 I'm your host, Brittany Zimmerman. And I'm your co-host, Richard Ha. And today, we are going to do a deep dive into our M invention, which is modern-day ahupua'a. How are you doing, Richard? Pretty good, pretty good. Awesome. I know this is a topic near and dear to your heart, so why don't you kick us off by telling us what is a modern-day ahupua'a? Well, you know, in a simple way, it's the way people were doing it before, an ahupua'a system, but we're adding modern technology to it. So essentially, it had to do with water, and water runs downhill. So depending on where the water is, everybody depends on the water, shares it with each other. And you grow the different plants that's applicable or the different crops or fishing, depends on where you are in the elevation. And modern-day ahupua'a is the same thing, except that we're going to be using as much modern technology as we know how. Awesome. And for those people who aren't as familiar with an ahupua'a, is this something that one person would run, one family, is this a whole community? Tell us a little bit about what it originally looks like, and then let's dive into what a modern-day ahupua'a looks like. Okay, well, you know, it used to be a communal kind of a thing, where there's a lot of people doing different things and supporting each other. This lends itself to what we call reciprocity. And the reason for it was back in the old days, they did not have metals. And because they did not have metals, they did not have money. So they couldn't make change. So because you couldn't make change, you had to trade. Still, you had to trade. When you trade it, that's where the origination of the more you give, the more you receive came from. And essentially, that's the basis of aloha. Yeah, reciprocity, for sure. And it's a very different way than the way we live today, which is very transactional. I know that when you've spoken before about this big transition between reciprocity and transactionalism with the introduction of metals, we have to think about what it looks like in our everyday lives. What does it look like with the credit systems and the monetary and the banking systems that we live under today? And do you feel, Richard, individually, like there is a way to still live in a way that is based off of reciprocity in a day and age where transactionalism is really the environment that is here in prevalent? Well, actually, now I think about it, I was really lucky because when I was growing up, my father would pound the table and yell, not no can, can. So he instilled in us this positive way of thinking. He would say, get a thousand reasons why no can. I'm only looking for the one reason why can. And then he would say something that, you know, look for three answers for every problem and one more just in case. You know, when you're 10 years old, it doesn't really click. But when you get to be my age at 79, and you say, oh, OK, I see what's going on here. But essentially what was going on, you know, and then that was really significant. If you have to look for three answers for every problem and you've already got in your mind where you want to go in the future, all the alternatives has to be based on facts. So basically, each of the alternatives has to be based on science. The answer would be wrong. And I didn't know that for a long time, but then, you know, as I got older and older, oh, OK, that makes sense. Right. Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, I think a lot of the lessons that were passed down to you are certainly applicable, not only in the days of the Ahupua'a, but also today, right? And so did you want to tell us anything more about what a traditional modern, or a traditional Ahupua'a look like before we transition into what a modern one looks like? Well, I'd like to see this because it happened to me when I was 10 years old. I know what, you know, this idea that you give for kids, if you give them the tools, that's how young that we can affect their living. So I want to see that. And then we can jump into this. What's the modest? OK, that sounds wonderful. So I know that you had a property which was being utilized for the biggest banana farm in the state. You were utilizing it for tomatoes and that you have decided on a bit of a transition for this property and walk us through Richard kind of the transition between the farming and agriculture that you were doing and then utilizing this property first for the modern day Ahupua'a. Well, you know, I started off on this journey back when I got out of the army. And, you know, all the values my father gave me. But when I came out of the army, I went to Maku, our family land there at Maku. And Uncle Sunny, the son of a total lady who's the most influential person on my life when I was young. Uncle Sunny had gone and became a merchant marine, which means he went from subsistence farming and he went all over the world. And then he came right back to subsistence farming. And what is interesting about him is that on his desk, there's a kerosene lantern, because that's no more electricity, right? Yeah. A kerosene lantern and a stack of US news and war reports. Isn't that something? Yeah. And that's the position. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So the stack of US news and war reports. And then he would talk about, well, I just noticed that he was influenced by the extension agent a lot. The extension agent would come and visit and talk to him about what he was growing. At that time, he was growing watermelons. He'd been in tomatoes and other things, but at that particular time, it was watermelons. And so he showed me that, you know, herbicide to control the grass. How would you do that? And he didn't talk to me. He just, by example, I just watched it and he would go do the mixture and then take a piece of California grass, the grass he was going to spray and stick it in the water and look at it to see if it was reacting the way it's supposed to. In other words, you know, in regular grass, it would bead right off. No problem. But when you do it and you check it and it's smooth and, you know, that means it's covering the whole leaf. So I, you know, I just, I'm over there keeping my mouth shut because he's a real strong personality kind of guy. Yeah. So, yeah. And then when he started growing watermelons, he showed me that again, not showed me. He just demonstrated that in the middle of the day, the fruit fly would be attracted to these corn plants. He planted outside the field. And then he pulled out his can of reed and he went over there and he shot the fruit flies with the can of reed instead of having to spray the whole thing. Yeah, because that's where they're not in the middle. So I'm looking at, oh, that's really interesting. But what I got out of that was two major things. The pluses have to exceed the minuses to be sustainable. And number two is if the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm. So those two ideas is all I need to have to, you know, be thinking about whether it'll work or not. Understood. And so when you were doing your agriculture, when you were working with the bananas and the tomatoes and everything that you did after was the idea of the modern day of what are already in your mind, or is that something that culminated later? It was just sitting there because the values I had was in that direction. Those two values that I said. So then as when I, it was back in 2007, when I went to the Peacock conference for the first time, you know, that was an eye-opener to me because they told us the world had been using twice as much oil as it had been finding and had been doing that for the last 20 years. It doesn't take a genius to figure out, okay, wait a minute, how much is there left? Is it going to last forever? And the answer is no. But then when I came back, I couldn't very well say, well, you know what, everybody, the sky is falling. That ain't going to work. So I just, you know, kind of, I went to, you know, five more conferences. I learned a lot because it was so important. I spent a lot of time in the backdrop. And so all the stuff was, is there. But now it's coming to a hit now because we don't have really that much time left. And we have much time that we think. That's how I feel about it. All right. So now you have your property and you're looking at making it a modern day ahupua'a. Can you now walk us through what a modern day ahupua'a looks like? You said that we would be looking at maybe all of the same basic principles as traditional ahupua'as, but utilizing new or modern technologies for that. Could you give us a couple of examples so that we can start conceptualizing what that might look like? Okay. So given the environment we operate in, we're in Hawaii, the land is not flat and it's up and down and whatever. So we have to take that into consideration, which means we can't have the volume that other places in the world can have because they can have giant equipment. We can't. So we have to have a different solution to this problem. So what I'm thinking we could do is try to find multiple income streams and then also we got to make the land affordable because farmers just coming in and we're talking about new farmers because the old farmers are quitting and they're retiring and there's nobody to take over. So we got to get the younger people to get in, but can they afford it? So it's got to be manageable, smaller size, maybe 10 acres or so. And then we helped them with multiple income streams. So that's the basic thing. Oh, so you're saying, okay, we have the large ahupua'a we could break it down into 10 acres or so where people could take on responsibility of a part of the ahupua'a, a specific cultivar, a specific process. Maybe it's Ulu and maybe it's, maybe it's Kalo, maybe it's fish, but help them to take a modern approach to it. When you think of these modern approaches, what kind of things are you thinking of? So we start off with the multiple income streams. And it's to give the farmer resilience. If something goes down, then there's others to back them up because he's got a family or whatever. So if you're looking at multiple income streams, one thing that you might consider is high value timber, not a lot, but you know, the places that you can't really use, stick them over there because 25 years is how long it'll be before you can use it. And then you might be, you can choose, should I use it for myself, for my retirement, should I use it for the kids or whatever? But it's a multiple, I mean, that's income stream that's separate from what we're looking at today, just, you know, cash and that kind of stuff. So that's one way. Another way of looking at it is given the land, what it is, if it's real sloppy and rain runs down real strong, then you might choose the kind of crops that you like, you know, Ulu or these kinds of crops where you have grass growing on the bottom to keep the soil there. So that's a possibility and multiple kinds of crops that can grow under those conditions. And one other one was really interesting is sweet potato. If you grow sweet potato, the traditional way there's so much left in the ground and then you have to wait 18 months or so before you can come back in because of there's disease in the ground, et cetera, et cetera. On the other hand, if you use hydroponics and had a gutter kind of a system where even like a rain gutter and you had one end where the fertilizer and the liquid is in and then every so often there's a place in it where there's something that can, you put a bag of media and when you put it, it sucks the water into the bag. That way it sucks the water and nutrients into the bag. But the thing about it is it doesn't take much to monitor something like that. You could send the kids go check the water and then you can harvest and use 100% of the product. And you can come in as fast as you can replace it and get it going again, you can replant. You don't have to wait. So that's another way of getting it. Then all these things, depending on who's doing that, they can decide what they want to do. Ideas of what could be done. Yeah, for sure. And as you talk about some of that, in terms of maybe hydroponic options and things along those lines, those typically require significant amounts of water and energy. Is there anything special about your particular property that helps with one or both of those? Well, we have two springs on the property that you can actually see. Those are springs. And what's really interesting about that is it's spring water that comes out from deep into the lava from high elevation. And what that means is that the pH of the water is stable, 7.23, something like that. A chemical content is stable because it's coming to the rocks. And the temperature is stable. So now you can do a lot of adjusting to that, given what you already know. So you're not just throwing stuff and wasting it, yeah? So just play with it. What makes sense, yeah? Okay, yeah. So for the crops that need a lot of water, right here on Hamakua coast area, you have a lot of rainfall, and you also have two springs on the property to be able to feed large amounts of water to some of those crops. So you have different types of energy sources that may be available to the island. But on your particular property and for the modern day Ahupua'a, you have hydro power. Can you talk a little bit about that? Oh, yeah. The hydro power came from the flume system that the plantation made. Now, that's a really interesting situation because the flume system takes the water down from YAA stream, and it comes down and it goes into Aliyah stream. Now, Aliyah stream is interesting because Aliyah stream is not a stream that's down in the valley. It's a stream that runs on the ridge line. How is that, you would think? So, you know, and it runs down the ridge line and it goes to the bottom, and in the old days, they used to plant taro over there. So how would that happen? My best guess is that it probably caused by an earthquake a long, long time ago. The spring jumped out of the... I mean, the water came out of the ground and it was on flat ground, and there were all these other places that had the rivers and valleys and this and that. And so it was on the top. And that's... But anyway, that's Aliyah stream. I got sidetracked here. But it's so interesting, you know? So, essentially what I'm saying is you've got to be kind of fleet-footed and look at your situation and try to be as open-minded as you can and use the most modern technology that you have based on science. Got you, yeah. That's how you utilize your spring water. You produce energy from the movement of water. And then you can utilize that to support some of the other, maybe hydroponic or higher-tech solutions. Maybe there are even some value-added things that can be done to help make food more sustainable here, right? So, I'm going to talk about the vision of the Hauai Island in particular. I know that we had spoken before and you were talking about the vision, right, of having these different sections of the property that different groups were taking care of. And collectively, they make this modern day ahua-ahua. Can you talk us through what an individual or a group would do if they wanted to collaborate with you to reach out or are you looking for additional partners for building this ahua-ahua up? We're working closely with the GoFarm program at the University of Hauai. We're working with the GoFarm program. We're also working with the department, the CTAHR, College of Tropical Agriculture, because we sat in on interviews of the various different people that were coming in to become the new president now that the person has been appointed and we're optimistic about that person. So, we're working very closely with him. So, we'll... And with all these things that we talked about, that's what we're pushing, yeah, trying to... Yeah. And are you open to working with other groups or individuals, like if somebody's watching this and thinks, you know, I would really love to start doing some value-added processing with the modern day ahua-ahua, or I would really like to start growing flowers for laymaking, or I'm really interested in agroforestry and I'd love to be able to help with maybe some of the tree selection or the understory. How would you... Are you interested in those sorts of collaborators? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, and we've been working together for a long time, yeah? The general idea. And so, you have a really good grasp of this. We just met Emily Emmons just a few weeks ago. Yeah, and she's... She has a program already operating. So, we're trying to figure out how... You know, as a matter of fact, from a broad point of view, what we'd like to do is work with lots of nonprofits because they're all trying to do the best they can for the people in general. And what we're doing, as long as it's in parallel with what they think is good, we can all collaborate, yeah? So, I'm 100% open-minded about what is possible. That's why I don't want to be real specific. Yeah. So, we can... For sure? Yeah. Okay, so if there's nonprofits or there's local organizations, maybe if there's school groups or maybe if they're budding or interested beginning farmers, how would you suggest that they reach out if they were interested in potentially collaborating with you? How would you like to be contacted? Yeah, well, you know, the best bet is... We have this group, Kyo-Ki and Malia, and our objective is to try to make life better for future generations, yeah? So, we'd like to enable that organization to collect information and collaborate back and forth with people. Okay, I think that sounds wonderful. Any other finishing thoughts? Anything you want us to know about what the modern day... what I might look like in the future, who you want to work with, anything you've already done, anything at all, Richard, before we close up? Yeah, well, so it's... What will life look like 100 years from now? You know, if we're looking out that far, then, and we're sitting out here in the largest ocean in the whole world, that would be self-sufficient. So, that's about enough motivation to do the right stuff, I think. For sure. And I'm excited to see that manifested in the modern day. Awesome. I got to say, though, I really appreciate working with you, you know, because... Oh, thanks, Richard. We've been talking about this, and it didn't take me very long to figure out who you were, because I don't know the science, you know, what the hell out there. But for me, I knew who you were inside, you know? And so, I want to say that. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Well, I love working with you, too. And hopefully, we'll have a lot smarter report on the modern day of Pua'a here for you guys soon. But this is Inventing Our Future on Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you again for joining us. And thank you to our viewers for watching. If you want to get our email advisories to see a complete listing of our shows, you can sign up for those on ThinkTechHawaii.com. We'll be back in two weeks, so please tune in to do a deeper dive into our end invention. Until then, I'm Brittany Zimmerman. And I'm Richard Ha. We want to announce that Think Tech Hawaii is moving into a new phase and will not be producing regular talk shows after April 30th. We will retain our website and YouTube channel, and will accept new content on an ad hoc basis. We are also developing a legacy archive program to provide continuing public access to our content. If you can help us cover the costs of the transition and the development of our legacy archive program, please make a donation on ThinkTechAway.com. Thanks so much. Aloha.