 that tourists will pay more for locally grown food. This is a proposition that we will discuss here today because it may or may not be true. We're going to find out exactly what the methodology was in reaching that conclusion, what the data was, and exactly how Jerry found that. Jerry Agusa from the Tim School, the Travel Industry Management School in the Charlotte College of Business who led a team to research that very question. And we're going to test his proposition here today, okay? You know, I would be surprised, Jerry, if you found that tourists would not pay more for locally grown food, but you didn't find that, did you? Oh, well, first Aloha, thank you for having me. We really appreciate the opportunity to share our last latest research project. And yep, to answer your question, we found that the tourists are willing to pay more and help both help support local farming, as well as, you know, by doing that, we help lower the carbon footprint and having Hawaii be more sustainable. But isn't it a question of degree, you know? I mean, if I said to my patron in the restaurant, you can have locally grown food, but it's gonna, we have a premium of three times the regular price, you know, that may not get you to the same result. That's true, and the thing is about that, you mentioned three times, that's 300% more. And that's not always, that's not the case, you know? When you go to most supermarkets, whether it's times or you go to food land or you go to Safeway, when you're looking at the pineapples, the majority of the time, the pineapple that's less expensive does not come from Hawaii. It is coming from a place, I don't know, Thailand, Philippines, et cetera, where labor is so inexpensive that it makes it more cost effective to grow it there, put it on a ship and then ship it halfway across the globe to come here. You know, one of the things that, you know, if you recall, just now during the primaries, especially the gubernatorial and the lieutenant governors, they were all mentioning food security, right? We have, it has been said by many people that 90% of the food that is consumed here in Hawaii is imported, whether by ship or by airplane. And we know that, you know, we've had huge supply chain challenges in the last two years. And we've seen it, you go to the supermarket shelf and, you know, sometimes there's a whole row empty. I mean, a few weeks ago, I went to Target and there wasn't one star of peanut butter, not my kind, not the JF, well, the skipping, none, zero. And even the one that, you know, they mixed the jelly with the peanut butter, which I really despise, but if you have that feeling one left, you might have to do that. That wasn't even there. And I just thought, wow, this is really, really, really taking a toll, this supply chain. And we need to start to look. And I try to explain to my wife all the time, even if you don't need it today, if there's something you like or you might need in a week or two, when we go to Costco or we go to a supermarket, you better buy it because there could be two or three weeks without that shipment coming in. And that's become more and more so with food. It's okay when people would accept it, you know, when we have a shortage of cars, let me say, okay, we just fixed our car, we don't have to get a new car or the price gets so much higher because of that. But when it starts to go to food, then everyone eats, right? Everyone needs to eat. And we can see that there's been a huge challenge with food supply. And here, especially, we saw the prices go really, really up. Now, is that all because of supply chain? Possibly, all because of COVID, maybe. I think that there's been a lot of profit, record profits at some of the supermarket chains across the United States and across the world. And I think everybody said, okay, charge a little more. You know, inflation on food went up 12.9% last year. Me as a state employee, we didn't get a raise last year. Today is the first year that we're getting a raise after three years of zero. So, you know, it really affects those of us that are working for the state. And you can see people must really be in trouble for food. And that's why you see so many more food drives and food banks, et cetera. Now, what we did for this study was to see if the tourist would be willing to pay more, to pay more if it was locally grown food. And this is something that, you know, we asked, we surveyed US residents who are coming to Hawaii or who have been for Hawaii. So the majority of the folks that, everybody was from Hawaii, we got 554, no, 454 respondents. And with that at a 95% confidence level, we're very happy with that size of a sample. And, you know, one of the things that we found is that the majority of the people, almost 80%, 78.2% said, we'll pay more for locally grown food. We'll pay over 16% or more. So you're talking about if something costs $10, they'll be willing to pay another $1.60 or more. Now, there are some people who mentioned they would be 25% to 50% higher and that was about 10% would pay 25% or 50% higher. And, you know, when people are on vacation, they're willing to spend more money. They're on vacation. Now, what we need to see is if this, but if we grow more food with the price then go down, we grow more food locally. And do we have enough people that are willing to pay to bring it to scale, to bring it to scale? Now, I've spoken with a number of chefs, both at restaurants and at some of the high end hotels. And what they said is the challenge with buying locally grown food is can they keep it, can they make the delivery when we need it, right? Can they grow it and then at the amount that we need? And that's one of the biggest challenges. And I know that there's been a push, like I mentioned earlier during the gubernatorial elections, all of the candidates, especially on the Democrat side, kept talking about food security. Yesterday, Councilman Tommy Waters was on the news last night and he actually said, can you imagine that we have 90% of our food being imported? And if we have a major disaster, whether it's a hurricane or some other disaster, that we only have food on the island for two days, for two days, then what do we do? Then what do we do? And I thought that was very, sort of dippinous that I came in the news last night and that we were scheduled to talk about it today. But you don't break food down, you just say food. The 16% factor in that chart, you just say food. But is it different like for caviar? Is it different for steak? Is it different for some kind of fancy food? We didn't break it down to that. We didn't break it down to that. But I think what we asked is, would you be willing to pay more for locally grown products, number one? And how much more would you pay for that product? So if we grow a locally grown thing, right? Local beef, big island beef. Would you be willing to pay instead of $20? If you're willing to pay 20% more, then you're really gonna pay $24 for it. Or $40 for 20% more. Now you're up to $48 for the steak. Are you willing to do that, right? We asked them to, if you're willing, yes or no. 80, 78% or almost 80% said yes. And then we had it in the categories. Up to 5%, 6% to 30%. So what are those other bar numbers signified from the blue down to the red? So you got six to 10 at the blue. Green is the top one, right? So green is up to five. Then six to 10 is blue. So 23%, they did that. And then 11 to 15%, another 16.5% said they would pay that. And at 16 to 25%, almost 10%, 9.89%. And at 25, 26% to 50%, 7.91. Which then 50 to 75% is 1.1%. And then those that are more than 75% answered almost 2% answered that. So if you go to the amount 16 or more percent, you have 20% of those who are willing to pay more. So how does this translate? You mentioned early on in your comments that there are food chains out there that take advantage of the situation with the inflation. And they actually create their own inflation by raising the prices of whatever is on the shelf. And I'm sure they have some sort of justification, even if it's only in their own mind. But the reality is they're improving their bottom line. Okay, so I go into a restaurant and I'm one of those respondents on the chart. And I look at the menu and it says this is locally grown, whatever, peas, I don't know, pick a food. And it's gonna cost me a little more, okay? So it's gonna cost me 16%. I'm willing to pay. I don't know, maybe the restaurant owner says, look, I'm gonna give you two choices. You can have it from Peru or you can have it from Waimalu, Waimalu, sorry. Waimalu. Where ever the... Waimanalo, Waimanalo has great forms. Okay, Waimanalo. Coming from Waimanalo and I'm willing to pay more for that. So on the menu, I say to the waiter, I'll have the one, I'll have the piece from Waimanalo. And he says, very good, sir. We're gonna put that on your bill. You're gonna get charged more. Now, how do I know that that 16% is going either... Well, where is it going? Is it going to the bottom line for the restaurant owner? He's like, I don't know, maybe it's going for the waiter. Maybe the waiter is going to encourage me. Take the Waimanalo piece, they're better, you know? Or alternatively, nobody says anything and the farmer gets it somehow. The farmer in Waimanalo, he gets it. And in that way, we encourage local farmers to grow more. And that goes to your other point about food sustainability and all that so that we don't run out of food after two days. So how do these things connect is what I'm saying. How does it connect with the restaurateur making more money, the farmer making more money and us having a more sustainable agricultural industry? How do those things connect? Well, first of all, here in Hawaii, right? You mentioned, you made a comment. How do we know if it's Waimanalo piece? And maybe it's not served on the menu. We have a really strong truth in menu form. Really strong that if you say it's Waimanalo piece or you say it's Big Island beef, it better be. It better be. Well, they'll come and they can hammer you. You can get big, big trouble. You know, if you say New England lobster, you can't be bringing lobster from the Caribbean. You cannot. That's against the law. Same thing here when, you know, when you say it's locally grown and we just had a big court case, right? With the Kona coffee, right? We finally had that being clarified what it has to be, the cold Kona coffee. You can't just have a few beans in there and say it's Kona, you know? And then, and that going back to the state law, the state, the truth and menu law, just like if you're selling a quarter pound hamburger, it better weigh four ounces or more when you put it on the grill. It has to be. So truth in menu, weights and measures here in the state are very, very strong on that. So there's the first thing. Second thing, why do people want to buy locally grown product? One, we found out that they want to support- Wait, wait, wait, let's try it, but this is really important. When you say people, you're talking about tourists, are you talking about everybody? Well, we didn't get a chance to survey. That's our next study. We're gonna do now the local residents. Don't forget to collect, you know, because of the COVID and we're still in the protocol for the internal review board or IRB at the university. We're still not allowed to go and speak directly face to face. We have to subcontract out someone who then does this online. We use Movietvato, which is a online research company and they help us collect the data. In the past, I've used Omnitrac, a local company that helped me collect the data, you know, run by Chris Cam, very good friend of mine. And that's how, you know, the tourism authority as well as the Department of Economic Development and Tourism, they all hire these companies to collect the data for them. We cannot, because of COVID and the protocols, we cannot hand out surveys anymore, face to face, you know. So we found a way around it to keep going. And then the next time, like I said, the next study, we're gonna ask local residents perceptions of. Now, what we found when we asked the tourists, don't forget we asked the tourists from US mainland only, written in English and that they had to have been here. Whether it's the first time, they've only here once or multiple times. Now, the majority of the folks who answered this time were first time visitors. So what we find in other past research, a first time visitor is usually spending more money than a repeat visit, right? They're willing to try everything and so on. You know, if they're here for a special occasion, weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries, these folks spend big bucks. That's why we want, you want the honeymoon because the honeymooner, happy time, willing to spend more money. And then the memories of when they come back, they'll come back. Remember we had our honeymoon? Remember when we were happy? Remember that when you're married and you were happy? I'm joking. Everybody knows Jerry jokes about being married. All right, so let's see. Some of the other things that we found, one of the great things is that we found that people, this study provided quantitative evidence that people will be willing to pay more from the tourist perspective. And that could help our local officials understand the hate. You know, you get, this year, we probably hit almost nine million tourists, maybe a little shy because the Japanese, we were hoping the Japanese were gonna come at half, right? We had 1.6 million in 2019. We were hoping that they'd get to about, you know, 800,000 this year due to a lot of challenges. The biggest challenge today is the end. The end today went to 143. I mean, this is just way out of line. You know, 110 is the number, right? We're looking at one. No, no, the reality though, when I read about this yesterday, the reality is the American dollar is very strong all over the world, not only in Japan. I'm not sure I understand the process, but that will make it difficult for tourists from many places to come. But the thing is that Japanese are by far our number one tourist market, right? They want 1.6 million, the highest spenders. We really needed them to start to come. Their government had all these restrictions by you had to take a COVID test before you come back. You had to quarantine, then they only allowed 10,000 people. At first 7,000 people a day then, 10,000 people a day. Tourists had to stay in groups going there. You had to stay with the tour guide. You couldn't be around groups of other Japanese residents. And that was because it's an airborne disease. They were just looking out for their residents. And then as this is happening, the end was at 130, then 133, then 135. And then the other day I was talking to a reporter, it was on Friday, it was 136, 138, I said 138. And then today, 143. And it looks like it's not even slowing down. It's gonna keep going. So the Japanese tourists as a whole, they booked their travel 90 days, 180 days out. And they usually pay for a package. And with that package being the dollar being so high right now, they're just saying, we'll go to Okinawa instead of coming to Hawaii. Nope. That's what I think is gonna happen. Well, what's the long-term effect is that they may say that they'll pay more in a restaurant, 16% more or whatever. But if there are fewer of them, because the barrier, the yen barrier is so high, then the amount of money that goes either into the restaurant or the farmer is ultimately less. Right. And one of the things that, we have some unique thing here in Hawaii versus say other destinations with this Hawaiian local. First of all, the food is so integrated into the Hawaiian culture, right? So when people come here, they want to eat a Hawaiian meal, right? Everybody goes to a luau. And a luau is almost majority is locally grown food, right? Food that comes from here. Whether it's the pork, it's the chicken, it's the luau luau, the poi. So they're experiencing both the culture as well as eating the local food. So there's the first thing. Number two, they realize that they're helping the local farmer. Number three, it's more sustainable. As I mentioned earlier, because so much of our food is imported shipped in by air, by freight, by shipping is brought in here. When oil was at $128 a barrel two months ago and we were paying six something for a gallon of gas at Costco, right? Now they've lowered it, but still these big giant ships that cargo ships they're all run on fuel they're not running on nuclear, they're not running on wind, right? So because of that, we're making it, it's costing more. Number one and number two, we're also right now with the environment, right? We're talking about global warming, carbon footprints. It's just so huge and it's on people's minds. It's on people's minds when they travel now. It's on people's minds when they travel. What's important to them when they travel and that came up in our study as well. We have some results on that too. Environmentally responsible, would you describe yourself as being environmentally responsible? And you can see that the majority of the folks that answered said yes, with the age group of 60 and above having the highest, but everyone believed that they are environmentally responsible and believed that they want to be environmentally responsible. Is it fair to say that the younger they are, the smaller the number? It was on this study. Those that were 18 to 29 were lower than those that are above 60. That's really interesting because you would think that young people would be- It's in themselves more environmentally responsible. But I think what's happened is, and I see this in the classroom, is that that generation is, what we consider to be more environmentally conscious is normal. It's normal not to use plastic. It's normal not to let the water run when you shade or brush your teeth. Where you and I, when we were growing up, it was normal to run the water. And now we consider ourselves, when we turn the water off, or when we leave a room, we shut the light off. To us, that's more being more environmentally responsible. And to them, that's just become normal. Yeah, so de facto, even though the chart may show less of an awareness response, in fact, they may be more responsive. They may be more conscious of environmental issues. They might be more action. Yeah. They're not as great as some of their friends who come on vacation and don't spend one day cleaning the beach, but spend seven of the seven days cleaning the beach. Yeah, that sounds right to me. Right, right. So in their mindset, don't forget this was from their perception, I would describe myself as being environmentally responsible. Some people think they're kind because they didn't take the parking place from the old lady, right? Oh, I'm kind, right? I held the door for her. See how kind I am, right? Some people, in their mind, I held the door for them. I mean, and we have the opposite too, right? We have people that hold the door and then don't even say thank you. They think it's a given. Or I had one case, one time I held the door for somebody at a university and the person said, I can hold my own door. Okay. Okay. Chivalry, chivalry is passe. Oh, of course. Okay, so then the second, next slide. When choosing a vacation destination, it is important to me that the tourism industry supports environmentally sustainable tourism practices. And you can see male and female both agree, but female slightly higher, slightly higher. And then for the potential impacts, the level of agreement with the question, I consider the potential impacts of my action when making many of my travel trips. Again, both groups very much so agree with this, with female slightly higher. Culturally respectful tourism practices. When we asked, it's important to me that the tourism industry supports culturally respectful tourism practices. Again, female slightly higher, but both agree with this. So one of the things that we really, we looked at is we had some open-ended questions and we use this formula called word cloud where the computer then will look at. So the first one was the tourist supporting local farmers and purchasing locally grown food. And as you can see by some of the words that keep coming up here, important products, local, food, offerings, quality. These were words that were put out in the open-ended questions of these 454 folks. And then the computer picked the words that were used the most. And you can see willing, premium, visiting, excellence, right? And then I mentioned here, when they're talking about farming, you get coffee. You have gold, meaning probably pineapple gold, et cetera. The second question that we used was environmentally friendly tourism practices when a person comes. And you can see here, the big thing, it was very important and menus reduce damage. This was very important. Need to preserve for the future generations, lower carbon footprint. Over tourism is a concern. So this was a major concern of what, when they had the open-ended question that came out. Greening, agriculture, carbon again, carbon seeing there, carbon footprint, restaurants reducing damage. Again, reducing the damage to be available for the future generation. And then the final slide, the industry supporting sustainable practices. And one of the things that came out is that the government must educate the public and promote the islands in a way that protects nature and Hawaiian culture. And we found that, this is what HDA is doing now with the Malama project. They've got a lot of the TV ads. They have it on the airplanes as well, trying to explain to the tourists what is behavior that's acceptable, as well as, if you look here, some of the words that come up, consumption, culture, Hawaiian, what's important, sustainable. And part of that is intertwined, Hawaiian culture and sustainability go hand in hand. Go hand in hand because, Hawaii was sustainable, especially food-wise for a thousand years before any outsiders came. And they were supporting 400, 500,000 residents without any machines, et cetera. So we could do better. We could do better than what we're doing now. So with these responses and the conclusions you make from them, who would be most interested in looking at this and in changing their systems, changing their perceptions, improving the way it works? Who is this directed to? Well, I think it looks at a number of things, right? We can use us as an example for other destinations, island destinations, especially specifically. We hear, because we're so far from anywhere, right? We're the most isolated land mass with a million people in the world. And that's what makes it so, that's why we have no pollution. We have the best water, the best air. You know what I mean? When I travel, I say this or not, and I'm on your last on, you're sure I said it too. When I travel, I don't remember. I don't realize how good the air is here. And so you come back, you fly into LA and there's this yellow haze, right? And you say, oh, it's because it's humid. And then you realize afterwards a couple of days, it's the pollution. And we have the best air here. You know, when people say that to you, when they come to visit, we have the best, we have the clean water, we have the best weather. You know, and that's why people, that's one of the reasons they come here. And they come for other reasons too. They come for the Hawaiian culture. They come for the natural beauty. They come to surf, they come to swim, et cetera. But this is one of the great things that we have to. And, you know, if we can be a leader in helping to be less, using less carbon footprint, right? Instead of having all that food imported and it would help us with food security, right? As we learned through COVID, when we had the lockdowns, et cetera, you know, there are times when people, you know, there's just no, nothing on the, on the shelf. And we could, you know, if we scale it up, if the farming goes back to scale, the price will come down. The price will come down. I noticed that last week in the news, there was a gentleman, a big developer who was giving out lots of land to farmers, small farmers to start, Savio, right? Is that his name? This is Savio. Right, so he gave out, I think, 100 blocks of land last week. And then you could see it on other outer islands as well. You could see some of the city councils on Maui and on Kauai wanting to do this so that we become less dependent on input. Is it easier to input? It's easier today, but it might not be the right answer for the future. And, you know, the new farmer is a different person. There's a gentleman that, you know, works at the university. He's a younger guy at 29 years old and he works for the Tropical Ag. And he tells me, the new farmer is got all heavy technology and, you know, learns, you know, lots, where water is used out of premium, where we don't have that waste. And, you know, we never thought about having a water problem here in Hawaii. Until now, who knows, one of our aquifers might be gone forever. Due to the oil, right? And the red hill. So, you know, learning how to grow things, growing in on walls, right? I don't think you watch some of the hydroponics. I know at the Sherrith and Waikiki, they have it in one of the restaurants where they pick the herbs right off the wall there. And this is just taking all these steps, all these steps, having gardens on roofs, rooftops. My wife on our little lanai outside, she grows all these little tie slices where you could smell them from inside the house, even before she starts to pound them. And it's just accessibility for her and the cost, because it's not the accessible here. You know, on a high scale, it's more of a premium price. And this is just some of the things that people are starting. One of the things that happened during COVID, they said lots of folks tried to get into growing their own gardens. And there's like a shortage, there's a waiting list, right? Of some couple of hundred from the city that are wanting to grow out, they have open garden near Alawai, right? On the opposite side of the Alawai, there's a couple hundred people on the waiting list. So it's getting back to nature. It's becoming more sustainable. It's understanding that this is our Juliana too, right? Okay, but here, if I put half a dozen smart guys in a room, including you, and I said, look, would you design some expression of this public policy? For example, you get a deduction, okay? If you have your own garden, we're gonna let you deduct all the costs of that. We're going to give land away like Savio or whoever else to young farmers so they can have entrepreneurial experiences. We'll give you a tax holiday. We're gonna get incentives left and right. We're gonna try to get you to do all these things that will save us. Will save us from supply line issues. Will save us from the two-day limited McDonald's or whatever it is. We want Hawaii to be self-sustaining. We want an agricultural industry that will support the tourists and the locals, both. And we understand we have to pay more. And I'll bet your subsequent study will find out that local people are even happier to pay more. I believe that's so, but you have to offer them the choice. If they don't know the choice, they go into Safeway, they're gonna buy the cheapest thing on the rack because they don't know the difference. All I'm saying is to express this policy, you have to take action. And query, how does a survey like this or like the one that with I believe, which I believe will find similar results, similar responses on local buyers, how does a survey like that actually get to the action part? Well, one of the things is you share the results with the people who cater to the tourists, right? So you look at the hotel restaurants and the restaurants that cater directly, right? Those inside the hotels and catering. And they can use this as part of marketing, right? They can say, hey, we are more sustainable because we're buying local, grown produce. We use this. And it's been done in the past. It's been done in the past. There's been a number of restaurants that have used that all local, local beef, right? We got a number of burger places that use local beef, and et cetera, et cetera. So by doing that, that helps with the marketing. Then people want to support local, right? Buy local, buy local. They didn't come about buy local because of a hamburger. It was to buy local to help the small businesses. You know, I'm on the board of the restaurant association. The number one people who lost their businesses are the small mom and pop during COVID. Businesses that have been around for 20, 30 years, they just said, I just can't do it anymore. When we went totally to delivery and then first we went to shut down, then we went to delivery. They just couldn't. Now today, again, we have now the new laws on plastics. I understand there's a reason to stop plastic containers. The challenge is supply chain. There's a limited number of it coming in so the price is paying even higher than what it should be. And the restaurants are hurting. Right now, food's up. Now, the gold products are up. And people have to start, when something that used to be $15, all of a sudden is now $19. You know what the people say? Maybe I can't eat there. Maybe I can't get that food to go now because the price has gone up that much. Now, if you go to the Safeway, the price has gone up that much in Safeway, you just say, I don't have a choice there. Well, in the restaurant, it's a choice. And this is what's really the margins are really small. They're squeezed, they're squeezed. So- What do you think about an organization that favors local growers, local production of food, that will have a sticker, a sticker, a decal, and put it on the window of a restaurant. And it says, we serve only local food in this restaurant. Right. Wouldn't that help? Yep. And I know that, like for instance, high school, Kamehameha, they buy all local food. This is what was said on the news the other day, that they are one of the first. And a couple of other high schools are doing it as well. And they're being subsidized, this Kamehameha doesn't really need subsidized, but some of the local other high schools or grammar school, they're being subsidized by the city or the council to help buy locally grown products. And then teaching the young kids that this is a future, this is an opportunity, that you can do something that you might have a passion for. You know, yes, we all need money. We all need money. I work for money, we all need money. But if you have something you love that you get a passion for it, money won't be the only answer. Because farmers don't make a lot of money. Just like teachers, we don't make a lot of money. Can I make more money if I went into the industry? Of course, of course. I could have fainted. So I suggest that, you know, I would be very interested in doing a show with you on the next survey about local people. And I know, you know, it's hard to craft survey questions that will give you, you know, the most probative results, but it seems to me one of those questions is, if a given restaurant serves only local food, but it is more expensive than restaurants in its class, you know, in its menu category by X dollars or X percent, would you still go there and pay that, you know, in order to support local food? Will you buy into, across the board, increases for that decal, for that kind of restaurant and still go there knowing you're going to pay across the board more? So, query, if that happens, it seems to me that there would be a huge incentive, okay, for that restaurant, I mean, if your next survey comes out to say people will go, local people will go. Yep, I'll add that question, Jake. I'll add that question for the next survey, just to see. And you know, like, yes, of course, I know everything because I'm the professor, but you know, one of the things is when I share this knowledge with people and somebody shocked like yourself says, hey, did you think of this question? No, I didn't think of that, but I will add that question. And that's how we can get a better, another viewpoint, a better result and possibly help change what we're doing here in Hawaii. And I agree with you, if there was a detail that showed that they all locally grown products, you know, I mean, you could see that in retail, we have a number of retails that say locally made products, right? And that helps. The ultimate thing here is what you said at the very beginning of the show. We have to become sustainable. We can't keep taking this huge, huge, life and death risk of not having food to eat. And right now, I mean, if we had to rely on ourselves for food to eat and that 90% was cut off, we would starve in almost no time at all. So I mean, to me, this is a highly emergent issue and you are right in the middle of being able to explain to people how important it is. So let me give you one more minute because we're really out of time, Jerry, to leave a message, whatever message you want with our viewership. Well, I first thank you again for having us on the show. We really appreciate sharing the results of this study. And, you know, we will be doing it, a follow-up study with the local residents on all the islands. And if somebody, you know, if any of you see that there's a study survey online on the internet that might say we're looking at residents' perceptions of purchasing locally grown food, please fill it out. Please fill it out. And that would help us gain the sample size that we need. You know, and we're gonna, you know, we'll do it on all the islands. And then we'll try to get, you know, we'll try to see what their perceptions are. And, you know, we really appreciate that people see the value in buying or purchasing locally grown food. Absolutely, but you gotta help them along with that. Yeah, and from a first standpoint, I think that there's a number of reasons. One is they get the opportunity to eat local food because that's part of Hawaiian culture. So that's, it's, it's, it's dovetailing into what the tourism authority is doing at this. Yeah, but arguably it's better tasting is fresher, it's a better meal. And in my view, Hawaii ought to have a global reputation for better food. That's where we're going in terms of the tourism aspect. Jerry Agrusa of the Travel Industry Management School at the Schuyler College of Business, a professor who has been the leader in a study to see whether tourists would pay more for locally grown food. Very important issue of very important direction. Thank you so much, Jerry. Thank you, Jay. And thank you everybody. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.