 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, I'm Glenn Martinez from Olimonic Gardens and we'd like to thank you for tuning in to Think Tech Hawaii. And I've got a wonderful guest today. We got Pam Boyer here with us today from the Farmers Market, which is one of my favorite hangouts, okay? And I used to have a booth at our Farmers Market out at Holly Evil when she was out there at the Triangle, great experience and that. And we've done other ones and it's really been great. And when I was president of the Hawaii Farmers Union, let me tell you, it was a big shot in the arm for our farmers to have an independent Farmers Market. The Farm Bureau has a lot of the markets in that. A lot of them, you have to wait for somebody to quit or die to get in. They're hard to get in. Once you've got a booth in a Farmers Market, it's tough to break the ice. And Pam came with her partner. They opened up. How many markets do you have now, Pam? We have four markets right now and we are working to get on Scofield. So we will be serving the military and we are very excited about that. Oh, that would be good, Ron. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And so where are your markets at now? We have one in Holly Eva, which is tomorrow from two to six in Waimea Valley. We have one in Kakaako. Waimea Valley, that's the Waimea Valley Park. Yes. Where you go into the, where they had the buildings and the guests to reception center. Yes, and it is one of the most beautiful places on Oahu. It's so spiritual. So you don't have to pay to get in the park or anything, right? You just pull in. Well, you have to pay to go to the waterfall, but not to the market. But not to the go to the market, right? I've been to that one. That was very cool. And where's the other one? We have one in Kakaako, right, Malco of Ross at 333 Ward Avenue. On Saturday mornings, 8 to 12 and one at Pearl Ridge Center. Okay. On Saturdays, 8 to 12. We're about to Pearl Ridge Center. That's a good place. It is downtown in front of Zippy's and Sears in the parking lot. Downtown. Well, they call it uptown and downtown. Oh, really? At Pearl Ridge, yeah. So it's a really big shopping center. It's like 123 acres or something. Right, right. And so we're on Kamehameha Highway in Pauley-Momey. Okay. And it's a great market. So you can see it from the highway? Yes, you can. All right. Yeah. And then we have Kailua Town, which is our hood. Oh, sure. Right back there. Yeah, yeah. My breakfast place. Yeah. Kailua Elementary School. Yeah. And the fun thing about our markets is that we have a cafe in each market. Real tablecloths. You sit down, listen to live music, and you get to meet your neighbors or bring your company. Who you got playing at the market this week? You know, I think Mason is playing. So it'll be Hawaiian music. Usually at Kailua, we have Paul Isaac. Yeah. Yeah. And when we go to the Kailua Marketplace, what I love about it is that you go in, walk around, order your breakfast, go grab a table, and then you walk around and scurry around and pick up your breakfast and crepes and that. So you can have something different every Sunday. And of course, you don't buy your vegetables because you grow them. Right, right, right. But when you're walking around, you can buy your vegetables while you're waiting for your breakfast. Exactly, while you're waiting for your breakfast to be cooked. Or drinking coffee that's grown in Hawaii. There you go. Yeah. I like that. There's always something going on. Speaking of going on, I hear you got something special this weekend. Yes, we do. We have a special event happening at Haleiva and also at Kailua Town. Fieldworks is coming in and they are a research development company and they are doing some experiments and research and development with taking selfies. So if you come and you take 10 selfies, you get $20 in market money to come and spend at our markets. So that really helps the farmers. I can just take my selfie? No, I think they have a special thing that you have to do there. You can come on Sunday. Come on Sunday, huh? So I take my own picture 10 times and they give me 20 bucks. They do. Of market money. And I can spend it anywhere in the marketplace. For the month of November. For the month of November. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's great. I'm excited. It's good for the farmers. It's good for the farmers. Anything that's a shot in the arm. Yes, we need to support our local farmers. And talking about local farmers, I noticed that when we were there and I watched other people approach you and asking to have booths and that and they tell you what they're going to do or what they're going to cook and what they're going to serve, they seem to be quite a surprise that you actually assisted. It had to be grown in Hawaii. And it had to be really Hawaiian home grown or Hawaiian made if it was arts and crafts and that, so you really do a here to that. We do. It's important because we want to support the local economy. So everything is local. If it's grown here, then you're supporting the people that you buy the fertilizer from or the people that are selling the tractors here to the people that work on the farm and then they come even to the local gas stations that they put the gas in to come to the market. And then the people get to eat the food that's grown here and they get to pay the farmer who gets to pay his bills and then they go home and it's just an incredible circle. It's called an economy, right? Yes, it is. It is wonderful. And it's kind of funny because I go to when I was on the president of the Hawaii Farmers Union and I would go to the national meetings and that they were really shocked when they came out here to visit us and they came to our farmers meetings and that one, how much food we served at our potlucks were kind of over the top and that and how many young farmers we have. Now all over the country, the average age of a farmer somewhere around 62, 63 years old, I was really heartened to see here when we had our statewide convention here a couple of weeks ago, and why not? How many young farmers have? I go to Maui and young farmers rule. I mean, you go into it and it's like anybody over 50 almost feels out of place, which is a real good turn around to have. I never feel out of place. Yeah, not me, well, because I'm getting younger every day. Yeah, yeah, I tell, I'm all hope and groan except for my hair, but we have good fun with it. But yeah, that's a constant challenge though to get the young farmers. Yeah, there is a movement happening here which is part of the Farmers Union movement of young farmers between 25 and 45, let's say, that have so much passion, one a farm, are growing sustainably, they're trying not to use chemicals and they're growing real food for the local economy for us to eat. And to me, it's the most exciting time to be able to assist some of these young people and help mentor them on the marketing side and giving for us, our farmers markets are distribution centers. So they get a place to be able to distribute their produce. But also to help them get land. I'm working with Scott Enright at the Department of Agriculture to get a couple people land in Waimanalo. Hopefully that comes through. And I know AMB is working with some of the Farmers Union Farmers on Maui. So plantation era is over and it's time for us to start growing, small farmers, family farmers, growing real food for us to consume. And living on the land. Well, we're working on that. I know Cindy Evans tried to pass a bill for that but it didn't pass, but maybe it will this year. One of the issues that we're coming up with is like DLNR a couple of years ago came up with a new policy that if you lease a 10 acre piece of land that the leasee could not live on the land himself. And that really crunched it. The idea was they were against gentlemen farmers. They didn't want people to lease and land, build in a million dollar home and they're not actually farming. So they wanted it farmed and it's a problem. And I'm trying to find one of these gentlemen farms. We like to talk about them but there can't be more than a handful of them around. They're not really a presence. But what happens is when they come into a community and they build some $800,000 house the property tax for everybody around them goes up and it's an artificial inflation, okay? So the shame of it is people are renting cheap land, state land or department ag land and they're not actually farming. They just want a country lifestyle, right? It's more of a lifestyle thing. And it's backfired on us. It's backfired on us on such a point and down why Holy Wai'kani which are predominantly Hawaiian community going in there 30 years ago there was a big land fight here when a lady named Mrs. Marks wanted to sell out and build townhouses and develop it into a community and it became a war zone down there. They blockaded, barricaded the cops out, everything else and they won. The state came in, bought out Mrs. Marks and all the locals got to stay. Well, they're all doing really great. And a couple of years ago the city and county that does the property tax came into the community, went around and said if you don't have a 4% excise license i.e. you're not just farming, growing tarot but you have to sell the tarot. And other farming is a business, okay? But that's ridiculous. We should be able to grow food for our own consumption. 70% of the people lost their agricultural exemption which means instead of paying tax on 1% of the land they had to pay 100% of the tax. So let's say if the tax on a piece of land is $4,000 for an acre, if it's residential if it's ag land it's only gonna be 1% of that. Okay, if you're actually agging then one of the ways they prove it is that you grow something and you sell it. And we all, we kind of went along with that one, right? I mean you're supposed to farm it's supposed to grow something and sell it to the community, right? Well, it totally backfired on it to the point that I had building inspectors out on my property and they're walking around and I'm doing okay until I go over by the horse stables and my wife has four horses and right next to the stable she has a greenhouse 20 by 30 feet. And they said, and what is this in here? These plants are for sale. I said, oh no, this is my wife's plants. She's just raising, I used to have to give her money every week to buy plants. Now she has enough stock to take cuttings and seeding and grow her own. And now she grows her own and she'll finish landscaping our property. He says, I'll have to write you up for that. And I said, what? What do you mean, write it up? Clay, you're always getting in trouble. And you go like, write me up for what? Well, it turns out when we did this ag dedication stuff a couple of years ago, it sounded good. So we dedicated land for 20 years. Everybody that did that did not realize the whole ramification. You have 5,000 square feet is for yourself and anything that is for yourself, a swimming pool, a garage, park your boat and everything has to be done in the 5,000 square foot area. Everything outside that must be ag. You cannot have a swing set, a dog kennel or your own personal horse. And that totally backfired on us. So our government is at odds. So we got a lot of people that want to move out in the country for the country lifestyle. They want to grow their own food. And so that's when I got involved with the farmers union guys said the day that a farmer can't go out and farm on his own land his own food for his own family that you can only raise food to sell it. There's something wrong in that diameter. And we are still grappling with that. So people that do ag land like on the island of Kauai they must do a thousand dollars a month or they're not agging. They not only have to grow the food, you know they come out and they expect to grow food. You have to sell it, you have to be in the economy. And that's where the farmers markets came in because a lot of people are not big enough to sell to the stores. They don't have the moxie to go up and deal with the store owner or the food land or the safeway or Costco. I tried to sell to Costco. Costco says, can you guarantee me 1000 pounds every week? And well, I can't guarantee it. I mean, but you could buy a thousand a week. I'd certainly gear up for that. Right? I would be fantastic. Five dollars a pound. Oh, the numbers were going in my head. They said, but if you can't do 1000 pounds we're not interested in doing business. So we had to start farming co-ops to get somebody to drive around and buy from all the farmers to bring them to Costco. But what happens is this whole food safety thing has gone crazy. So the farmers market for many of my friends and young farmers is a lifeline to them because they go to the farmer's market, rent a booth. What is it? $50, something like that? You know what I'm saying? $50, you got a table, put your cigar box, money, write them a receipt, and you're in business. So you get your 4% tax license. I mean, all the people are paying taxes, right? Right. Yeah, so. Yeah. You know, the benefit of a farmer's market too, which Luann Casey and Gary Gunderman said they never knew anybody in the community and then they came to Jaliva and now they know everybody in the community. There you go. And it's such a social event. You know, it gives you time to meet your community and spend time, but I think the new kind of farming that we're gonna have to have because of FISMA is this co-op farming, where we get, let's say, a hundred and, well, I don't know, but it's co-op. Just one moment, I gotta take a little short break and we'll come back to co-op farming and my favorite tool of the week. So stay with us. We're on Think Tech Hawaii. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Greetings, it's me, Angus McTech, the longtime host and star of Hibachi Talk. Think Tech is important to our community because we bring all kinds of cool ideas and I bring gadgets to the show. So you gotta watch it for sure. 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And but every week we like to share one tool with you. And today's tool is a simple one. And that is I am to be a captain in the merchant marines. And one of the most simple things in every farm worker is we have to have a knife. Oddly enough, every merchant marine on every ship in the world to get on board, you have to have a knife at least three inches long, half of a smooth, half of a straight to cut the line. On all of our farm workers when they come, they have to show us their knife in their pocket. That's because we have to cut line and we have to do it. It's one of the most practical tools we carry. The other thing is every merchant marine from ordinary seamen on up has to have a rag. So when we go walking up the game plane of a ship, we have to hold up our knife and hold up our rag. And the rag is to wipe up oil spills. And I think how many mothers wish their kids would have a rag in their hip pocket, huh? You spill it, you wipe it up. But those are the two things we do. And on our farm because of the aquaponics, this is something that we carry around in our hip pockets is a little level because in the water thing, water seeks its own level, but we have to get it level. So these are just some of the simple things that we carry every day and a practical level. But you're getting ready to talk about the co-ops. Yeah, I think the new way of farming on Hawaii is gonna be if we get, let's say a hundred acres, which is small compared to California. I was just in California and there's so much farming going on, I was so envious. With the drought all over? It's a nut, I mean, everything's growing everywhere and the markets are just filled with produce. Santa Barbara Farmers Market, there weren't even any other vendors except for farmers. There were so many farmers and the produce was magnificent and I just bought way too much. But not really. But I think for here because of the way that we are, if we could get a hundred acres, let's say get 10 farmers or five farmers on there, they share the tractors, somehow they get a food safety certified warehouse to house everything and wash it. So everybody shares the cost. That's right. And then I'm not quite sure how that would work as far as the sales go. That still needs to be determined. But at least the facility of growing and sharing all those costs would be better. Now went out to LIEA in the Mormon church out there, they have about 600 acres which they co-op and the members of their church can go out and they can get a eighth of an acre, quarter acre, half acre, up to an acre. In other words, use it or lose it if they don't use it and grow for themselves. Sadly, they made the decision they cannot sell anything. They can only grow for themselves or they can donate it, give it away, but they can't sell it. And so it somewhat stifles the entrepreneurship of it, but they didn't want people going to commercials. I really wish they would re-address that and allow people to make some money off of their farming because it costs you something to grow it. Yes it does. And doing it. And in Hawaii it costs a lot. A lot, right. And so I've seen different plans come up with having 50 acres and making in their quarter acre plots and you give a person a quarter acre, if they use it and they're productive with it, you give them another quarter acre and another quarter acre and another quarter acre. And every few years somebody comes up with a plan to have a big circle and have all the houses going around, have the shared utilities and that and doing it. We've worked with the farmers returning from war from Iraq and Afghanistan to come home to have a place to land and be mission-orientated. Are you working on your farm with that? Still working with that. Well that's great. Yeah, yeah. So we do one or two people a year. It's not always smooth. We can come back with some problems, okay. But once they're left on Vietnam vet and they came back with a problem and nobody had a program for us, they just, they could send you to college and that was it. If you weren't college-orientated you were just on your own. Can you imagine what the World War I and World War II vets came back with? There was not nothing to work with. Now we have so much available with PTSD. Nobody even knew there was no name in PTSD at that point. Yeah. Farming is a great rehabilitation. Yeah, what was that? Yeah. Yes, please. We're gonna pull up your website now in here for you. And you're gonna be able to see that and highly encourage everybody to go to it. Annie Sweet, my business partner, did this website and she did an incredible job on it. She's an amazing woman. Yeah. So we have the four markets and we do sell just local produce there. That is all that is available. We go through our markets and look at everything that's being grown to make sure we are police women, men, beings in our markets. Right. And this is all Annie's photography. She's a really great photographer. But we have plants, we have fruits, we have vegetables, we have value added nuts, coffee, all sorts of things. You're a drop value added. Value added is a locally grown product that you do something to. So if it's an academia nut, you roast it. If it's coffee, it's roasted. It could be a breadfruit that they may come us out of. So they make different things. Take it one step further in the processing. Right, right. And so we found out with our fish, if just scaling it and cleaning it, added value to the fish. Just that. Just taking that drudgery out and doing it and doing it up, right? If you cook it, then it's a meal. That's way value added, you know? So. Yeah, some people make dips out of it. Smoked tunaed ahi dips and things like that I've seen. Yeah, I love Maui Lavender. I think they've got to be the most value added product in Hawaii. I see Maui Lavender salt, Maui Lavender butter. And they actually. Really taking it to brandy. The branding of it. The branding of it, yeah. But they hand it to other people. So other people do those products under their label, which is right. You know, we're so small compared to Big Ag on the mainland. We're just tiny, tiny. And we have to keep that into perspective, you know, in all the ways that we're doing this. And that's something I got out of the viewing with the Farmers Union. When I went and sat on the National Council and you sit in a room with 30, 40 people that have thousands and thousands of acres. And the average person had 10 to 70,000 acres and only four employees. Everything was contracted out. When they come to Hawaii. Or McIanacal. Dean Akamoto got up one time at the legislature and he held up a piece of paper and it said 82% of the farms in Hawaii are less than four acres. Okay, okay. Less than 2% are more than 100 acres. So what you got is a couple of big ones and the rest of us were all doing on four to 10 acres. Yes. And you know, in farmer's markets when we came here, they are very regulated in California, Texas and I'm sure other states, but here there's no regulations. So what's happened is there are a couple big farmers and all the other farmers buy some of those products because they grow squash, which other people can't grow zucchini. They're growing tomatoes, which are very difficult to grow and there are certain products that show up pineapple that show up in the market that the farmers aren't actually growing in California. You cannot do that. But the way that it was set up, yeah, you have to grow what you're selling at the market and they find you if you do not do that. I was just at a conference and stocked in and they spent a whole day on how they regulate that and how they catch people that are reselling and here everybody resells. And it's, I don't know whether it's good or bad. Do they go to Costco, buy a case of something and come out and just sell it? Well, hopefully they don't do that, but they buy from Larry Jeffs or they buy from a loon farm and then or dole and then bring that product to the market. And then sell it as if it was local. Yes, well it is local. It is local, but it's not from all farms themselves. Most of the immigrant farmers are growing. So they're more of a merchant than a farmer. They are, but in our markets, they have to be a grower in order to be in there and then they can subsidize with other foods that are grown here. And that's just the way it was set up. And, you know, KCC is 12 years old and our oldest market was Hollywood started in 2009. But on the mainland markets are 35 years old. So we really are, yeah, we really are babies with us. All of your markets do people only grow in Oahu or can they grow on the big island and bring it up? Or Maui and bring it up? Any island in Hawaii is great. So it's Hawaiian grown. Not necessarily, it doesn't have to be restricted to Oahu. And they're different climates on the other places. So we've been getting great corn from big island. We get persimmons from Maui. We're gonna get cherimoyas. I'm hoping when I go back this Saturday, they're cherimoyas there from big island. So yes. By the way, we didn't know it at the time, but when you invited us to go out to Hollywood and we participated in your market out there, we drove out every Sunday and we did worms. And you'd hear Natalie, it's all about the worms, organic worms. When people came, we sold the worm bins, we sold the life worm stuff, and we sold the worm castings, right? And then about a year later, we went and looked at going to some other farmers markets and they wouldn't let our worms in because they weren't food. They said, oh no, we couldn't have worms in a marketplace. And it was just a complete shutdown. So you are our only avenue to the public to sell our worms out on a public venue, which is kind of odd. And we thought the other farmers markets would welcome us and they did not. You know, it's kind of funny. They only wanted food, you know, ready to eat kind of thing. And part of our business is we're small business incubators and there's so many young people that come with an idea that has something that's grown here, value added, and this is such a great way to get in and test your product and give them the experience and Annie and I, if they're open to it, help them with their marketing and how to sell the product better, we don't really tell them what to do with the product, but you know, to help them be able to sell their product. And it's so rewarding to see some of these young kids like really being successful and making a living and seeing the whole world as wide open if you just are creative. Well, we have about 30 seconds left. That's it. That's it, it goes by so fast. Always with you, Glenn. I'd like to do one more time here about what you got coming this weekend and which farmers market. Okay, so we, if you come to Haliva tomorrow, which is from two to six in Waimea Valley and Kailua town on Sunday from 8.30 to 12, field day is coming and they will be handing out, if you do a selfie, $20 worth of market money, which will be good all the way through November and you will be able to come and support our farmers. Fantastic, looking forward to that. Well, we thank you all so much for tuning in to Think Tech Hawaii. I always love to have a lovely guest like this. And it's so good to be promoting our farmers markets. I love them, I go to them, I eat there. That's, we take our whole crew out, buy them dinner. We enjoy it very much. Yeah, thank you all so much for joining us.