 Aloha. Welcome. I'm Glenn Martinez of Olimonic Gardens and my specialty is aquaponics. Today I've got a special guest of Vincent Mina. He's from the Hawaii Farmers Union. He's our current president and he's going to be hosting a big convention this weekend and he's got congratulations and order in that I understand that you guys are going to be chartered. Yes. So this is kind of a convention and celebration all at once, right? Good fun. So happy you're going to be presenting there too. Yeah. Yeah. And along with a long list of people coming. Long list. So can you give us a version of what we're going to do this weekend. It starts Friday, at eight o'clock in the morning at Leeward, no not Leeward, but West Oahu campus. West Oahu campus. The brand new campus, right? So it's an opportunity for people to go see the facilities there. That's right. But it starts at like eight in the morning, right? Yeah. Registrations at eight and then opening is at nine o'clock. And then basically throughout the day we're going to be exploring the relationship between our food and the soils and how to rebuild and restore the soils and vitality in the soils, plus aquaponics delivery as far as ease of application and aquaponics, which you've developed. I think it's just brilliant. And we're just really excited about the level of expertise we got coming in. We have a veed trellis fruit production happening from Peter Solars coming from Australia. The farm comes Saturday, right? And Friday he's going to be doing classroom presentations. So during Friday he's going to be all in the Class Oahu classroom. Lecture hall at first, right? Everybody together. That's right. And then you're going to break in in the afternoon into workshops. That's right. Well in the afternoon at West Oahu campus will be breakout rooms, because we have so many presenters, there's going to be concurrent presentations happening at that time. And then Saturday will be hands-on workshops. You're going to be having a hands-on workshop in aquaponics. We have a natural farming chicken coop workshop. We have veed trellis fruit production workshop. And then also polyculture cover crops being happening on Saturday. So it's going to be very diverse and at the same time having this theme of regenerative, regenerating our soils, regenerating our aquaponics systems, how we can be able to grow nutrient-rich food without having to deplete where we get it from. Yeah, the regenerative. That is close to your heart, right? Now you put on, when I first met you, you were putting on over on Island of Maui the body and soil, SOIL, like body and soil, SOUL, SOIL. And I attended, I think, three of those. You did. And presented some of them. And it was when the Farmers Union was first started in organizing. It came out of Maui, Loha, Aina, our non-profit into body and soil, that we were, our soil conferences that we were putting on. It was kind of funny, it was a statewide organization, but quickly Maui had more members than all the rest of the state combined. Yes. You know, you have a great farming community there. Now at the last state convention, which we did down in Hilo last year, we had the same fellow that's coming up this year from Australia, right? That's right, Peter Solaris. Now when you say the V, when you describe what that is, I saw it. Well, basically, we're putting posts in the ground and from the center point, it's 17 and 8. It's like six by six inch posts, right? Yeah, they're thick posts. That's right, out of the ground. That's right. Actually around, yeah, nine foot, eight to nine foot canopy. But from the center, it goes out 17 and a half degrees one way, 17 and a half degrees the other way, because that's where they find most maximized light can get into the trellis. So the trellis is the plants are on wires, 50-foot section. So it's like a bean pole wire. Exactly. It's a drum wire going back. That's right, four wire high. And then they get... Now they train the tree to go to home. They train them. That's right. And they get double the fruit production on a lower canopy, so ease of harvest. Plus it's ease of when you're furtigating, when you're foliar feeding, so the plants stay real healthy. It's just to... So instead of having a tree just be how borrow your hat here so much, instead of having a tree with a count around service, the tree gets too tall, it gets much harder to harvest. Yeah, I was trying to surprise a fellow man to mention, anything over six feet cost you 50% more to harvest it. So even though it looks good, the birds get it. We don't get it, right? Because these cost too much to get it. That's right. And the hazards and the injuries and everything. All that. So when you do the bee, now you have more surface area, right? More surface area. And the inside area. And then you have double the fruit production. How do you pick the inside? You walk down the inside. You walk right down the middle of it. Right down the middle of it. Wow. And you have to be happy. He said to me, he said, Vincent, if you guys were, if Hawaii was in the southern hemisphere, I wouldn't be speaking at your convention because of the competition. He said, but because you're in the northern hemisphere, I don't have a problem with it. But we're putting in thousands of acres in Australia with this system. So really cool. And then plus it protects from wind damage because you're on wires and you don't have any issues with when you have big storms. Well, when I went to Korea about two years ago, and we toured like an apple orchard place, and I assumed the apple orchard would be outside typical Washington state type apple orchard. No, we walked in. It was a hoop greenhouse 200 feet long, and they had about six rows of apples going down, beanpole. But they were the single pole. But they had apples on both sides, and they harvested it from two feet to six feet. And they put mylar down on the ground. What's that all about? Well, that makes a lot of the apple red. And you get more for a red apple thing. You do a bit of it clear on the bottom. But I imagine when they see this, if you did the V, you just got that much more going for you. Now, when I saw it down there, that was quite productive. It was on yellow. So now, where is this going to be at? Where is this point? This is going to be a Kahumana farm on Saturday. He's going to do, we have trellises in the ground. So people will get to see how it's done. And then I noticed I was out there a couple of weeks ago, and you volunteered. You came over for a mile, and you were helping to put them in. They were digging holes, wooden poles, gravel, concrete, the whole thing. That's right. And anchors. Anchors. Yep, for the wires. Because there's a lot of weight on this thing when you go down to it. Well, what we did, we just dug a hole three feet deep, put a rebar with a half inch galvanized chain that came out of it. It sticks. The chain goes down in the hole. It's buried. And then it sticks a foot out of the ground, and the wire is attached to that. That's it. So there's a big clothesline in the V. There you go. There you go. And then the real beauty, too, is, before we put that trellis in there, we're building our soils with the polyculture cover crops. So, you know, people talk about the whole idea with... When you say polyculture, that just sounds like Polynesian, you know. Well, yeah. But why do you? Poly means many things, right? Many. It's just like permaculture. When I was growing up, farmers were growing up doing soybean, period. Right. Or they did monocrox. Monocrox. And you got one thing out of the monocrox. That's right. So when you're doing poly, you're talking about doing a mixed variety of things. That's right. You know, legumes or things, etc. Mixed up together. So what kind of polycrops would they do? Well, the nice thing about it, Glenn, is it's set up, if people talk about permaculture, different levels of plantings that's happened from the annuals up to trees. Well, this is, in essence, kind of a microcosm of that, because you're putting in polyculture this ground cover, and then you're coming up with other level of cover crops, Sudan grass, and Sun Ham Cove. Do you plow all that under? Or does it stay there year-round? No. The ideal is to roll it and crimp it. Roll it and crimp it. Yeah, you roll it and crimp it. You enjoy literally rocks it into the ground. Yeah, what happens is every seven inches, it crimps. And so it lays down as a cover crop, as a mulch, and then the roots are in place. You're not damaging the soil. And then you come with a yeoman's plow behind, and you can cut a line right through it and drop your plants right there. A yeoman plow? Is that the one that's like a disc that makes the thin slot and open at the bottom? Yeah, it basically goes underneath the soil. But it's not open plow. No. Not open plow. So normally you say plow. People think a rotor tiller coming up, disturbing, killing all my worms. That's right. And we don't want to do that. And I asked some fellows over at a certain university, I said, how do you integrate worms? He says, hey, when the worms hear my tractor coming, they go beep. I go, oh, this is terrible. That's right. But what I was interested in is when they do it, when they before, like they were burning things. I hear a sugar cane. You're burning this sugar cane. We go down to Philippine. They burn the rice. And then somebody comes along and found out if they would just roll and crimp the rice. And just let it rot into the soil. It did a lot. And all the roots are in place. You got all the nitrogen fixing. And you don't get the wind blowing the soil off. Yeah, that's right. It seems like a given. It seems like a given, doesn't it? And what I love is you don't have to weed. That's right. So you say, no, that's polyculture. That's not weed. That's right. That's right. That's polyculture. But tell me about this fellow that's coming up from Australia. Yeah, Peter. Yeah, Peter. Yeah, great guy. And he's doing hundreds or thousands of acres, right? Well, him personally isn't. He has a farm that he has acreage in this. He, I think he's 40 acres of his farm. But there's thousands of acres going in in Australia of this way of doing fruit production. And he's very conservative on the water, too, right? Very conservative on the water. You're watering a straight line as opposed to every 10 feet. That's right. And no aerial spraying in there. No. Now, the foliar feeding is really valuable with this. Now, foliar feeding, that's a great term. I know what you're talking about. But what would you describe it to a layman? Well, a layman, it would be a nutrient-rich, microbial-rich tea. Worm tea. Worm tea, compost tea. Now, when you see foliar spray, you're spraying it on the foliage. Spraying it on the foliage. And natural farming inputs, fermented plant juice. These things that we're making, basically recycling nutrients back onto the farm, we get it from the farm like purslane. Now, what does the plant get out of spraying something on the leaves? Well, that's the thing. Does it absorb it? Yeah. Like, for instance, purslane is a weed. People consider it a weed. Well, we make it, we ferment it with sugar. And then we put one ounce of that per five gallons of water. When we spray it on the plant, it opens the stomata of the leaf. So anything else that's in there goes in the leaf. So that's part and parcel of why we do that. On all of them on the gardens, we found out that we did worm tea, because we raise worms. So we compost everything with that. And then we make 50 gallons of warm tea. I put five gallons on my backpack and I walk around. And we found out if we sprayed the bottom of the leaf, whereas like the tender underbelly of the leaf, it absorbed it in. So one day I'm reading, and it says, a plant absorbs about a third of its nutrition through its leaves, which would be like us absorbing something through our skin. That's right. Right? That's like when it rains and the leaves turn up. Purn up? Right. And so when we did that, it went to Jurassic Park. All of my holly guava, the limbs all broke because the fruit is so heavy. We went out to BYU and we did a farm out there, an eight acre farm. They had bananas all the way around. Banana trees, they had no bananas. And their yams were sickly and they were yellowy. And every time somebody sees a yellowy leaf, they go, oh, it's iron deficient in that, right? Or they test the leaf and it needs calcium. So they put more calcium, but really it was magnesium. It was missing to release the calcium. So it's all this balancing act. So what we found out is the shotgun approach. We would just make up a good quality compost heap. That's right. Whatever compost you got. You put minerals in it? Put the minerals in it. There you go. Whatever the additives. That's right. We put it in there. And we did what we call the shotgun approach, you know, as opposed to the single silver bullet. Right. Where you get, boom. That's right. We went out, we sprayed it on it. And we would wait three days. And if the plant regenerated itself and new leaves came out and it changed color, that was when the ticket, right? Well, we went back out. And when I first went out there, all the beautiful trees going around, this is out in Kahuku here on Oahu. And you can imagine five acres, you know, with the, you know, the windbreak of banana trees around, but no bananas. When we went back, it looked like a junkyard. They had pallets and two by fours. Holding them up? Holding them up because the banana racks were this big around and three feet long. That's so good. And they were just shoved bananas. When we did. It's the way to do it. We did the yams. They took a backhoe. They dug a trench, put their yams into it, and they started crowning. When the yam went down three feet and hit the hard, hard grit we hadn't broken, it pushed up. And they were crowning up on the surface. Too good, huh? And it was just. So how is it? How is it that we're not growing our own food here in Hawaii? Ha. Right, Glenn? Right, right. So our agricultural budget right now, as you know, is 0.37%. Yeah. And we're importing 90% of our food. And yet, listen to this story that you're telling us on this small postage stamp. The amount of food that's grown. How much food we did. Well, this is great. I've got a few more things I wanted to ask you about. We're going to take a little short break here for about one minute. We're going to be right back with you. So don't change that dial, as they say. Be right back. Thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii. Raising public awareness. Some say scuba divers are the poor man's astronaut. At DiveHeart, we believe that to be true. We say, forget the moon. DiveHeart can help children, adults, and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on Earth. Search DiveHeart.org and imagine the possibilities in your life. We're all part of your community. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. So protect there every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Hi, I'm Glenn Martinez of all the Monica Gardens and I'm here on Think Tech. We really appreciate you all joining in and joining us. I've got a special guest, Vincent Mina. He's the president of the Hawaii Farmers Union United. And he's here to share what we got coming up this weekend. We have coming up a big convention and it's at Lewa Community College all day Friday. I'm sorry, West Oahu College. West Oahu College all Friday. Just classroom lecture kind of thing, PowerPoint presentation, life speakers and that. And then on Saturday, we're going out to the farm. And we've been talking about with the v-trellises and that they're going to be on the farm. But let's talk about some of the other people that are presenting. Because this reads almost like a rock concert of everybody who's presenting. Yeah, we have, so God, there's like 18 presenters. Yeah, yeah. And it covers a whole system of agriculture. As you can see all these sponsors that are on this poster, it's a very well supported event. Department of Agriculture is very much involved. West Oahu campus is very much involved. And then we have just people who value Olson Trust from Big Island. He's the largest agricultural landowner in the state at Olson. Very supportive, Ulupono, very supportive. Yeah, this is a little small for y'all to read all the little logos that we've got here. But from down the earth, University of Hawaii, Department of Agriculture, Ulupono, as he just mentioned, what are these here? Okay, so Hoppy is Haiku, Permaculture Institute. And then Don Nelson, basketball player. From Maui, he's got the first hemp house. Well, they're supporting them. He built a hemp house? Yeah, he built a hemp house, first one in Hawaii. And then the YNI Medical Center, very supportive. And hey, Jerry Bernetti's business. Very good. Yeah, Jerry's going to be present. Jerry Bernetti was a good friend of both of ours and really helped us a lot in our lives. Icon of agriculture. And he was just a super champion guy. He passed away a few years ago. But he lives on. Yeah, truly. That's all the work he's doing. Center for Food Safety. Mono Foods from Maui, big supporter. So we have art with a cause. Okay. The wife of Kyle Data has this artist group. They bring the art for silent auction. They get half, and we get half. So it's to help organizations. Well, let's go down the list here. We've got Gabe Brown. Yeah, Gabe Brown's coming from North Dakota. He is the cover crop specialist. He had a workshop recently in North Dakota. They expect the 50 people to show up. 500 came. So he's a rock star at North Dakota around cover crops. He's office synthetics on his land. Other farmers are coming to him. Will you farm my land? Right. You know, so he's a great guy. And then Glenn Martinez, this guy's from Waiman Hollow. Going to do airlift. Hey, he's a full hot air. Well, no, the whole beautiful thing what you brought to the table is this airlift. And I'm implementing that on our farm with our compost tea. I love it, Glenn. So you're doing great stuff with that. You're in Hawaii with the expense of electricity. People need to save the money and find a cheaper way to do it. So your brilliance there shines. And then Mike Dupont, he's from Ag Extension. He does natural farming education. So we do a big supporter on the natural farming convention we had down on the Big Island. That's right. That was one of where we hoped to get 100 people to show up. 350 people came. And then I, my wife, we ended up following with him. Twice he's gone to Korea to all the natural farms there. So I went for one week here. We saw like 11 farms in one week or something like that. It was like three farms a day. This guy walks the talk. And he also, Michael Dupont with the Ag Extension agent, he did the pig farm down on the Big Island. No smell, no flies. No odor, deep litter. It's a wonderful thing. Wonderful thing. So he's not just like a, something that you think, oh, we're having somebody from university come out. They're like coming from a classroom out to the farm. This guy truly lives on the farm. And then we have Albie Miles. He's a professor at West Oahu campus. And he's doing a really wonderful program, sustainable program with the students out there. So I'm really excited for Albie. And then Christopher Spanzano, this man, it's Forman Matter. It's the light bulb here. They're a big sponsor. But Christopher is developing this computer-based system that's going to connect all the dots for farmers to make it easier for them to get through markets to be able to know what's available. So it's a wonderful thing. People scab at it every now and then. Yeah, but Christopher, he pulled it off. He did, this guy's a brilliant mind. No doubt. And then we have Jennifer Kuchira. She's the soil health expert for NRCS West Coast region. She's coming. Jennifer's beautiful. She does the grass, right? That grass and that? Yeah, she does all. Just anything having to do with soil health. And then Bob Schaefer, body and soil fame. He's an agronomist that's just doing kawaii coffee. He's turned that operation around, making it organic. He's done all the food waste compost for San Francisco. So Bob, he's coming. He met a fellow here in the sugar business who used to be a Forman or a supervisor for the big sugar cane company. And they closed down. And one of the guys said, when he was in the sugar cane business, he hated the California grass. It grows up, right? And Bob changed his whole life on that. Got him to do, again, flower it back down. And in less than three years, they have worms on the property. So it's amazing, the connections they did. Truly. And Sheole Mula, she, a beautiful young superstar, changing poop water into drinkable water. So she's going to be. See, I don't even know what you're asking me if I drink my worm too. I see you're drinking some. Yeah, well, I'm still trying to work that out. Doug Fine is the hempster. He's going to, he's the hemp rock star from the mainland. And Doug is going to come and have, there's going to be a panel on hemp production in Hawaii. So excited about that. And then Lely, Lely Vi, she does extractions. You know, they're doing sandalwood oil extraction up in Montelua. They take the old sandalwood trees when they're dead. And they still have oil in them though. They harvest a tree. All the babies come up. So it's reforesting the sandalwood forest. That's something else. And at the same time, it's got whiteout on this side. Yeah. No, it's just whiteout. Beautiful what they're doing. Fantastic. And then Jamie Burton from Hark, she's doing the polyculture cover crops used into tropicals. So she brings that expertise. And Ted Radovich, you know. I've worked with him for like 20 years. Rock star. Yeah, yeah. Ted's great. He is like Mr. Organic University of Hawaii. There's about six people over there. But Ted Radovich has been, and he's become the chair of his department over there. That's right. And it's kind of funny. You go to University of Hawaii and all the ag departments you think of and that, it's only him. And who's the other fellow? His name is flipping my mind right now. Oh, Jonathan Dienek. Jonathan Dienek and one more. He was with the Farmers Union. Oh, Hector Benzuela. Hector Benzuela. Yeah. Real champions. That's right. I mean people who really lived the life. That's right. Yeah. And then we got David Fisher is doing a wonderful class right now for HFUU members on business development, regenerative business development, business plans to get farmers more in the mentality of making money. You know? That's it. And then we have Tulsi Gabbard going to open up the Saturday Farm Festival at Kahumano. And Rep Kreegan who's the ag chair of the house and Senator Gabbard who's the Senate ag chair. Otherwise known as Dad. Yeah. Yeah, Tulsi's Dad. Yeah. And Scott Enright, the director of agriculture. You got the trifecta. You've been our friend. They're all members. Richard Kreegan is the vice president of the Kahoo chapter. I'd like to give a shout out for Scott Enright. Natalie and I went down and you were there. Vincent is on the Department of Agriculture Board. And we got two things turned around. We saved the circuses. That's right. The tigers and elephants can still come. But what we were there for at the meeting was the champion getting the Nalodocus fish off the A list super restricted. Can't bring it to Hawaii to the B list. You can bring it in as long as you meet conditions. And it was here anyway. And it was here anyway. That's right. And so we got it moved over. So nobody can explain how it ever got on the list. And as far as the animals go, you know, I mean, that was pretty contentious. I think, you know, I abstain from that vote because it was the film industry can still bring them in. Well, if the film industry can bring them in, then why are you trying to come down on the circus? Right, right. Plain fields got to be leveled. It's got to be leveled all the way across. Edible Hawaii Islands is a sponsor. Armstrong Produce is a sponsor. Yeah. We have Oahu R.C. and D. Produce. Yeah. They don't grow anything. They're wholesalers. They're wholesalers, but they buy a lot of local produce. But keep in mind to the farmer to have a place where you go and they'll buy everything you got as long as it meets your quality standard. And it really helps with the food safety issues because they will take care of the handling and the people they sell to trust them. That's right. That we will deliver it clean. They'll wash it. They'll package it. They give it to Disneyland Hotel or Eolaniya, wherever it's going. And so having a good wholesaling is good stuff. Truly. Pamela Boyer from Farm Lovers Markets. They're a sponsor. Local IA. They're sponsoring the Fish Ford. North Shore Livestock sponsor in the beef. Sunfresh Hawaii helps sponsor. National Farmers Union, of course. Kahanoa and the Greens, our farm. Scratch and Peck. Mariah Raftree is going to be part of the presentation on Saturday. She's a big player for fermented grains for the chickens. So this is, you know, this is just, this is all about body and soil. This is like a rock star poster. Here's what's going on. Truly. This is all the people. It's going to be good fun, man. I tell you what, something Natalie and I going to the convention sit together here for about the last eight years. Yes, we attend to classes and we certainly learn something. You know, I mean, you sit there, you learn, you get some education. But in the breakout sessions, in the donut and the coffee session, they're strolling around the farm where you meet and you become personally acquainted with the people. Well, let's talk about the food, Glenn. Yeah. The food right now, we have all local wars. It's not going to be coffee and donuts. It's going to be like the kind. We're going to have good food. Good food, brother. You know that. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then also, it's a really great point, the networking that happens. Let me jump into, how can people find out about how to do this thing and how to sign up? H-F-U-U-H-I dot org. So it's Hawaii Farmers Union United, H-F-U-U-H-I for Hawaii dot org. Can register. And either one day or the whole weekend, I think the key is, like you say, Glenn, you know, as a farmer, I'm a family farmer, you're a family farmer. We're in the trenches. Yeah. So these get us up in the clouds. Yeah. With one another. We get the network of people throughout all the state. We have 14 chapters, so all those presidents who are farmers are going to be together. Yeah. Come on, this is Electric Avenue. Yeah, that's right. Then we go back to our farms, we're kissing the walls of the trench. We're happy to be back on our trenches, doing what we're doing. Comfort zone. Yeah. But this way we have a chance to share, you know? When I met Jerry Bernetti and you get that personal relationship going on, to me, it's the difference between buying a book and just reading it and having lunch with the author and getting to talk to him and ask the behind-the-scenes question. That brilliance is going to be here. Yeah. That brilliance is going to be at this event. By the way, down here, the National Farmers Union in the corner, let's talk for a moment about the celebration we got this weekend of being chartered. What do you mean? You know, as well as I do, because you were past president of the Farmers Union, that it's a national organization that's 115 years old. And so they are extending us. They're coming to deliver a charter. And what that means basically, since I've been president, I go to the, and you've been at the, when you go to the mainland for national board meetings, well, I'm at that board table but I don't have a vote. Right. And now? We have a vote. You have to vote. We have a vote. So you know, as well as I do, if I'm sitting here and you have a vote, I listen to you a lot closer. There you go. You don't have a vote, right? Yes. And so it's cool. And so we've met all of the membership requirements, financials, the governance. We have the core leadership. They said, you guys are ready. We're going to charter you. Well, that happens Saturday at 2.30. Congratulations. Thanks, Glenn. It's been great. Well, we're just about out of time. They're giving me the wrap it up sign, as they say. And so I want to thank everybody for coming to us. Think Tech has put us on the air and we're really happy to share this and we're going to have some other good people coming in here. And we're going to share some more. And I'll be doing the follow-up report, hopefully next week, how this all went and have some scenes for you. Thank you all so much for tuning in. We do appreciate it. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you.