 I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech, growing agriculture in Hawaii. Today with Denise Yamaguchi, she runs the Hawaii Agricultural Foundation. Very important, and we're going to talk to her about the future of agriculture in Hawaii because it's really critical. It's the center of the channel, and Denise knows more about it than most people. Welcome to the show, Denise. I've been looking forward to this, and now I'm happy we're here together. Well, thanks for having me today. Okay, food, food is love. If you want to look for aloha, food is there. Food has a place in aloha, and we have so many different kinds of food here. A lot of our love of food is deep in our history, in our multicultural background. So where we are today is the important 90% of our food to Hawaii. And really, I'll tell you the truth, all of us, every time we take a bite of food, we should remember that. 90% coming from somewhere else. Now, maybe good, but it's coming from somewhere else, not really sustainable in the case of natural disasters. Who knows what? And without food, life is really tough without food. I'll go on record with that, Denise. I care about food for Hawaii, and I care about developing agriculture in Hawaii. And I don't think it's high enough on our list of priorities. You were on the movie we made, just scaling up the Hawaii's food future with Kim Baster, that was very good. It's been playing on PBS Hawaii, I don't know if you've seen it there, on the big screen. A lot of people have had very nice comments about it, including comments about you, Denise. So you are a symbol. So I guess I'll dive right into it. Let's start with the assumption that we're, as a state, as a state government, a state society, we're not doing enough to make food sustainable here. And we do rely, do 90% or more, of our food from the mainland. What are we going to do about it? I mean, boutique foods are not enough. We have to have staple crops that can feed our people. What are we going to do about it? Well, you know, Jay, if you really think about agriculture in Hawaii, Hawaii has a long history with agriculture. Most of us that live in Hawaii come from parents and grandparents who were once farmers and worked the land, they worked on the plantations. So back, you know, immigration started in the 1860s, and we all come from a plantation and agricultural background. And so there's, should be no reason why we can't have more agriculture in our state. If you look at the Hawaiians, at one point they were 100% sustainable. You know, the population of 200, 250,000 people were sustained by these islands. So there's no reason why we can't do this. When the plantations did phase out, you know, we should phase out sugar and pine in the 1970s through the 1990s. It was a time for us to diversify agriculture. And during that period, it's been tough moving from monocrops to diversified crops. And of course, when, you know, these large plantations got out of agriculture, of course, imports became more extensive and things that farmers needed just escalated. And so it's been a tough time for agriculture to get moving again and toward diversification. Our state, you know, if we really want to diversify our economy, you know, to other industries such as agriculture, we need to make a commitment. And that commitment has to start from, I mean, it has to start with the people. Our people need to tell our government leaders, hey, agriculture is important. You know, put your money where your mouth is. When you look at our state budget, you know, one third of 1% goes to agriculture. And you know, that's, that's shame. If we, if we really want to double food production, and that's going to take longer than five, 10, 20 years even, we're going to have to actually put more effort and more funding and more, you know, we're all going to have to work together to make that happen. And so there just needs a lot of commitment by everyone to make that happen. I told you about the story, didn't I, where we had an agricultural program for Think Tech downtown, you know, downtown forum. Man came out of the crowd, pat me on the shoulder and said that he was part of Silicon Valley, Huey, and want to invest in Hawaii agriculture. And he wanted me to introduce him to people, which I did over a period of time. And I tried really hard to make him interested in that. And he looked at it, looked at it, looked at it. And then finally, he took me out to dinner. And he told me he had made his decision. I said, what was that? He says, he's going to invest in tourism. The return was better. Okay? And you know, you can't, it's probably accurate, the return is better. But he doesn't live here. He's not committed to this. He doesn't really care about the sustainability of the state in case of natural disaster. We have to care. And, you know, it's a serious problem. And I don't know exactly what to do, but I want to create a case study with you. Okay, case study. I'm going to give you a billion dollars today. I'm going to write you a check. Send it any way you want. You can put it through the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation or any other agricultural organization. How do you spend it in order to achieve, you know, ketchup on agriculture in Hawaii? You know, that's a good question. I mean, a billion dollars is a lot of money. If you look at where agriculture has been successful in creating spaces where there's efficiencies, I think you're looking at technology and you're looking at new ways of doing agriculture. Conventional farming in the ground is tough, is a tough business. You have weather, you have bugs, you have pests, you have all kinds of natural disasters that could occur to your farm. So if we look at, you know, putting a billion dollars into infrastructure, the best thing to do is invest in greenhouses, maybe vertical farming, you're looking at aquaponics, hydroponics, you're looking at drone technology, you're looking at investing in those types of infrastructure so we can grow food production. There's also other kinds of crops that we can grow in Hawaii that may be successful and we just haven't gotten there yet. Like hemp might be a good crop for us, but we as a, you know, government hasn't allowed that crop to actually grow here. And so, you know, it's a matter of making choices. And I think a billion dollars, you could do a lot. I mean, you know, look at what's happening on Lanai and I think, you know, with the hydroponic farms there and they've been, they've during the pandemic were able to export some of their produce to O'ahu because they were able to produce a lot in those greenhouses. So if you were to give me a billion dollars, that's what I would probably look at doing is finding the best technologies and efficiencies with ag tech and invest that money there. So does that mean the university? Does it mean research? Does it mean the College of Tropical Agriculture? Does it mean, you know, getting, getting, developing companies of young people, young technology people here in Hawaii and giving them assignments and, you know, supporting investing their efforts? That's, I think that's one way, but I also think looking at leveraging those dollars and partnering with other companies to bring technology here. People that already know how to do this. We're not, you know, we are on an island and we always, you know, if you look beyond our shores, there's so many people that are in agriculture around the world that are doing it. And so to find the best people to, you know, give that billion dollars to leverage it and figure out ways in which that money's can go further, I think is, is the way I would look at it. I would look at investing in companies that have those best practices and those best technologies. Well, do you think we need supports, you know, like on the mainland for, I don't know, 100 years, we've had, you know, crop supports and all that. And so you start out with the notion that the farmers don't make money. What does Richard Ha say? If the farmer makes money, he will farm. If he doesn't make money, he won't farm. That's pretty basic. So crop supports, would that help? Absolutely. Subsidies, I think, aren't necessary at this point. I mean, there's no magic bullet, but I do think that industries across our country are subsidized, because we, otherwise, they wouldn't exist. I think the dairy industry is, you know, hugely subsidized by the federal government. So if we, as a state, invested some of that money and subsidized some of these farmers and really put money into those industries, whether it's, you know, poultry or even our beef supply, right? Our fisheries, our, you know, aquaculture community. I think if we were to subsidize some of that, especially the infrastructure, because infrastructure costs are the highest. I mean, we run a 288 per egg park in Punea with 20 farmers. And I was able to get a grant for one farmer for a pump to push water uphill, right? Because not all land is flat. And most people don't see farms anymore, but farms in Hawaii are not necessarily on flat land. You have low-key land, you have all different kinds of terrains. And so, you know, when you're talking about water and infrastructure, irrigation is critical. And that equipment is really expensive. And so, you know, that's what it'll take. I think sometimes government will need to subsidize it. I also think what Donovan is doing out in Whitmore Village and working to build back Wahiwa as a plantation community for diversified ag is critical. I mean, one of the solutions is looking at these ag clusters. But when you talk about an ag cluster, it's not just about, I mean, you sent me this article on food hubs and food hubs, of course, are important. I think it's the first step. But in order for an ag... Tell people what a food hub is. It's just in today's Civil Beat, that article, yeah? Right. So, a food hub is basically an aggregator of different farms who bring their produce together, process it, and get it to market. But in order for, you know, when you're looking at farming, we have 7,000 small farmers here in our island. So, those food hubs will definitely help. But when you look at scaling ag, really scaling ag, you're going to need something like an ag cluster, right? An ag cluster would be you need workforce housing for the people that work there. You're going to need maybe retail outlets, you're going to need food processing, you're going to need major infrastructure distribution points, right, from wherever those farms are going to be. So, I do think that an investment in an ag cluster or building that ag cluster in one location and seeing if that works is a tremendous undertaking. But it also gives us hope to put all those pieces together in one place so that ag is concentrated and we're not building small little, you know, areas of ag that aren't going to make a difference. I think, you know, Galworth lands, all those lands that the state invested in and invested in farms and then putting this Whitmore Village there where there is a cluster of different types of processing, housing, retail, maybe even some ag tourism out there is the right way to go because it's concentrated, it makes sense. And I think long-term, it's not a short-term project, it's a long-term project, but if we're going to invest in agriculture, I really think, you know, having them in different communities across the state, you know, it is the right way to go. So, what's the role of government? You know, I mean, they always say, everybody always says that the biggest landowner in the state of Hawaii is the government, you know, and if the government wanted to give land for farming, it has plenty of inventory. It may not, as you say, it may not all be even, some of it may be hilly or rocky, but it's land. And there could be a lot of land that comes out of the government inventory that is dedicated to that. On the other hand, how much do we want government involved in this? Should government be, you know, proximate, you know, directly involved of the organizer of these projects you're talking about? Or should government have incentives instead and be on the sidelines? Or is it all of the foregoing? What is the role of government in this? Well, I think that the government can play in a number of roles. Like you said, there's so many different ways government can support and help. Number one, it could be a direct role right where they are, the landowner, where they develop an ag park. And I understand that the governor did put some money into develop an ag park in Cuneo. But again, you know, I'm not sure how good they are at managing, you know, being able to manage an agricultural park, but then making, maybe making some of it privatized and privatizing it and making it more efficient would be the way to go. But I also think that there are leaders, certain leaders in government that have ideas that can put monies toward different projects, such as the Wahiawa Innovation Center, which again is in that ag cluster that can take, you know, it's forward thinking because not all those lands are in been leased out to farmers yet. But once it starts to get leased out and we start to figure out, you know, what we're going to do, we can have small businesses innovate and create products in those areas, because value added product or commercial, now it is called commercial packaged products, consumer packaged products, I'm sorry, are you know, going to be vital to also support ag in the long term. If we also, if we look at agriculture too, I mean, diversified ag is one thing, but I think, you know, also looking at export, right, because you can't just have, it's hard to have a diversified industry and just provide for ourselves, right. If we're really going to scale ag, you have to look at players like Mahi Pono, who have taken over 40,000 acres of sugar lab on Maui and are investing in all different types of crops. I mean, they've actually planted over a million citrus trees on Maui where sugar used to be, but they're not looking at it all for Hawaii, they're looking at it, some of that as export, but if you, they're smart, I mean, they, those guys are experts in farming, that's conventional farming, they're experts in farming, they understand the market, see, that's the other thing is understanding the market and what sales are at a higher value, right. So citrus is really expensive, if you go to the market, it costs you a dollar or more for a lemon. Now, if they planted a million lemon trees, there's a market for that in Hawaii, but I'm sure there's a market for that somewhere else. Larry Jess is the largest farmer here on Oahu and I think he has still has some non-molokai, he is really smart at understanding the market and if farmers, you know, understand the market and they can foresee what, you know, where those pukas are going to be and they can anticipate what to grow, they'll get the top dollar for that commodity or that product. So, you know, again, there's some sophistication, there's a lot of sophistication to farming and, you know, it's finding those farmers that know how to do it. I'm sorry, I deviated from the government question, but again, government can play many different roles and I can't answer that question because, you know, sometimes government gets in the way, but at the same time, there's other times where you really need government there and so I can't give you a straight answer. Well, let me give you one thing that occurs to me listening to your thoughts about it and that is, you know, at the end of the day, we have to feed our people, especially in times of need and those times will come, we have climate change and so, you know, it's a pretty serious, a pretty serious issue and if, you know, so as Richard Haas says, if the farmer doesn't make any money, he's not going to farm and if we compete on staples coming from California, we won't make any money, the farmers won't do that and so the government or somebody had to figure out a way to make staples profitable enough, you know, with supports, incentives, what have you, so that we do have staples because as in the film, you know, we had chocolate in the film, we had Kohana Rum in the film and there's various chocolate companies and various rum companies in Hawaii, O'Coley Hau, what have you, that are, that are boutique, right and we like boutique because boutique has a white brand and it sells for, you know, a high margin on the mainland but it doesn't feed the people who are hungry, that's the problem so we have to find a way to serve both of those interests, that is to help the farmer make money even with boutique and also to make the farmer, to incentivize the farmer to grow staples so I really would like your thoughts about how we achieve both of those things and I hear what you're saying, you have to have both, you have to have both for a robust agricultural sector, it can't be just the one, staples or boutique, the other, it has to be both because they kind of feed on each other, the expertise you develop in one area is useful in the other especially in terms of, you know, people expertise and business acumen expertise and, you know, the way you organize a farm so my question is how do we achieve both of them? How do we achieve, ask a question again, how do we achieve staples and boutique? So I think we are already growing staples here in Hawaii, we just don't know it, I mean, believe it or not, Larry just, again, four farmers to succeed, right, they either have to be small boutique farms that are growing a high, high valued crop, for example, chocolate, right, you mentioned chocolate, you talk about, we're back to sugarcane because that can be created into a higher value added product, but then at the same time, if you look at aloon farms and you look at Larry Jeff, they're not subsidized by the government, they're conventional farmers, but then you need scale and that's what, and that's all of it and you got to be able to time the market. I don't know what Larry Jeff's secret is, but he grows, if you go to the market, his stuff is not necessarily branded local, but it is a regular beef steak tomato you're buying and it was produced here. And it's competitive in price. It's competitive in price, but again, he has scale. So I don't know how you help farmers achieve scale because that's a big question. If I could write the book on how to take a one acre farmer to a five acre farmer to a 10 acre farmer to a 20 acre farmer, I would have all the answers for you. When we started this ag park in 2011, the goal was to help farmers scale. And I thought, okay, well, you know what, this is great. We can write the book on how to take that small farmer to five acres to 10 acres, but I've been doing this for 10 years now. And it's not that simple. It is not a simple. Well, let me offer a thought, you know, and what came out of the movie was the Dean of the of sitar, I guess, you know, was talking about, hey, let's build, let's build the hot houses. Okay, because you control things, control the temperature, the rainfall, control the nutrition, you know, the season growing, the growing season, all that stuff, you know, and that and to me, that's, you know, obvious, even if it costs money for the hot house is shed, you know, we can do better, we can more yield per acre, more yield for the effort involved. And so that's one thing. But you mentioned something that I think we should focus on here in this discussion just for a minute. And that is vertical farming, farming farming is completely indoors, like in in the Milly Lonnie, the Milly Lonnie experience that was in the movie, how they have more in garden. Yeah, right, Murray's garden. So, you know, they don't use soil, they use PVC, PVC, you know, structures, and you put you put the produce in there and it grows very quickly. And you provide nutrition and water and you have a really perfect kind of crop. And if you expand that, talk about scale, if you expand that to a larger building in a larger building, and then you include the fish in the hydroponic cycle and all that, you're really creating a lot. And the food is good. And conceivably, you can, you know, make it very efficient, as you say, efficient, and grow a lot of it. And we could do that. And it wouldn't be outside. And it wouldn't involve the problems of soil, if you will. We just got to get our hands around the technology. No, no, it's not the technology, it's the cost. And the technology is that I went to Lonnie and the technology is available. It's the building of that greenhouse that is extremely expensive. So, you know, Richard Ha, you mentioned Richard Ha, Richard Ha from Hamaquah Springs had tomatoes and he was growing hydroponic tomatoes. But to read, I think he had it maybe, I don't know, guessing like 10 years. And it was just the life cycle of that greenhouse, aquaponics, I'm sorry, hydroponic tomato was at its end of its life. So he looked at putting, replacing it, but the replacement costs were so high, it would have taken him years and years and years to recoup the cost. So unless you have, like you told me, you give me a billion dollars, talk about Larry Ellis and having a billion dollars, he's able to put that infrastructure in to feed that island. So that island, like I said, it will probably be very food secure down the road if he keeps his commitment to making that island sustainable because the infrastructure cost, maybe down the road, the infrastructure cost will come down. But at the moment, to build those greenhouses and the infrastructure that the aquaponics and hydroponic sits in is very expensive. Upfront capital investment, Larry Ellison can afford that and not everybody can. And maybe part of your billion would go there and grow, create infrastructure that will last a long time. There's not a lot of maintenance involved and keep on producing. But with the billion, we need to decide, you and me right here now, Denise, what kind of crops we want to grow? What are your favorites? It's easy to like boutique because boutique is always fun and sexy and high profit margin. But aside from boutique, I mean, should we focus on beef? I personally think that Hawaii is probably better off focusing on produce because it's healthier because it doesn't have the same effect on the environment. But what do you think? What should we focus on? So I wanted to mention one thing before we close because this is important. I think we all want to support the small farmer and of course, we support small farmers. But I mentioned Mahi Pono, which is a large-scale farm. I also went out to Wailua Fresh, which is a Villarosa farm. They came from the mainland, invested millions and millions of dollars into an egg-producing facility. So they have 200,000 hens. If we want to move the needle on food production, it's going to take large-scale farming to really move that needle fast. If we look at working with, we have 7,300 farms. Well, of those 7,300 farms, well, percent of those farms produce 90% of our food. So we, you know, if we look at about local food. Yes, local food. If we look at, you know, sometimes Hawaii is not that nice to for, you know, not I want to say foreign investment, but non-local investment. But sometimes we need it because we don't have the funding to do it. Mr. Vander Sluut from Hawaii meets just invested or bought the two slaughterhouses. He's a billionaire from, you know, Idaho. I think that if he can invest money into those slaughterhouses so we can have more local beef, I'm happy. You know, we don't have that kind of capital here on our own. So, you know, you talk about the role of government. What's either going to come from government because government has a lot of money, but we've seen already the pattern of government. We haven't put a lot of money toward infrastructure toward agriculture. But now we have these outside investors that, you know, want to support and help us see opportunity, right? Again, those big businesses have to make money. They see opportunity. But if we really want to move the needle on increasing our food supply and increasing sustainability here on our islands, you know, we have to look at that as an opportunity. I mean, you know, those guys have put in large investments to help us move that needle. This wild little fresh has 200,000 hen and they said it usually takes a hen per person in the population. But if they can just replace what's being imported now, that's huge because most of our eggs are imported. One of the things that came up in that downtown forum program I told you about was that if you want to have offshore investment, you have to manage it. This is one of Hawaii's structural weaknesses over the years. We let people come in here and buy us, you know, and then tell us what to do. And so, you know, to me, if the legislature was going to be involved in this, and it should be, it would structure these clusters. It would provide a framework, okay, and the framework would involve a whole bunch of parameters and guardrails. Among them would be if you want to invest in agriculture in Hawaii, you follow our guardrails and our structure. You can't come in here and do everything and anything you want because we ultimately have to control this in order to make the states sustainable. Do you agree with that or should we just make it a free for all? I don't know. I don't understand what you mean by guardrails. Well, if they want to come in here and invest in agriculture, do we limit them in any way? You know, at this moment in time, I can't see how we could do that and why we would, because if we put up more barriers to entering this market, you know, we are not going to have people who want to do ag, and then we're going to look at these 7,300 farms and try to scale. But again, then government's going to have to do something about it. I just don't think putting up guardrails, more guardrails, more regulation, more anything is going to help agriculture. I think if anything, it's going to hurt agriculture. I think we need to be open-minded about others who want to come here and invest and do the right thing because I don't see somebody that wants to help us build the beef industry or build an ag, build the egg industry or build, you know, poultry industry. We don't have a poultry industry. We import almost all of our chickens, right, that we eat. Why is that a bad thing? They're helping us, they're helping us. So if there is a pandemic or there is a natural disaster, we have the farm right here on the islands. We can get it. I just don't see guardrails and regulation as the answer to helping agriculture. I don't think we, I think, you know, poor capitalist society, right? So I'm sorry. I mean, I don't know if that's the way to say it. A very, very good point, Denise. I really appreciate it. I'm glad I asked, but I'm glad you, I'm glad you, you know, you made that answer. One other thing I want to talk about, and that goes to your other activity that you have been involved in over your career in food, or in love, as the Kate Food is love, is the Food and Wine Festival. You've been running that for a long time, and you have developed it and refined it and tuned it up, and it is very important. It raises the question of whether the public understands the problem, whether the public, when they go to the, you know, when the market, and they make their food choices, do they understand about buying local? Do they understand about supporting, for example, candidates for office who will talk about, you know, supporting the agricultural industry? If the public doesn't understand, we'll never get through this. The public needs to understand lobby and, you know, force the government to do what the government should be doing to develop the industry. And the Food and Wine Festival essentially is a channel to do that. Can you talk about, you know, the public sentiment on this and how it can be changed, and to the extent that it should be changed? So let me tell you a little bit about Food and Wine. So what Food and Wine Festival was started in 2011 as a way to help promote local agriculture. The whole goal was to utilize the celebrity of the chef to promote our local farmers, ranchers, and fishermen. We asked all of our chefs to use a locally caught, caught, raised, or grown product. And we, you know, to this day still do that and try to educate the public on how you can utilize local ag and what is grown here, and why it's so much better than a mainland product that comes, you know, 5,000 miles away. So that has always been the centerpiece for Hawaii Food and Wine. Hawaii Food and Wine Festival has also been able to put a spotlight on Hawaii as a culinary destination. You talk about opportunity for agriculture. We have had pre-pandemic 10 million tourists coming to our islands, right? During that time, there was a survey done that said 78.24% of all visitors would be willing to pay more if they knew that that dish or that whole, that, that operator, restaurant operator, or that hotel was buying from a local farm, a local farm, or that product was local. So that says a lot about how the visitor industry can also support and help us. But the goal of that, our festival is really to put a spotlight on our, our islands as a culinary destination and to promote the best of our local agriculture. The other, that, so that's number one, is to make our residents and visitors aware of the kinds of things that can grow here in our islands and how good we are at it. That's, that was the first step, right? Through, through Hawaii Ag Foundation, what, when I did the festival, we had so, we got a lot of media attention, you know, we were able to also put a spotlight on our local post culture. We've been able to use, do a lot with that platform. At a particular point in time, a local legislator asked me, hey, Denise, can we talk about food and ag issues? Because, you know, we have so much, we have so much in fighting in the industry and, or we have people that are against the industry and we just need to kind of get, come together. So can you create something that will address food and agricultural issues to inform the community? And so through the Hawaii Ag Foundation, not through Food and Wine, because I just felt that it would get lost in a lot of the media attention that, you know, the chefs and all that going on, we started something called Eat, Think, Drink. And Eat, Think, Drink, we are in our 18th episode now. Our next one is on June 15th, but we've covered all different kinds of ag and fishing issues across the state, whether it be how to get, how to get investment in ag, about how, how agriculture affects the planet. We've talked about regenerative agriculture. We've talked about farm to school, just a number of ag issues to make the community aware. And we're not, my goal was not to get the ag community out, you know, only the ag community, because then we'd be talking to each other. My goal was to get, you know, the regularly person to start getting interested in these ag issues, because you talk about how we're going to make change. The only way we're going to make change in government is to get the people to push. I mean, when you have a community that wants it, government will do the right thing. I'm going to tell you now, you know, I used to work in Washington, D.C., my very first job out of college was working for Senator Danny, you know, and I was in Washington and I thought, gosh, I made it. I'm at the top of the food chain. I'm at the federal level. Well, you know, I came back home and I started working with the state government. And then I got this opportunity to work with Norwegian Cruise Line at the county level. And I thought, oh my God, they want me to go to the counties. I'm working at the lowest level of government. But what I really figured out in that experience, working with community, working with the local counties, is those are the people that have the part. If community wants it, community is against it or are against, that's when government moves. And that's when that's when things happen. So again, you know, this grassroots effort that we have through Hawaii Ag Foundation is this eat, think, drink platform. But again, yeah, government is going to support what community wants. And so it's a bottom up, not top down. Absolutely. Absolutely. Boy, we have touched on a million things, Danny. And you know what, I mean, I'm hoping that you can come back and bring in some of your, you know, producers and farmers and supporters and technology people. And there's so much to unpack here. I mean, just the issues that you and I have covered here, and we just skirted across the lake on them. There are so many shows that we could do about this. So I hope you come back. I want to hear more. I want to follow the action. I like Think Tech to be a source of information and inspiration about putting food at the top of the priorities. Thank you so much. Denise Yamaguchi, president, executive of the Hawaii Ag Agricultural Foundation, also the Food and Wine Festival, is it? Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Aloha.