 So, September is National Food Safety Education Month. I wasn't sure if you were aware of that. I just learned that this week as well, which is a really important topic, especially when we're talking about Hawaii's food and farmers. We have two local experts in food safety and agricultural professionals here to talk more about food safety education and their work with local farmers. Our show today is called North Shore Economic Vitality Partnership, Food Safety for Hawaii's Farms. And we'll be talking to Kevin Kelly in the studio with us today, as well as Lisa Rodin, who's joining us by video from Kauai. I know Kevin and I know Lisa for my work in the agricultural professional field with Oahu R-CND and working with farms on the ground. And I invited Kevin and Lisa here to talk about their great work that they're doing up on the North Shore and how they're expanding their work with local farms to support food safety, but also our local businesses, as well. So we have the North Shore Economic Vitality Partnership, which is a 501-C3. And I'm going to let Kevin and Lisa talk more about how they got involved in agriculture and how they're supporting local agriculture now, but in the future, as well. So let's extend a warm welcome to Kevin Kelly and Lisa Rodin. Hi. Welcome, guys. Thanks, Stephanie. Thanks for having us. Yeah. I mean, I've worked with you plenty of times, but now I get to interview you formally. So I know a lot of the great work that you do with farms and food safety. And today, I want you to pretend like I don't know any of that, okay? I'm not even involved in the agricultural world, okay? A lot of our audience are ag enthusiasts. So they want to support local agriculture, but they also want to learn more about behind the scenes of how farms exist here in Hawaii and how they can support them. So Kevin Kelly, you are president and CEO of the North Shore Economic Vitality Partnership, right? Correct. Okay. Can I call that North Shore EVP for short? That's our real name. Okay. North Shore EVP. We'll go with that today. And then we have Lisa Rodin, who actually used to be with the WALF who are CND, but now has a new role as food safety director with North Shore EVP, correct? Correct. And we're really lucky to have Lisa. She comes with all of the knowledge, skills, and passion that we're looking for in a food safety director. Yeah, she's pretty awesome. Yeah. You are too. But I know you can't tout your own horn. So I thought we, you know, September is National Food Safety Education Month. And I must admit, I had no idea. And you and Lisa reached out to me to say, hey, let's talk about all the great things that's going on with food safety on Hawaii farms and how you're supporting that endeavor. So, you know, first and foremost, we usually do a profile of who we're interviewing. So agriculture is a really interesting field and people come to it in a myriad of ways. So I was wondering, Kevin, if you could explain a little bit of how you came into the agricultural world. I came into the world through community activism. Okay. I was involved with the Defendant of Oahu Coalition during the Turtle Bay conservation planning thing. And I met a lot of people who are really concerned about the future of the North Shore, you know, preservation of open spaces, rural lifestyle, agriculture. Those things are really important to that community. And I said, you know, it's really hard to play defense when you're trying to preserve land and keep open spaces and things. I said, what's the plan for our community for the things that we value? And that ended up in a large community conversation where we looked at tourism, we looked at ag, which are the big economic drivers in the region, and said, what are the opportunities for creating more jobs in those areas so that we can use the resources that we have on the North Shore to build our economy, keep our economy going and preserving the things that we find important. And one of the ideas that came out was that in agriculture, we have so many small farms and their challenges in small farming, just not even just the farming part, but access to markets and things like that, we said, we need a food hub, a facility that could buy from all the small farms, could aggregate it and then allow these small farms through the food hub to access large markets like hotels and grocery stores. Because individually, farmers don't have the consistency or the quantities to do those kinds of things. And they're relegated to farmers markets and roadside stands. So as we started down the road planning a food hub, a regional food hub for the North Shore, we came across food safety as a significant hurdle. All the major buyers required gap certification, good agricultural practices. It's a voluntary program by USDA. But without that, there's no really assurance to a buyer that these farms practice food safety in their production, handling and shipping of food. And as we got down that path further, you know, I'm an oceanographer by training. So I'm learning ag as we went along too. But it got really interesting because USDA has a new program specifically for small farmers. It was being piloted on the mainland with groups of small farms that were interested in lowering the cost of obtaining their gap certification. And USDA was interested, especially in lowering the cost of small farms, because in getting gap certification an audit for a 10,000 acre farm is as expensive as an audit for a five acre farm. So it was very, you know, the playing field wasn't that level. Not equitable. Not at all. And so now we have, we're the 15th official USDA group gap group in the country. We're the only one in Hawaii. We've finished training for 10 farms and they're awaiting their last audits and they will be gap certified. We have nine new farms that just started a couple of weeks ago. And so we're just going to keep turning over cohorts of 10 to 15 farms at a time until we have 40 or 50 farms on the North Shore of Oahu that could justify building an aggregation facility. So you really came to the agricultural field here in Hawaii from kind of a tangential point of oceanography. I think you mentioned business training as well. Well, it's economic development. Yeah. Yeah. It's economic development. We're talking about playing defense all the time. How can we be having an offensive strategy as well? I know that kind of sounds maybe a bit aggressive, but instead of always trying to play defense, how can we think, look forward and plan forward for the future of not only North Shore but Hawaii's farms? Exactly. And when you look around the state, this isn't just an issue on the North Shore. So many communities around the state are saying, how do we hold on to the things that we value here, especially the things that are special about Hawaii, these open spaces or agricultural routes? I mean, we have a legacy in agriculture in Hawaii. Absolutely. And when Cain and Pine went down, we didn't really have a good plan for implementing diversified agriculture. What does that transition look like? Exactly. And we're still struggling with that, I would argue. Yeah. I agree. So Lisa, we've heard a little bit about Kevin's background in agriculture. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about how you came on the agricultural scene here in Hawaii. Sure. Thank you. I actually grew up in the mid-Atlantic and I was lucky enough to have a friend whose family had a 50-acre vegetable farm and I worked there many summers. I harvested, I did a lot of selling at their roadside stands and I didn't necessarily see myself going into agriculture as a career, but that experience definitely stuck with me. As well as if you know anything about the mid-Atlantic region, there's a lot of big farms, particularly on the eastern shore of Maryland, so I was exposed to that over and over and over again. And when I came out to Hawaii, I had previously been a dolphin trainer back in Maryland, but when I came out here, I wanted to switch careers and I ended up with a job with Oahu R-CND, as you mentioned, and I was really lucky. In that time, I was exposed to a lot of farms, not just on Oahu, but across the state. I was lucky enough to work on a cover crop project with John McEw and it took me to farms across the state on every island and I really, it just ignited my passion again for working with farmers, learning about farms, learning about growing products, and being outside in that environment, preserving that kind of base and that kind of work. As I continued working here, it's just one thing after another has kind of led me to a narrower focus, which really has become my passion and that is really helping farmers with safety. I was lucky enough to meet Kevin through an introduction from John Purcell and it was kind of funny because I was managing an ag park in Kunia at the time and John wanted to bring out Kevin. I didn't know who he was and it turned out we just had so many similar ideas about food and production and food safety and Hawaii farming issues and I couldn't believe it because I hadn't found anybody who really thought the same way that I did until that point in time so I was really happy to find that Kevin had the ability and the motivation to get this going. Wonderful. So when two great minds come together with similar ideas and collaboration, right, what can you build and how can that collaboration help Hawaii's farms in the future? So can you talk a little bit about how North Shore EVP got started, like how old is it and what's kind of its main mission? So we had our large community engagement back in 2013 where we actually did an economic analysis of the North Shore. We raised money, we hired consultants from California, we did a cluster analysis and uncovered other little clusters of economic opportunity in the region but when you take a look at the food hub and how that transpired, that was the community saying this is what we need and afterwards we had little action teams formed around the ideas and they were supposed to like take the idea and run and our money ran out and the action teams fell apart. So the walk away is, you know, there's a lot of great people in the community who are willing to pitch in and do things but someone needs to call the meetings and someone needs to take the minutes and make phone calls and make sure that these volunteers actually this new generation of civic leaders actually have something to do and contribute to the thing. And so I was kind of bummed for a year and a half or so that none of this happened. And when I look back at all the ideas that did come up, you know the food hub was the one that would impact the region most strongly in that if agriculture and open spaces were so important to the community, if we didn't have a complete supply chain in agriculture, then none of that would happen. Right, it would just halt. And so we have farms and we have people harvesting and then things really start breaking down. Everybody's trying to do their own packing and marketing and transportation and value and everybody's trying to do it and quite frankly no one's doing it really well. And so again the community is saying that's why we need to have this aggregation facility. If we could take the post harvest work off the farmer's hands, then they can actually farm all five of the acres they have instead of the two that they're currently farming because that's all they can sell. Right. And a common theme that we see on our show is like we're always talking about farmers are so busy, right? Like they have to have like their heads down looking at the field but they have to be looking up at looking at market trends and food safety and you know one person even if you're working 20 hours a day can only focus on so many different things at once. So after our break we're going to talk a little bit more about how North Shore EVP provides services not only to the community but those farmers you're talking about as well. So we'll be back after a few short messages and we'll talk more about North Shore EVP. Great. Thanks. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back and what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means let's take healthy back. Aloha. Welcome back to our show on North Shore Economic Vitality Partnership. Food Safety and More for Hawai'i's Farms. We're joined in the studio today with Kevin Kelly who's here in person and we also have Lisa Rodin who's joining us virtually from Kauai, our very first video guest that I've interviewed so that's exciting. Thank you Lisa for joining us. We talked a little bit about how Kevin and Lisa got involved in agriculture through activism and through cover crop projects and a myriad of different ways of how they got involved especially in Hawai'i's local agricultural scene so we were left off talking about the North Shore Economic Vitality Partnership, this nonprofit community partnership that's on the North Shore of Oahu so now we're going to talk a little bit more about the services that they offer to our farmers to help empower farmers and our local community so Kevin maybe you could talk a little bit you know we're talking about all this great work about empowering farmers right and especially you know saving land keeping open spaces preserving that legacy of Hawai'i's agricultural scene so can you talk a little bit about how directly you help farmers and the services you provide? Our biggest objective is to get farmers gap certified. And what's gap? Gap is good ag practices and that's that voluntary program that assures buyers that you practice good ag practices on your farm. What's some examples of good ag practices? Washing your hands not just washing your hands writing down that you washed your hands. Oh, record keeping. Record keeping is huge so you know how you harvest the things where you harvest the things did you find something nasty in your field that you should write down did you apply pesticides when where what kind how much all of those things need to be documented okay because if it's not written down it never happened right and you know again in the end it's all about keeping a food safe safe food supply okay but now the laws have changed so this voluntary gap program has evolved into a new FDA law called the Food Safety Modernization Act. FSMA. FSMA and FSMA has been rolled out over several years now but the deadline for compliance for small farmers is coming up on January 1st 2020. Not that far. Not that far it's less than a year and a half out and and the rule is that really you can only sell directly to consumers if you're not FSMA compliant. And that really limits your market. It does. And it's very time-intensive too right? Very time-intensive. So it's critical if we want to address ag on the North Shore that we have enough farmers who are FSMA certified. So that's our primary goal but in in doing that especially with group gap we're starting to create a network of farms. I mentioned the 19 farms before these people will all know each other they all trust each other they're willing to work together instead of compete against each other. Right. So if you have two farmers five farmers growing green beans they're not going to all plant at the same time they'll stage it so that we always have green beans to sell. So it's it's starting to take on a different set of legs. But in the group there's also power to do other things. For example we can help farmers with their transportation reimbursements from USDA. We can help farmers apply for crop insurance. And actually some varieties have free crop insurance. I didn't know that. I just learned it too. So for some some varieties you there's free crop insurance and crop insurance for small farms we should do a whole another show on that because it's very affordable. What is set up is keep farmers in business. You need records. You need records though. Right. And so we keep finding more things that we can do. We've had companies calling us down from value-added people to food innovators restaurants asking do you know a farmer who grows this or is there a farmer who can grow this. So now we can we can do this kind of vetting for the end users and say here's the farmers that want to talk to you about. So we're you know we're saving time on upstream and downstream of the supply chain for you know again hooking these farmers up with real markets. Yeah. So I think you know you're talking about these gap certifications and you have mentioned like these cohorts of farmers. I thought maybe Lisa you could talk a little bit more about you know if you're hosting workshops or trainings for farmers like what what does your job really entail as food safety director. My job entails. Wow. That's a little. Why are you giggling. I don't know what I said. That was funny. You didn't tell me you were going to ask this. Oh yes. I know. Well the first thing that we had to do was really pull together a group of farmers that were motivated enough to say yes we want to go through this program. So it was really a little bit about reaching out to the network that I have and then developing a program for them. There's a lot of information out there about gap and a lot of information that farmers could probably gather on their own but putting it together for them so that it's easily understood and easily digested is the first part of what we started to do. We also developed a lot of log sheets and record templates for them so that the appropriate information that they needed was there and easy for them to keep. That really then makes the next part of my job probably the hardest which is making sure that they are keeping those records. So constantly being in touch you know do you have your restroom logs for this month. Do you have your harvest logs and gathering that data. Really what we want to do is provide a service where not only are we telling the farmers what they need to do but helping them do it reminding them to do it and then we'll be the repository for those records for them so they don't need to keep their paper records on the farm if they choose they can give them to us we'll store them we'll also store them electronically and that I think helps because it's the second set of eyes it allows us to really have a closer look at what's going on troubleshoot so if we see like your restroom keeping log seems to have stopped what happened there we can help figure out what the problem is and mitigate it get a solution. I think the other part of it is really just a lot of guidance farmers can really learn a lot about gap on their own like I said but providing that guidance on the ground is what's really important so putting boots on the ground on their farm to say show me how you're what your packing station looks like show me where your workers are sitting down for breaks and and figuring out whether that within the bounds of gap or FISMA or not and then providing that guidance on how to fix it. Yeah and I think we have some photos showing like depicting you working with farmers maybe we could pull those up if we have them on hand so what's going I see Kevin in the background and I see I see you leading could you talk a little bit maybe what you're doing here like what's your work with farmers in this photo. So I think that's our cohort to first class meeting so in our cohorts we provide a setting a class setting where the group meets and we're going to go over all of the different parts of the gap process so everything from an introduction to safety to the different parts of record keeping exactly what you're looking for in areas that could be contaminants on your farm. So talking about soil water buildings worker health and hygiene is a huge one. We also have pulled together some specific training for our farmers just to make sure we cover all the bases and we had one that was a pesticide safety training so we'll do that again for this cohort. We want to make sure that everybody has had that type of training is required for gap you'd be able to show that you've attended a training such as that. So just to make sure everybody's got an attendance record a sign in that shows they were there we will pull that together as well. Nice yeah so you know I had asked you prior to the show what are some of the services you guys provide. I'm not going to list every single service you guys provide. There's about 15 bullet points but especially you know those trainings you're talking about group gap, food safety plans, development and review. That's an important one. That's a very important one especially with FISMA. The food safety data management you are talking about keeping records, inspections, coordinating USDA audits, transportation reimbursement, food safety reimbursement, value chain coordination. I could like continue on and on and on like it shows that you know your small team is doing a lot of great work on the ground and working with farmers and the amount of services that you provide is staggering. So that's that's especially for such a young organization that's really something that I want to commend you guys for. Seeing this need, this niche and really taking it on as your own and how can we promote food safety not only from the farmer's side but for buyers and for consumers as well. So you know you guys have been around in the last couple of years right and you know you're doing a lot of great work right now what do you think the future holds for North Shore EVP either in terms of you know what are future challenges for you or future opportunities? I'm going to go with the opportunities. Oh I like it. Because you know when we... Let's stay positive here at Think Tech. We can talk about problems all day. We often do. But you know when you look around the state again this isn't a North Shore regional issue and we've been very fortunate to have the support of the Department of Agriculture who understands this also and we are working to bring this program statewide. So our first cohort was focused on the North Shore and our second cohort is Oahu wide and so now we're working on you know e-delivery or e-learning platforms so that we can work with partner organizations and communities around the state again to deliver this and help those communities get a you know concentration of gap certified farms. It's important to their supply chains to their restaurants their grocery stores and their schools and everything else. Everyone along the chain. And and you know we're behind the eight ball on on timing on this. Yeah Hawaii has a lot of small farms. Yeah 7,000 farms across the state but a majority of them are small farms. Right and and when we talk about doubling food supply those farms all have excess land. So if we if we can allow farmers to farm all of their land that's where our increased production I can I'm convinced is going to come from. Okay how about how about you Lisa do you have anything to add about future opportunities that you see or things that you're excited for for the future of North Shore EVP? It is to be helping farmers get their food safety certification. I think it's something that has it's been around for a long time in terms of the voluntary programs like GAP but it's sort of been ignored and I think I think a lot of people just assume that that it's out there and being done. So I'm really excited to give it an elevated level of awareness and really give it its due and help farmers achieve it. There's definitely a little bit of a perception out there that it's challenging or difficult or expensive and I think it may be a little bit of all of those things but by and large the farmers that we're working with they're mostly already doing it. It really comes down to just documenting it and helping them get through those audits which can be daunting opportunity but it's definitely something that they can do and when we're done there's going to be a lot more farmers that can confidently say we did it and it wasn't that bad and we're going to continue to do it. Right I mean the word audit in any industry is terrifying so like this is not a problem that farmers face alone right any industry is like oh I have an audit coming up. We want to take audits as learning experiences. It's all being positive. Yeah like you guys can do it you can and we're here to help you and hold your hands and train you and show you it's not this terrible regulatory framework that's coming down on you. It's all about safe food, good ag practices, running a good farm and that's what all our farmers want. Yeah and I and something we talk a lot about this show it's kind of an inside joke of record keeping. Farmers are notorious especially with us ag professionals are notorious for poor record keeping and that's simply because they're just so busy out in the field in the market you know record keeping doesn't necessarily think there's not really an economic incentive but showing that food safety and all you're going to expand your market there is more of an incentive to keep better records then. And we're trying to make that easier. We have a SPIR small business research innovation grant with smart yields to develop a smartphone app for collecting food safety data. It's going to drive down costs it's going to make record handling a lot easier and it's it's introducing new technology on small farms. That's hard to do. That's the future right. So all right well unfortunately we're out of time guys. I mean half an hour ago so quickly right. So I thought you know the audience today you guys can go to nsevp.org to learn more about the North Shore Economic Vitality Partnership. You'll learn more about Kevin Kelly and Lisa Rodin and their work with farmers on the North Shore and how that work is expanding hopefully throughout the state to help farmers with record keeping food safety group gaps and more. So we encourage you to spread the word if you know farmers on the North Shore if you know other farmers interested in food safety please reach out and check out that website nsevp.org. We'll see you next time on Hawaii's Food and Farmers. Thank you.