, you know, during his heyday, the plantations and Kauai, we didn't irrigate my napa, but I'm already do. And during his heyday, they were drawing statewide, they were drawing 800 million gallons of surface water in addition to 400 million gallons of ground water a day. This is an incredible amount of water and it speaks to how much water we actually have here in Hawaii. And you know, so we're talking 1.2 billion gallons of water a day, the great majority of the water has now been returned to the streams and I would be surprised if for agricultural purposes we're drawing more than 150 million gallons a day of irrigation water. I would say, you know, I'd be surprised, 150 to 200 million gallons stops would be my estimate. So what happened to all of their water, right? Well, it's going into the ocean. And another interesting fact, and you may be aware of it because you do on property in Puhi. Well, in that particular area, what they call the Puhi Basin or the Kilohana Basin when the plantations stopped irrigating and this has happened elsewhere in the state as well. When the plantations stopped irrigating and of course in those days they did a lot of fertile irrigation, which means they put a tremendous amount of water on the ground. That water was percolating down into the aquifers and recharging there. So in a dry areas like in Puhi, we now see some of those aquifers in peril, right? Because they're not getting the recharge from the irrigation that they used to. And that's one of the reasons in that area they went to surface water for municipal use. Yeah, that is a big problem and I don't think I don't see it getting better anytime soon. Well, right now we've got the water that the plantation used to use in the ditches. And the plantation did that before. They got the hydroelectric plants. We had a couple of them at Kwayahi. And of course they got the tourist water tubing in the ditch. But it's being used both for that then for farming I think right now. I don't see the farmers using very much. So what do you see agriculture going in the future? You know, we often get asked the question and it's a big issue in Hawaii. And that question is, can Hawaii feed itself? You know, my own opinion is absolutely. I mean, we could feed our stuff in one hand, tied down our back, given our water resources and given the amount of fellow land that we have in Hawaii. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of formerly irrigated land used by the plantations that is now either in pasture or it's lying fallow. So from a purely technical standpoint, could we do it? Absolutely. What kind of diet would we have? Maybe kind of a boring diet. There's a lot of things we cannot grow. There's a lot of things we can't. So now, would that mean that farmers were making a good livelihood? Not necessarily so. I mean, if we were to feed ourselves, farmers would have to be heavily subsidized because it's very hard for us to compete with producers on the mainland and in fact now globally. Yeah, we see Costco a lot of import and in Walmart and other stores a lot of imported fruits and vegetables. Yes. Well, the land, it was sailed to the highest bidder and they're not going to come here and plant cabbage. They get billionaires raising cattle now, buying up all the cattle. I guess it's an industry but it's being shipped out, right? That's correct. There's a lot of blame to go around, including the farmers themselves, frankly, because, you know, we were very slow as independent farmers, not the plantations and not the pineapple canners, and you know for yourself, because you've worked many, many years on a farm, we were very slow to adopt new technology, right? A lot of our agriculture is based on very labor intensive methods and, you know, there's several reasons for that. One of them being the small size of our farms, you know, it's difficult to find equipment that matches the scale that we do agriculture on. You know, if we're raising wheat, you can get a combine. They're huge. It takes three acres to turn the thing around, right? They wouldn't work. You know, the scale does not match. So the adoption of technology is going to play a very important role if we are going to, you know, restore farming to its proper place, which is as an economic driver of our economy. So, you know, we really have our work cut out for us. We really need to embrace technology, and that includes biotechnology. That includes mechanization. That includes post-harvest handling of our products. And, you know, getting back to the issue of feeding ourselves, you know, that may not be the answer. Production for local consumption may not be the answer in Hawai'i. Historically, we have exported crops from Hawai'i. So who's to say that our future does not lie in export crops? Yeah. We had the sugar and the pineapples being canned and exported, right? And the cattle, you know, being exported. So right now we've got the farmer's market. It's, you know, pretty full. And for example, the one in Hawai'i, pretty full. But I hate to say it, but we don't see it a long time coming on locals in the farmer's market. I don't know if we don't want to work or, you know, granted, they're hard workers who, you know, those farmers who have come here and working the land. So it's, I don't know where do you see it going? You know, the fundamental problem, okay, is one of profitability. Okay? If farmers can make money, they're going to farm. And you saw, you saw the tail end of that. Like I said, around 1970, things started to change. But you saw the days, Dennis, when if you bought in a prime crop of watermelon, you could make $20,000, right? Which means you could buy two pickup trucks, or maybe three in those days, right? So, and, you know, I've spoken extensively to your dad about that. So he always told me, yeah, when you make the money, save it because it's not going to happen every year. But in those days, it did happen. Farming was pretty much cookbook, right? You planted when you supposed to, you prep the field, you did things, buy the book. At the end of the day, you take it down to the wholesaler, you sell the crop, you leave with some money in your pocket, right? That's no longer the case. Now we have to be expert salesmen as well, right? So as to your reference to farmer's markets, you know, thank God they came along because this is pretty much all right now, right? So this vertically integrated model of people raising the crop on their farm, taking it down, they're selling it directly to the consumer has saved a lot of farms. Now, the result being that they downsized their farms. If you recall, in the old days, farms were, you know, 28 plus acres in size, you know, if you're going to feed a family, you needed 20 or more acres. Now, our average farm size is about five acres. Sometimes less, they are so large farms. But for the most part, the farmer market guys, they're pretty much in that five acre range. And, you know, they're producing all they can sell. The saving grace is that they're getting, you know, retail prices for their product. Yeah, farming is not easy. It's a, I grew up in the 50s and 60s with papayas and bananas, the papayas, we had the virus, right after, where I thought a lot of them. Then the government came in with the administrative committee. We could sell certain shaped papayas and all that. I think that went away. Then came the banana virus. Yeah. Yeah. So, I thought a lot of bananas. So it's, it's not a easy business now for, and the whole family had to work in it. You know, we had a lot of kids, grandparents, they all had to work in it to make business. Now only one brother is doing it. Yeah, it's, it's not easy. And the government, I don't know, it's a point of debate, but government handing out money. People don't want to work. I get that goes for all fields. Yeah, I have, I have, you know, I have a friend that recruits labor. Down in Micronesia. And, you know, he does all the paperwork. He does it all legally. He does all the paperwork, gets them here, plays their paint, paint for you, gets them here on Kauai to work in his tarot patch. He's a large tarot drawer and, and houses them, provides transportation, even, you know, shepherds them through the process of getting a driver's license. He does all of this and they work a year or two. And then they leave the farm to work in the landscaping industry or the restaurant industry. So, you know, when we were kids, you and I both, I mean, we didn't have a choice. Right. Right. But now you cannot even get, you know, people to work on the farm. It's very difficult. You know, there's so many other choices, right? Yeah. So, so what do we do? I think we're going to have to embrace technology. Like I said earlier, you know, I've traveled. I've traveled to Japan several times. And I've been to New Zealand. Now both of those countries have labor issues. So they have really embraced technology, especially when it comes to mechanization. So, you know, I was told when, when I was in New Zealand talking to one of the guys there, one of the farmers there, and he told me, you know, some of the crops you see on grocery store shelves today will not be there in 10 years if they cannot be mechanized. And this is happening globally. People are moving to the cities. People are becoming openly mobile. And in some ways that's a good thing is that we're erasing poverty. So you cannot find people to work for the wages anymore. But on the other hand, we still need to get the work done. So we're going to have to employ technology to do that. And unfortunately, Hawaii really lags the rest of the nation. We don't even have an engineering, an engineering department. Well, I think the department is there, but there's nobody staffing it at the college of tropical agriculture and human resources. We don't even have that anymore. So, you know, we've lost that technological age and make, make, that makes it very hard for us to compete. Do you know what the egg experiment to station up in your home stays working on? If any. I'm sorry. What's the question? What are they working on right now? You know, they're doing work on a number of things. I'm not, I'm not working there anymore. So, but I do visit the station occasionally when I need to talk to the extension agents. And I think, you know, one of the crops that is showing promise here in Hawaii is a cup, which of course is used to make chocolate. So I see one of those crops. I see that crop with a lot of potential because I think you can apply the pineapple cannery system to raising that where whereby you have a lot of individual growers raising the crops for processing in a central location. Yeah. So the farmers would raise pineapple, especially up in your area in Kapa'i, but the home stays all the way, all the way to Moloa, they would raise pineapple, but it would be processed and canned at a central cannery. And I remember farmers being happy then as to get $30 a ton for pineapple. I mean, I know farmers that sell a sugar low prime sugar low pineapple today for $30. Right. So just to give you an idea, but I see that model as possibly working. And of course, you know, if we did go into it in a big way, this would be an export crop. And I think it dovetails nicely with tourism, which is something else we as farmers are going to have to embrace. Yeah. Yeah, you just mentioned tourism, like is that what they call it? Is that ecotourism or some farm tours? You know, I was, you know, I'm almost cool, man. And I was actually one of those people that, you know, it was kind of leery of agro-tourism. Yeah, this marriage between tourism and agriculture, because, well, if you hit your wagon to that star and tourism goes down, then what happens to your farm? But I saw what happened during the pandemic when, you know, just survived and bounced back. And now with that, almost the way we were. If we're not already there. So I think because we have to raise specialty crops and niche market type crops, developing what some people refer to as suitcase products, where you raise a product that is not always a value added, non-perishable. They can take it with them in their suitcase, right? I think there's huge potential for crops like that. And like I pointed out, chocolate fits that bill almost perfectly. And I think there's a lot of other products as well that we could develop. And here again, the more money we spent in research and getting that research, applied research down to the farm level, the more we're going to benefit. And, you know, we cannot be cutting the university of Hawaii. Every time there's a downturn, we cut these two places that the ledge almost literally cuts. So they cut the Department of Agriculture funding and they cut funding to the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. And we need to invest more in both of those entities. I just want to tell you an interesting story about the Experiment Station. I believe it was in the 60s, early 60s. My dad sent me up to the Ag Experiment Station. They had come up with the Williams banana before that was Bluefield. They said, oh, go get the KK over there. So they only had 35 acres. They couldn't give me six. I had to cut it up to keep multiplying that thing. Yeah. And I know they had tons of them, but that's all they gave me. And we multiply that eventually. This is a side story. Anyway, you don't need too much about the seed corn companies now. How's that going? I think there's a reason you don't hear too much about them. You know, they kind of got beat up during the anti-GMO, anti-pesticide. I don't know. I call it hysteria that we have here in Kauai. Other people refer to it differently. So I think they've taken a more low-key approach. But, you know, there's an industry that, you know, way back James Brubaker predicted, and he was a wonderful plant, he recently passed away here in Hawaii and had worked all over the world, literally. And he predicted the rise of the seed industry. So this is one of our strong suits, yeah? We can grow crops during the winter months and we cannot grow on the mainland. So I do a little bit of that myself on my farm. I have a small winter nursery program, which I work with a California rice farmers cooperative, and I do a small winter nursery for them. So, you know, I've kind of taken a page out of the seed companies playbook because I looked around and I said, who's making money? Well, they are. So, you know, by doing that, I can, you know, support the rest of my farming habit by raising some seed during the winter months. Yeah, I know you get the lychee and some other fruit trees. How's that? How's that wild parrot? Yeah, it's a real problem, man. I mean, we had, it wasn't a really terrific lychee year. The problem with lychee is that, you know, we're in the wrong place for lychee. We don't get a cold snap during the winter to induce flowering and lychee. So, you know, it's hit and miss as everybody who has lychee here in the yard knows. Some years you get a good crop, some years you don't. So this year we had, I would say a fair, fair to poor crop, not much. And a lot of the fruit was not a top of the tree. But the rose-ringed paracets were just ferocious. I mean, I didn't harvest anything except a little bit for family use because all of it was eaten by the birds. So, I mean, that's just some of the stuff we have to deal with. Yeah, so I guess we'll fall on some government assistors to help with stuff like that, right? The pests. Yeah. And even talk about pests, kind of expanding a little bit more. A while back, steeped in the money, they cut out all the best control under the Department of Health, then with all the issues with the pests. Yeah. So, well, all my complaints. So, yeah, but getting back to water, it's a big issue. It's a huge issue, Dennis. You know, we're out here in the middle of the Pacific. And, you know, we cannot divert the Colorado River, right? And even if we could, there's not much water left in it anyway. So, but yeah, we are here now. What we've got is what we've got. So I'm concerned about, as you alluded to earlier, about the demise of all of the reservoirs in decommission. And, you know, the abandonment of our ditch system, you know, for yourself, we would never be able to get permits to build that type of infrastructure. I mean, try to get a permit to drill a tunnel through a mountain today. Can you imagine? There's no way. Yeah. I walked the tunnel from Homestead to Hanalee. In a way, running out of time. You got any last words, Terry? No, I, you know, there's so much to say, so little time. But I think the take home message is agriculture needs help. We are in trouble. And, you know, I spend my life trying to, like I said earlier, trying to restore agriculture to its rightful place. As an economic driver of our economy. And again, Dennis, thank you for having me on the program. Thanks, Terry. Mahalo to our guests, former Jerry Ornelis. Mahalo to our viewers on Think Tech Hawaii. If you like the Think Tech free media shows, please help support this nonprofit platform. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. 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