 The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Tech can help agriculture in Hawaii. We have living proof today with two guys who put the AgTech conference together. There's Jim Wyban and Jason Awakey. Welcome to the show, you guys. Thank you, Jay. Happy to be here. Thank you. So, you know, it's a dream come true in so many ways. I recall once ThinkTech did a lunch and panel program about agriculture, and some guy came from Silicon Valley. And he was really interested, and he pulled me aside, and he said, I want to know more about agriculture and why I want to invest. And I have a hui who wants to invest from Silicon Valley. We're all very rich, as I was so excited. And I sat with him, and sat with him, and sat with him, telling him how great I thought the possibilities were. And after a few weeks of investigation, he came to me, and he said, well, I've investigated, and now I'm going to invest in hotels. Oh, no, no, no. What did we miss here? We have to make it possible for this guy to come back and actually make an investment. Him and his hui, and make a return in agriculture. It's not the old plantations. It's diversified agriculture. It's modern agriculture, and it's tech agriculture. OK, so tell me about your vision of this gym, by then. OK, thank you, Jay. You know, Hawaii has a tremendous agricultural tradition and a long history of innovation in agriculture, going back to the original colonizers, the Polynesians that came to Hawaii, brought with them what we call canoe plants, taro, bananas, coconuts. And they did that. It was very brilliant of them. They did that, so they knew that they would be able to grow food when they finally landed in Hawaii. And ever since then, Hawaii has been an agriculture innovator. And then go all the way up through the plantation era and stuff. And ag was a huge part of the economy at the time. But once the plantation started to close, the amount of the revenues coming into the state and agriculture started to shrink. And you hero has documented, it's a 30-year decline from the time that sugar started going away. The amount of revenues and the percent of our GDP in Hawaii from agriculture is on a steady decline. And we're now less than half a percent of our GDP comes from agriculture, which is, compared to thinking about our history, it's quite a sad statement. And yet, Governor E. Gay made a proclamation a few years ago. He wanted to increase the amount of local food production significantly. I think that was a very noble goal and worth working towards. And we saw in COVID, the disruption to supply chains are very real. And so we really need to address this issue. But to date, we're still left with a legacy-style agriculture, while the rest of the world, particularly California, is rocketing forward in incorporating technology at all levels. And that's what we wanted to show people in Hawaii was happening elsewhere. This is what Ag in 2022 actually looks like. And so we brought a lot of smart people together to tell us about how it's working. Yeah, and dealing with the challenges, such as the challenges that California has with water, like that. Yeah, but one thing you said, Jim, I think it's worth just dwelling on it for a moment. So somewhere in the late 19th century, Hawaii had changed, missionaries came, everybody studied religion. They got to read and write and print newspapers in English and Hawaiian. The government changed. The monarchy got more sophisticated than all this. And by the end of the 19th century, we had these plantations. And the plantations got bigger and bigger and bigger until they all fell apart in the 50s and 60s, right around the statehood. And so what's interesting is that in the process, the original native Hawaiian growing techniques, feeding yourself, got lost. It was completely, all the oxygen, so to speak, was sucked out for the big plantations, for selling crops overseas, making uku bucks with it. But the notion of feeding yourself in the, what do you call it, you know, those agricultural areas. Ahu pua ahu. Ahu pua ahu, I didn't get that right. The notion of dealing with the land, that kind of went away and the ability to feed yourself went away. So now we find ourselves, A, without the plantations, B, without industrial agriculture, which I don't really think we want. That's my own view. And C, without the ability to feed ourselves, which is really critical in this- Danger. Problems with supply chain. So, in walks Jason. Hello. Enter Jason and Jason has some ideas and, you know, think tech has been following this for 20 years and, you know, and we've considered and, you know, heard about so many tech ideas that would make it easier to grow things from every part of the world. And some of them have worked. Some of them haven't worked. Some of them clearly, you know, are humbug, may I say, and some of them are very promising. And so I ask you, Jason, with all of the possible technological advances with all the technology that could help, what's your favorite group of things? What are the things that are gonna give my investor from Silicon Valley a return on its money? What is the technology that's gonna make it easier for people to get into the business, local people and feed us? Well, you know, AgTech is very comprehensive. It actually covers biological technologies, engineering and also digital technologies. And I think what the most attractive opportunity is, is to transform our agriculture system here in Hawaii with the digital technologies and be able to incorporate some of the things that are transforming other industries and include them into our agriculture system to help us boost our productivity and efficiency to get us to a point where we can produce product and competitive prices, but we're importing them. That's the main issue. So it's not about necessarily working harder, but definitely smarter. And digital technology is the way to get there. So for instance, you know, the digital world can take in information that humans maybe have a hard time processing quickly and we can get real time data to make decisions and farm smarter. And eventually we'll get to a point where it can actually give us an early warning to adverse events and therefore save crops from failing. Yeah, that's a serious consideration given the extreme weather possibility with climate change. You know, spend the whole season growing crops and then have them destroyed. Now that's a big problem and if you can anticipate that, it's better. So you talk about data, talk about information technology. Can you draw us a picture of what that looks like? Is it my PC on my farm? Is it my PC running some programs? Is it my PC on a network where I get weather information and I have somebody else doing the AI processing for me? How do you see that unfolding? What's the most powerful way to help me? Yeah, it's probably integrating all of that, right? And including your phone. Our phones are very powerful today compared to the computers we had, you know, decades ago. What we have in our pockets is a lot more powerful. And so we wanna integrate what we have carrying with our farm workers and our farmers on site with satellite technology, with the data center, with the AI and the machine learning backing that up to give us that real time data on the spot so that we can then implement the best practices right then and there. Yeah, okay, and you talked about biology. What is the biological solution that would help my young farmer? I'll let Jim take that. Okay. Okay. Well, one of the biological technology that we focused on in the conference, you know, we divided the conference up into four half-day segments. But before you go too far with that, let's hear about the conference. So you had a conference days ago. It was called the Ag Tech Conference. Yes. It was organized to demonstrate technology that could help agriculture. So, you know, define, describe the conference and then we'll go into exactly what you, you know, present it. Okay. So the conference was officially Tropical Ag Tech Conference and we very much wanted to, you know, that was a conscious strategic choice to focus on the tropics because at this time, a lot of the Ag Tech that's happening elsewhere is focused on industrial agriculture in California or the Midwestern United States. And we see the tropics, you know, Hawaii as an example, but the tropics have very different problems, much smaller farms, irregular terrain, different crops. So, you know, that we consciously chose to focus on the tropics and actually as a strategic choice. So the solutions we come up with in Hawaii are relevant to all of our friends across the Southern, the global South, that is all the tropics. And, you know, one data that we threw out in the conference that was, is a very interesting thing to ponder is there's 500 million farms in the tropics. Okay, 500 million smallholder farms. When you talk about- You say tropics, you talking about Latin America? Oh, Latin America, Africa, the Pacific Rim, you know, Southeast Asia, Southern China. You add all that up and it's about 50, it's gonna be 50% of the world's population in a few years. And there's 500 million small farms spread across all those. So we believe that technology that is developed in Hawaii in tropical Ag Tech is relevant to all those places. And you earlier alluded to the Silicon Valley guy, you know, in the investment arena, the first thing they wanna know is can it be scaled? Can you scale? That's how investors make money. Well, maybe growing papayas in Hawaii, you know, has a limit, you know, there's only so much space and so much market, that doesn't really scale, but the technology scales, right? If you expand it through all of the tropics. And so that's another component of our strategy for this conference is that we wanna help Hawaii develop these Ag Tech tools that work on local crops and stuff, but we have a bigger concept in mind that that technology that we figure out here in Hawaii by adapting and adopting Ag Tech has global relevance and a global market, 500 million farms. That's not trivial. And some people that- To say nothing about saving the world, to say nothing about it. There you go, half the world will be in the tropics by 2050. So we think it's relevant on a lot of levels. So, you know, I didn't answer your question about biology. I'm gonna let you go. What about papayalogy? You talked about papaya. Now, that's a, you know, the success there is a GMO by a local guy who studied at Cornell, as I remember, and came back and saved the industry in papaya. Saved the industry, absolutely. And it's the one go-to example of GM technology that actually helped an industry and helped the customer base. It was very beneficial, you know, whereas, you know, the big companies that controlled that technology, that was so they could sell more chemicals. It wasn't about making healthy, sustainable food. It was to sell more chemicals. So I think that was a bit of, honestly, my view is that was kind of a disservice to that whole technical- But you're not talking about GMOs as the kind of technology that you would export. I mean- No, no, we're not, we're not, sorry. We're not advocating that now. What is the biology that you would export? I mean, give us some examples of that. I have a great example for you. And I was intimately involved in it and you interviewed me about it. It was SPF Shrimp Root Stop. That was technology born in Hawaii, right here on the Big Island. And, you know, once we figured out how to do all the packing and shipping and blah, blah, blah and open the markets up, once we opened up those markets in Asia, we literally changed the world. We changed the world. The productivity of the shrimp industry from Hawaii brood stock went up six-fold. So we see that as, you know, sort of a best-case model for what could happen if we develop really cool tropical ag tech tools and breeds and so forth here in Hawaii. That stuff can be exported to the world. And I see it, you know, I was the first one to develop SPF Shrimp commercially and market it and develop that market. I see this situation in tropical ag tech as a parallel situation. It's wide open. And we had people like, for example, one of our speakers was from USAID, Dr. Koo does a lot of work in Africa. And he's telling us he would love to see Hawaii be a technology development platform for the tropics. This is AID talking that way. So we're not, you know, this isn't, you know, fantasy. This is a real opportunity. And some of the VCs that were at the conference were Gaga over the number 500 million farms. I'm Gaga right now. Yeah. But SPF means something about disease resistant. That's a specific pathogen free. It means they're disease free. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, one of the problems, Jason, is that we don't, we have a successful venture, a successful model in the shrimp and the brood stock, but you need land for that. On the other hand, it seems to me that information technology can make it more efficient. Whatever we do, and we can do more on a given foot or acre of land. And thus, you know, the brood stock can be done with less land. At the same time, you know, the largest landowner in the state of Hawaii is the state of Hawaii. And you need to have, you know, support from the government, not only from the governor, but from the legislature. And from DLNR and whoever else is involved. And of course the Department of Agriculture. So what about the land problem and the use of technology to make every acre more efficient? Brood stock and anything else? Yeah, that's an excellent point. You know, the land issue is that it's not just agriculture that needs a lot of land. The housing problems we have here, energy, there's a lot of competitive uses for land right now. And so trying to make or do more with less is actually what's gonna be needed moving forward with agriculture. And add to that that we have to do it in a much more environmentally friendly way. The current agriculture system and our food system accounts for some 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions. And you know, consumes about 70% of our freshwater resources. So technology and management, smarter management of land and resources is gonna play a key role in doing more with less in a better way. And so we could definitely use all the help from technology, but also you brought up politics. We need incentives from the government to help our entrepreneurs and our farmers develop and implement these technologies. Well, incentives might include land for one thing or cheap land. You know, the old argument about why we don't have diversified agriculture is that you can't get a long lease or buy land cheap. And then as a result, the bank will not lend you anything on a short-term lease. And so you can never get the capital to buy the equipment and all the things you need to be a farmer. The legislature could certainly help with that. It can incentivize landowners and for that matter, bankers to make farming more possible. And then of course, you know, you have tax credits, tax holidays, all kinds of incentives. I mean, if we sat around for half an hour, we could develop 20 of them, right? And really all good. So why isn't that happening, Jason? This is a hard question. Yeah. Oh, well. I guess we need to have our farmers maybe be a little more vocal support. You know, they're always busy on their farm and you know, Jim and I had a shrimp farm and so there's no days off. They don't take a day off. So neither do the farmers. And so I guess giving them a platform to maybe express their voices for the needs and for help. And so that we can have more support for our farming community. Yeah, absolutely. We have to get woke. Have to get woke on this before it's too late. You know, I mean, because if we had a bad storm, if our supply line was interrupted, you know, you can't live at McDonald's. You simply cannot do that. And McDonald's only has one month supply and reserve. So prepare to be hungry. You know, I mean, I would like to see local produce, especially produce, it's healthier and fish, you know, sweep into the restaurant industry, sweep into the supermarkets and all that. So tell us, Jim, what else you had to present at the Tech Ag Tech conference that might have been interesting to investors from far away to landowners, to technology companies that might collaborate with and affiliate with in partnership with our people at the university and otherwise? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And that sort of encompasses what the whole conference was intended to do is to bring a bunch of smart people together so that they could form new relationships, you know, network and the possibility of projects. So, you know, we brought in a couple of, for example, we have post affinity, you know, I'm married to Jason's mom, right? Jason's my stepson, we don't look alike, but it's through marriage. But- Oh, well, you're looking like conceptually, you look alike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's Japanese, right? So Hawaii, we have strong affinity for Japan, you know, because of a lot of commonalities, but also in the ag space, quite similar, you know, in agriculture and Japan is small farms and a lot of the technology and stuff, but things are kind of taking off there in the Ag Tech space. So we brought two representatives of Japanese corporations to Hawaii for the conference, both NEC, you know, the electronics corporation and Nesui, which is a seafood company, so that, you know, Hawaii folks could hear about what's happening in Japan and conversely, the Japanese guys could see what's happening in Hawaii and maybe, maybe, maybe there's an opportunity to interface and interact and form projects. And I think that that's gonna be one of the outcomes of the conference, you know, I can't say too much and let the cat out of the bag, but I think some projects are gonna develop as a result of this. And folks are talking about Hawaii as a platform for Ag Tech development for the tropics. You know, one thing about doing agriculture in Hawaii is you have a very small market here and then on the residential side of things, people are gonna go to Safeway and buy whatever in the counter, they're not gonna make a distinction. And if the produce from Chile is cheaper, they're gonna buy that every time, especially when they don't have money to spare. So how do we deal with that? I mentioned early on, you know, that the trick was to have people invest in farms in Hawaii and these agricultural technologies and developments and partnerships and make a return. So to make a return, you have got to sell at least locally and maybe beyond that, maybe to all of those 500 million places around the world. But in order to do that, you're competing with Chile. So Jason, can we use this technology to sell at a cheaper price? Are we there now? And if we cannot use this technology to sell it at a cheaper price, how do we sell? That's an excellent point. So we are not there yet and we need to get there and technology I think is the way and that includes not just productivity and efficiency at the farm, right? And you kind of, we're talking a little bit about that. It's actually we need to tech enable the whole food supply system to make it more efficient so that we can reduce the pricing at a more consumer friendly price. And I think that is kind of where disruption will come is if we can figure out that to be, these technologies be cheap enough so that it can be widely adopted across the state and we integrate the whole thing so that the farm production is connected to the demand and we streamline that. That's a way that we can reduce all the inefficiencies in between and bring the pricing closer to where it needs to be. And I think we can get there but it's gonna take a lot of work because it's quite a compact system. So on the positive side, we can attract investment dollars to develop this technology on these systems that we can then not just use here in Hawaii but as Jim was pointing out, there's the rest of the tropics to then distribute this technology to. So I am very hopeful and I think it will happen. Not good, okay. We want that. We wanna be awash with local crops because then we could have this kind of global brand, Hawaii, the place of new diversified high tech agriculture. And that alone, that brand would bring people to our doorsteps to buy the produce, to buy the brood stock type of products and to buy the technology. You know, I'm reminded Jim of a couple of shows that we did way back 10 years plus with a company called Safe Water Systems. These guys developed a way to purify water using solar power. And it was a plumbing solution. And they patented the valve in the plumbing solution so that they had some control over the intellectual property. They would deliver this to developing countries and they would give it away relatively cheap. They were very altruistic in the sense that they wanted to help the world. And also, they did recover some money for the Safe Water Purifying System, which did not require any electricity at all. So I'm wondering about your connection together, your partnership together and the technology here about whether you are taking steps to get into control of the intellectual property for some of these devices and then taking them to those 500 million, you know, offshore places and trying to do good works, eliminationary contribution, but also recovering your cost and maybe a modest profit in order to save the world. Because I looked to you guys, nothing much, no pressure. I looked to you guys to save the world. But what about that? I mean, are you trying to control intellectual property here? Are you gonna get patents? Are you gonna get trademarks? Are you gonna have the kind of device that Safe Water Systems had? Well, Jay, we are operating as a non-profit. We made money in the shrimp root stock business and exited that happily and everything's good. We don't need to make money, but we're doing this as a non-profit and we see ourselves more as a facilitator, bring people together, encourage projects to happen, call on our, we have extensive overseas networks, particularly Southeast Asia and there and call on those relationships to bring attention to Hawaii. So we really think, you know, we have a role to play and facilitating all this, but we're not trying to acquire control over any particular technology at this time. Okay, so what is the future though? Talk to me about the future of your adventures with technology, Jason. What's on your, if I had to look at your desk right now, what would I see there? A lot of notes scribbled here and there. No, what we're trying to do is we're trying to inspire Hawaii and Hawaii's entrepreneurs and researchers and agriculture people to take a look at the opportunity that's before us, you know, as was mentioned earlier, climate change is really disrupting food production in the tropics today. And it's only gonna get more difficult as climate change continues to worsen. We have now the, you know, social, political things going on that are disrupting our food supply as well. And so the opportunity is huge for young people to develop solutions that are climate friendly in the USA cause it climate smart and help small farmers make money. We really have to do that. We have to create solutions that give farmers value. And if we can do that, entrepreneurs can make a decent amount of money and it's a very strategic cause as well. We need to feed each other, right? So there's no getting beyond that. And so we have to come up with these solutions in Hawaii we believe is the perfect place because we have all of these micro climates that look exactly like a lot of the places in the tropics. So that's kind of where our minds are at with trying to develop this conference and we're trying to encourage Hawaii to take a good look at this as an opportunity to diversify our economy and increase our food security. Yeah, and the diet around the world is changing. I think people around the world are recognizing that a diet without meat is better. And, you know, people are going into veganism and the like. And I think in the future, there will be more of that, including in chain restaurants. And if you can generate products like that and make Hawaii famous for it, make Hawaii sort of a vegan place with all these, you know, healthy, clean, clear, efficient, and fresh. Fresh, a big word, products. And, you know, you'll go a long way to do that. I think that the restaurant industry is in the process of trying to come back and in trying to come back, it's repositioning itself. And you can or you are part of that, no? Yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about closing remarks. Let's go to you first, Jim. I'd like you to make closing remarks to the public and to the government. What would you leave with them? Well, my comment to the public would be, you know, when you go shopping, think first of buying local products. You know, this is what helps our community, what helps our farmers succeed. The growth of the CSA model since particularly since COVID started has been really encouraging. And a lot of farmers are now dependent on that type of community distribution of their products. That's a fantastic thing. My message to the government is, wow, Ag in Hawaii needs help. And I think Governor's IgA of goals set of more local food going into the schools and more local food produced instead of the 90% of imports that we do now. That's noble, but we need more money. These things don't happen without money. I think they need a strategic plan for agricultural development in the 21st century and then fund it and go for it. And that's not just buying land in Wahiwa. That's implementing technology. It's helping farmers and all that. Okay. And now let me go to Jason and ask for his comment. And my question to you is what is your advice? To the young graduate, somebody who likes to get into technology, like, you know, likes to believe as you do that technology can solve these problems and give us leverage. And for that matter, profit and comfort here in our economy. What's your advice to those people? Yeah. So I guess my advice would be to take action. Right. Sometimes we think we have good ideas and we're a little paralyzed by that and don't know where to start. Or you just got to get started. Wahiwa actually has a lot of successful entrepreneurs in various fields and technology included. And so we have the support ecosystem is developing quite nicely. So I would ask for help. I would seek advice and whatever your problem, whatever problem you think you're solving, you have to get down to the end user because really it's about creating value for that end user. And we really need to help our farmers, right? And so the value proposition should be around helping the farmer be more productive and more profitable. Because if we can't get our farmers to be profitable, you just can't scale the industry. And so that's where the opportunity lies is to provide value to farmers while being good to the environment and good to the culture and society around it. And it's a huge challenge, but the market is huge as well. And it's a very strategic need to beat ourselves. So I would just say go for it and find help. And Jim and I are here to help. Yeah, not only Hawaii, but the world. Notice that. Well, let me let me say this that, you know, although we get distracted here in Hawaii as in the country with things that really aren't important that are distractions, this has got to be at the top of the list of priorities. And I wish you well. We wish you well. Think Tech has covered agriculture for a long time. And to see you together as an agriculture and technology partnership is a beautiful thing. And I hope you'll come back and talk to us and tell us about all the things that you couldn't tell me about today, Jim. Okay. And as for you, Jason, I think you ought to develop a new shrimp that only works six days a week. Let me write this down. Thanks very much. Jim Wyman, Jason Wickey. Thank you very much. Hello. Thank you. And don't me to us a think tech Hawaii.com. Mahalo.