 Welcome to your Thursday afternoon with Justine and Matt and the Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Every other week, me and Matt are here and we bring on farmers, all kinds of food producers, different business owners, and organizations that all contribute to the local food system that exists here in Honolulu and across the state of Hawaii. We get to hear their history and background and learn why they love what they do and kind of the role they see for themselves in local food and what they see coming up. We get all the inside scoop. All of it. All of it. So who do we have on today Matt? Thanks Justine. So yeah, actually today we're even going outside of Hawaii. We're going international. So super exciting for that. So with us today we have Scott Allen and also Scott McCoy who are with Uncultivated Inc. So thank you so much for being on the show with us today. Thank you very much. Happy to be here. And yeah, we've been going back and forth for a few weeks now trying to get you guys scheduled. So thank you for... I'm glad all worked out and we're all here together. Yeah, thank you. So before we kind of get into your own personal backgrounds, give us a little background on Uncultivated. What is that all about? So Uncultivated, we founded it late 2015 and we were hoping to be able to address food security issues, help communities build more resilient food systems. Nice. So you guys are based here in Hawaii. So obviously working on projects here, but then you guys are kind of all over the globe. Where else are you guys working? Yeah. The initiatives that we're working on are really meant to be able to bring them to communities all over the world. So currently we're working with a group or community in Haiti to try to bring a few of our initiatives to there to help build more resilient local systems in Haiti. And so what exactly are those initiatives? You guys have your kind of main goal and then what are your specific projects look like? Yeah, so we've got two main initiatives that we're working on right now to address building resilient food systems. The first is the Abundant Earth Initiative, which taps into my background a little bit. And that is a program where we set up agroforestry hubs in communities where community members can come learn about agroforestry and regenerative agriculture and then take those seeds and cuttings and use them to grow food at home or start another seed bank somewhere else as well. And then we've got the Mapping Local Food Sheds Initiative. Yeah, so we're also trying to encourage communities to support local food sheds. A food shed being the geographic area between where food is grown and where it's consumed and then ultimately where it goes as far as waste. And we're trying to involve communities, get them to participate in discussions, get them to know where the different players are within their food systems so that they can better support them and also have a better idea of how resources flow through their community. So we have mapping initiatives that we actually launched earlier this year that was global. We partnered with GIS Core, which is a volunteer-based organization that provides GIS services. And we collaborated on this and we had over 150 communities worldwide participate in helping map contributors to their local food shed. So to clarify, you have kind of a broad educational resource center kind of attribute to the organization as well as kind of a hands-on workshop type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We're trying to approach it from both angles. So be able to educate and inform and give people tools to become more in touch with their local food system and then also ways to build it and actually use those tools to produce their own food and get in touch with that aspect of it, yeah. And the kind of local global approach, if you can, I guess, consider that is important because you can get different communities approaching the same things in different ways around the world and when they're all kind of aiming for the same goals, then you can do cross-comparisons and you can see what's working here, what's not. Maybe if they were to approach it in the same way as this community, they would have better results. So it's really community building and what you guys are doing around using the different tools of agroforestry as a way to do that. So I definitely want to, it's interesting that I guess the relationship you guys have where Scott, you have more of the GIS computer background and then Scott, you have the permaculture agroforestry and also small business background. Let's hear a little bit about that, can you talk about what kind of business are you doing here in Hawaii? Yeah, so I've been in Hawaii for almost five years now and I went to school originally for environmental studies and in sustainability. I worked on a lot of organic farms throughout college and after college and it was actually kind of the last thing in the world that I ever wanted to get into. I had no interest, yeah. Because even in organic agriculture you can have a lot of destructive practices along with it but then about three years ago I discovered permaculture and got my permaculture certificate and since then it's become pretty much everything that I do. I started a business setting up regenerative agroforestry systems in people's homes. So I primarily do that now and then we started the non-profit about a year and a half ago and that's just another way to approach this problem, kind of taking both a for-profit angle and a non-profit angle to help build more resilient systems and get people growing food. So uncultivated offers these resources free to the community? Yes. Workshops are free to attend and the seeds and things are giving out? Yeah, totally. And then my for-profit business I offer at home design consultation installation and maintenance of their own food forest at home but through the non-profit we also provide everything that you would ever need to replace my job essentially. But it's really just another way of trying to push local food and growing food as much as possible. Could you explain what the difference or if there's a difference between setting up say like a permaculture garden in someone's backyard versus an agroforest? Yeah, so agroforestry... Would you even say that in agroforest? That makes sense. What? Food forest. Food forest works, yeah, yeah. So permaculture largely works with regenerative systems kind of closing the loop and agroforest tree in particular is a way of cultivating food that combines both trees, shrubs, herbs and it's largely perennial crops. So it's something that you plant once and you're essentially just pruning and harvesting. And agroforestry, yeah, super simple. I love it. Really what I advocate. It's essentially mimics nature. It's taking what nature does to create abundance, which is what it's been doing for millions and millions of years. You take those same principles like no-tilling, using nitrogen-fixing species to grow your own fertilizer, creating habitats for beneficial insects so you reduce the need for any pesticides and with the no-till you dramatically reduce herbicides. So if you walk into a forest, no one's watering it, no one's spraying it, no one's killing it, no one's using herbicides, right? And we're taking those same principles to grow food. In general, it's far more low maintenance than home gardening. The kind of stuff that you see on like a home depot commercial or based bed and Miracle Grow and all that. Those do look amazing on those commercials though. They do look really good. I have to admit, yeah. But there's an appeal about agroforestry aesthetically because it's three-dimensional. So it's not just this sort of flat two-dimensional space like you see in monocropping or even a lot of home vegetable gardens. But it's really applicable, especially to the tropics. It's the way that the Hawaiians grew food for really a long time. Their upland dry food production, that wasn't the low-e fields, was mixed agriculture of breadfruit and bananas and dryland colo, sweet potato, sugarcane, things like that, all sort of working together in the natural system. And so when you guys are doing these workshops, can this be applied commercially or the ideas that everyone's kind of setting up their own independent space or is there community space in terms of having this abundance of food that's growing locally? Or are you guys also consulting with farmers to apply this on a commercial scale? Yeah. So we provide all of the educational material and resources and we do workshops for people. When it comes to specific consultations for residences and farms and things like that, we shy away from. Especially because we're really interested in creating community centers and community hubs. So if someone's interested in holding workshops and something that has a sort of outreach approach, then we would love to work with them. But it has to be something that becomes really multifaceted in the community and their contribution to give back. Before we have to get away to a break, I want to hear a little bit from Scott. A little bit on your background. So you have more of the GIS part to Scott's, a former culture background. Yeah. So I've been working in the GIS community for about seven years now. And most of that time I've been employed in the private sector, but I've also in my spare time worked with other non-profit organizations. I've gotten to do a lot of community-based mapping projects, which is kind of what influenced some of our own initiatives. Getting out and showing communities how they can use something as simple as their cell phone to collect data. And that data can be immediately available and help them kind of understand their community and the world around them better is definitely something that has been a draw as far as civil society goes. Truthfully I didn't really know too much about agriculture until I met this guy. And that's part of what I really like about this. I'm always learning new things. I'm always out there trying to help him as much as I can when we're in the garden and just absorb as much of the information because I actually grew up on a tobacco farm. But that's monocropping. And I understand how much work goes into it and it's every year. You're just planting a large crop and you have to do it every year. But then you take something like agroforestry and not only are you creating something that you don't have to redo every year, but it's more space efficient too because you're stacking the layers vertically. You can have food growing on food, a fruit tree with an edible vine growing up it. And then right underneath it you have bush and it makes sense. We've been kind of working from these different angles to find all the different ways that we can connect these different pieces. We are going to have to go to a break soon, but not yet. Can you talk about a project that's going on locally that you guys have going on in Waimanala? Waimanala? Well, we are teaming up with I Love Nalo, the restaurant. And they've been on the show before. I don't know if you knew that. Beautiful. Mike was on it, right? Yeah, Mike was on the show. Yeah, totally. He was like guest number two. Oh, really? Wow. What a privilege. Yeah, I actually am going to be working with I Love Nalo and Mike to help bring more recipes for local foods. There's a lot of local foods that are really underutilized that aren't part of the common palette here in Hawaii. And you think there's also farmers aren't growing them? Partially, but it also has to do a lot with how much food is imported and then actually just shifting restaurants and people's palates over to more local foods. You know, if you walk into somewhere like Safeway or something, most of those fruits and vegetables you see don't really grow that well in Hawaii. They're more for northern climates, you know, things like lettuce and cucumbers and things like that. But yeah, we're working with the restaurant I Love Nalo to provide free workshops in the garden that they have out back. If you haven't been there, definitely go check it out. I did it, so it's super rad. Yeah, let me have a little taste of what you're doing in Wabanala. We're going to take a quick 60-second break and get back to it. Aloha. My name is John Waihei and I used to be a part of all the things that you might be angry at. I served in government here and may have made decisions that affects you. So I want to invite you in. I want to invite you in to Talk Story with me and some very special guests every other Monday here at Talk Story with John Waihei. Come on in, join us, express your opinion, learn more about your state and then do something about it. Aloha. Please, Sam. Hi, and welcome back to Hawaii Food and Farmers Series. I'm your co-host, Justiney Spiritu. This is my co-host, Matthew Johnson. Today we have Scott and Scott from Uncultivated talking about the organization they started that is not only an educational, informative resource, but also doing hands-on workshops to kind of spread the knowledge and practice of agroforestry in communities. And so we've heard that you've partnered with a restaurant, I Love Nalo in Waimanalo. And I want to hear more about what's going on internationally. How did you connect with this group in Haiti and what does that project look like specifically? Yeah, so I guess sometime middle of last year we were put in touch with an agronomist local to Haiti, specifically working out of the community of Basin. And we started talking and we wanted to approach it where we weren't just telling them here's what we want to do, but kind of get an idea of what the community wanted, what they needed and see if there was room for us to kind of collaborate and kind of co-create a project. So we've been in the works for that, or with that for about a year, and we're finally starting to gain some traction. We've been doing a lot of preliminary research about the community, trying to get to know them as people, even like what they do in their spare time, what sorts of foods are already grown there. And the aim is to start an agroforestry hub within Haiti to provide solutions to the deforestation that they've, not that they've done, but Haiti is very heavily deforested. And the agronomist that we're working with is involved with a lot of projects to re-force Haiti. So... I'm sorry. We actually have a Colin question. Oh. So we have a question for you. I'm going to be holding here, right? So they're going to talk to me. Yes, hi. I'll repeat the question. I have a question. I heard you briefly mention Miracle Grove. I have a home garden. Where do you folks stand on the use of pesticides? I get really frustrated when I get fungus and stuff like that growing on some of my fruits and vegetables that I have. So where do you stand on the use of pesticides and even fertilizers? Okay. So we have a question from a home gardener that is kind of asking about the use of pesticides and fertilizers. So she says she's very frustrated with kind of the diseases and bugs that are kind of getting at what she's growing. And so what exactly is your stance on that or how can that be? How is that addressed through the system? Yes. It almost says alternative to Miracle Grove. Yeah. Okay. So I totally sympathize. And I'm sorry to hear all that. I've gone through plenty of that. So a lot of it is going to be plant selection. So choosing plants that are really resilient to local pests, obviously, in the tropics. There's no winter, pests don't die, diseases don't go dormant. So there's a lot of pressure from all angles. Another aspect is having a lot of biodiversity in your garden. So creating habitats for beneficial insects. So using perennial flowering plants, perennial basil is one of my favorites, attracts plenty of bees and pollinators and ladybugs, things that will kind of naturally combat pests. So those are beneficial insects that are attracted to what you're trying to grow. Yeah. So creating habitat, creating ecosystems. Essentially any time that a garden is heavily infested with pests or disease, it's really important to look at that as a symptom of something that's wrong, rather than actually that being the problem. So you have to look at the sort of ecosystem that you're creating. A lot of that, just like really basic gardening tips, like mulching is super important, it increases the fertility, it helps retain moisture. Also helps with weeds. Helps with weeds, having perennial crops. I obviously in agroforestry, mixing fruit trees and shrubs along with your garden vegetables is really important, but yeah, a lot of it is also having foods that are resilient to that as well too. So things like colo and cassava, sweet potato, breadfruit, things like that. So is there an upcoming workshop of yours that our guest can attend and transform her pesticide and feed it in with the agroforestry? Yes, I would love that. So we're going to be hosting a workshop at Isle of Nalo, probably in the next month. So stay tuned, check out uncultivatedearth.org, we'll post everything there, check out our social media. Awesome. Thanks for that advice. Yeah. Let's jump back over to Haiti. Yeah, thanks for the call, was that the first time that's ever happened? I think first successful. I think I tried to call and you guys were like, man. Yeah, so Haiti. We're working with the community to build an agroforestry hub that can be used to teach workshops like we do here and then also provide propagation materials so that then this hub can be used to start other hubs within Haiti. So then the idea is any reforestation that is taking place cannot just be a tree, but it can also be vegetation that will produce food as well. I guess I could be a good, maybe not argument, but another benefit to go into community if for some reason they're deforesting their area because maybe they can make money and if you say, okay, well, you need to go put trees back in, but if there isn't a direct economic benefit, I could see that being making it easier pushing, hey, if we go in and we, you know, all the benefits of reforesting an area, but also if there's food that could be either just providing sustenance or economic benefit as well, that makes it a much more, I guess, stronger package of what you're offering. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of issues to address, you know, obviously, malnutrition is one and that's one that we face in here in Hawaii and the developed world all over. And then creating economic opportunities for these as well. But yeah, reforesting with food and actually using regenerative practices because so many, so much of the nutrients have been stripped away from the soil, especially when you clear cut an area and you deforest, you become so susceptible to erosion. Like what you're seeing with like oil palm right now in like Indonesia, Malaysia. Yeah, yeah. So actually, essentially with agroforestry and sort of permaculture practices in general, you are taking what nature is doing and putting it in fast forward. So you're kind of creating rapid succession to develop mature forest. So you use pioneering species, species that fix nitrogen into the soil, creating a mulch layer. You know, if you walk into a forest, there's no such thing as bare soil. Everything is covered in leaves that reduces erosion, helps hold in the moisture. You can actually regenerate entire landscapes that way by essentially by holding the moisture, you can regenerate streams, bring back wildlife. And eventually, if you do it on a large enough scale, you can affect the regional climate. It's kind of a snowball effect. If you deforest an area, it kind of dries it up. But if you start reforesting it, it brings it back. Awesome. So we're actually out of time. Never. Just to kind of wrap it up, what's kind of next? You have this project on Waimanalo. This project in Haiti is the goal. Do you get more workshops going locally, or do you guys want to spread your footprint out globally? What's kind of the next thing? Say both. We're still really young at this point. We were just founded a year and a half ago. We want to continue to build networks here and do more work here, but also expand and help communities and learn from them as well with globally. Awesome. Great. Thank you guys so much for coming on. Thank you.