 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Immunity matters here. Bingo. We're back. 4 o'clock, 4 o'clock on Thursday. And you know what that means. It's the Farmer's Series, the Hawaii Food and Farmer's Series with our special guest host, host guest, Stephanie Mark, who's here with me next to me. We have a full house. We have Stephanie, we have Cindy, we have Bert. And Stephanie is actually going to sort of be the host guest host today. And I'm just here for cooling their energy. We're here as a guest host host guest as well. So I think we all could probably be that at this point. Yeah, we could. So we're going to talk about taking advantage of technology, using technology for agriculture, the intersection of the two which we need to do for both the benefit of both and the state. So Stephanie, can you identify, describe the scope of this discussion here today? Can you also introduce our guests, Cindy and Bert? Yes, so we have with us Cindy Matsuki from Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, HTDC. And we also have Bert Lum, who is with Hawaii Open Data, 501C3 nonprofit, correct? And so basically today, our show kind of happened organically. So a couple of months ago, I was on the planning team for the Hawaii Agriculture Conference. And kind of like out of the blue, Cindy calls our planning team and is like, hey, I know I'm not agriculture, but we're trying to get more involved in the agricultural scene. And we want to see how we can utilize technology to help solve issues that the agricultural community faces. And we were like, this sounds awesome. We're not quite sure how to marry the two, but let's give it a shot. So at the Hawaii Agriculture Conference, we had a session that was basically what our show is about today, Utilizing Technology for Agriculture. And in that session, we focused on basically three local tech products, if you will. So we had 808 Planner, we had Farm Link, and we had Smart Yields. I hope you're going to describe those three. Absolutely, I will, I will. So we've had a show on 808 Planner. And it's a free online conservation planning tool for farmers to help with environmental compliance and stuff like that. We have Farm Link, which connects consumers with farmers so they can find new markets for their goods. And then we also have Smart Yields, which is all about hard data, climate data that you would use for water sensors, soil sensors, et cetera, so you can kind of mechanize farming more than being out there and digging in the soil. So during that panel, it was a packed house. It was 120 plus people. And people had all these questions and wanted to figure out, how can we continue this momentum of marrying technology with agriculture? So first I wanted to talk to you about technology. Because in my world, you're kind of a tech leader, and you're allow us to have the show on Hawaii food and farmers, maybe not the sexiest theme, but it's definitely the important thing, right? And so I was like, oh my gosh, who better than Cindy to come on and talk about technology and about all these programs that they help further technology, but also help small businesses, which a lot of our farmers in Hawaii are. And then she brought along Bert, who is another tech giant as well, as I found out today, who's kind of got his hands involved in everything. So I thought we could take these decades of experience you guys have in the tech field, and me as the small little agricultural voice, a nonprofit voice, and how can we really discuss what issues does the agricultural community face? So we could talk about lack of land, we could talk about access to water, finding new markets, et cetera. But I thought because you guys have all these tech skills and programs, you could talk about those first, and then we could kind of see a way that agriculture can fit into that, and we can help both sectors at the same time. Wow. This is only a six-hour discussion. We're going to try to fit it into 28 minutes and 30 seconds. So we can do it. Can we talk about the August program, the one that got this started, where 120 people showed up? What was going on there? Yeah, so the agriculture conference we featured those three tech sessions. But Cindy was there, almost as a spy trying to get some inside information, and really visit all these different panels to see what were the common themes. So our new farmers looking for how to learn about branding, our older farmers looking about how to access new markets, et cetera. So I thought you could talk a little bit about why you got interested in agriculture, being a technology. Yeah, yeah. What did you learn that day? What were the themes that you left the room? What's the long-term takeaway on that program? Oh my gosh. I thought it was a great conference. It was huge, and topics were great. Good job planning it. And I really love the fact that you had the follow through where you asked people, what are you going to do after the conference? How are we going to move forward with all the things that we learned? And so prior to the ag conference, our director, Robbie, had met with Jimmy Nakatani, who is the director of ADCE. And he wanted to bring in more tech into ag. And so Robbie said, hack it on. Well, but the notion is that people go out into this business. We want them. We want to incentivize them to go out into this business. We need to find as many incentives as possible. And they find that it's hard work. And there's dirt under your nails. This is not what we left the plantations for. We don't want to do that kind of thing. We want to be a business. We want to use the best practices and best technology available. We want to have some time off to ourselves. We want to be a good, robust career. And so how do you do that? Well, clearly, you do that with technology. Leverage, it's all about leverage. So it's a great idea to put these two things together, because it does help both sides of the equation. Good idea. That was your idea, Cindy. Good work. So Robbie's idea, just to get the on record. So how did good get involved in all of this? I got involved with, well, we've been doing kind of hackathons and code challenges over the course of the last five, six years. And we've been pretty successful at bringing together the tech community. These are the coders, the developers, people who are sort of civically engaged and trying to look at ways that they could come up with some solutions for issues that might arise. And we just had completed the Hawaii annual code challenge, which I was on with you, Jay. And we started that in 2016, 2017. And it's a great environment to give the opportunity for departments in the government to make some pitches on the challenges that they face. So there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to work with the different departments, try to understand what are some of the pitches that they might be able to do? And does it fit into a hackathon sort of framework? Because hackathons can be a month long in the case of the code challenge. But in the case of the agathon, which is the ag hackathon, we're calling it the agathon, it's really only a weekend. Well, there's a benefit in that. Because there's new territory in many ways. We have to identify what the challenges are that can be met with the technology. And one of the big challenges to me is to find out what those challenges are, to identify them. So one of the first places I started to look at was, what are some of the objectives that we've set for ourselves as a state? So if you look at the governor's website, there's an objective, double food production by 2020. Now, if you look at double food production, at least that's a place to have a conversation. So I go out and I start to talk to people. What does it mean to double food production? And then it starts to become clear that there's different definitions for what food is. It could run the gamut from eggs to beef to fresh produce. It could run that whole gamut. And then the next question I would ask is, well, how are we doing? And then the answer usually comes back was we don't really know because we don't have a baseline. So then the question becomes, why don't we have a baseline? Well, it's because we don't have the data. So that starts to lead you down a path to try to identify, what can we talk about as a result of maybe doing a pitch that could be worked on, that could help address some of these? Now, the hackathon, the agathon is not a silver bullet. It's not gonna solve all the problems. But if we can identify some key things and get people to maybe come up with some solutions, at least it's an innovative way of bringing kind of community into the picture rather than all the traditional folks sitting around and thinking about it. Well, it's not in a conversation. The juice is flowing. And know what Stephanie's next question is. She's gonna ask you for an example of technology that could help double food production. She's gonna ask you that now just to get the juices flowing. Oh, okay. What is that right now? I don't know. This is silver bullet. Okay, I'll give you one. So in the course of my conversations with a variety of people and I was sitting down with the folks over at the College of Tropical Egg and basically going through the same thought process. What are some of the challenges that you as an industry might face? Well, one of the things they brought up to me and they brought up several, but one that we wanna kind of focus in on is food waste. So if you look at food waste, there's all the food that makes it to the supermarket or to where you buy fresh produce. And usually those are very nice in appearance. They have the form, they have the freshness, they have the color, but there are so many produce that doesn't make it to the market. And that's considered food waste, but they can be used for things like, you could make tomato sauce out of the tomatoes that don't make it to the market. You can do a lot of different things. You can even create like feed for farm animals. So how does technology help you do that? Well, how do you identify what the food waste is? How can farmers use a tool that allows them to differentiate between what goes to the market and what gets identified as food waste and how can we build a marketplace for food waste? It strikes me that when you go through this kind of analysis, you're gonna watch the farmer. You're gonna be, you're gonna shadow him. You're gonna see every movie makes. You're gonna see where the waste is. It's not only in food waste, but in waste of time, waste of materials, waste of land, anything that's not efficient. It's like energy efficiency. You're gonna look for any sign of inefficiency and stamp it out. Another area would be the traceability of produce from the farm to the marketplace or to retail. How do you trace that? And right now, there isn't really a good way to do that. And I think technology can help to streamline that process. So that's another area that we might present as a challenge. This is gonna be interesting. So in this, as opposed to the code challenge, you don't have to build the code over the weekend, but you have to sort of make a false code kind of thing. Just generally, what is this program gonna do? What data are you gonna take and use? How are you gonna get it? What are you gonna do to process it? What kind of result comes out? So it's really a good beginning because we're gonna be able to solve some of these. What do you think about this, Cindy? I mean, where does this fit in your world? What does HTVC think about this kind of approach? What does it think about Bert? Do they like her? That kind of guy is he, anyway. Well, you're asking really tough questions for Cindy. You're pretty good on the spot. I know, I know. You don't like him being this way on the spot. He's run so many successful hackathons. And as HTVC as an economic development agency, it's great because we're hoping that out of these, even out of the concepts, that the teams get so excited about it and the farmers get so excited and they want to see things happen, to see these concepts come to life, that they're willing to put money into it. And so our hope is that these teams create businesses or they create products that just grow the economy. So that's what's in it for us. At the end of the day, it's going to the bank and saying, you know, I talked to Bert, mom. No, you want to get the loan? You might use other names, but... You use Cindy's name. Yeah, please. And your name, Stephanie. Stephanie, we're about midway through the show and I thought it'd be appropriate for you to tell them about the break now. Okay, we're going to take a short break, but again, we have Bert, mom of Hawaii Open Data and Cindy Matsuki of HTDC or the Hawaii Technology Development Corporation and myself, Stephanie Mock and Jay Fadal of Think Tech Hawaii. We'll be right back after these short messages, but we'll talk more about options of the agricultural sector and technology sectors have to collaborate. Fabulous. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at one o'clock, I present Think Tech Hawaii's research in Manoa where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me one o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's research in Manoa. Hi guys, it's RB Kelly. I'm your host of Out of the Comfort Zone where I find cool people with cool solutions to problems that all of us face. Now the thing is, we're really cool and I only invite really cool people but the thing is I think you're kind of cool too so I think you should come and watch. That Thursdays at 11 a.m. here on OC 16 television with Think Tech Hawaii. I'm RB Kelly, host of Out of the Comfort Zone and I will see you next Thursday. Okay, we're back, I told you. Actually, Stephanie told you we'd be back and we're back. Okay, we got the second half to go now. Stephanie, can you describe what we're gonna talk about in the second half? Absolutely, so in the first half of our show we just introduced our guests and we got to know a little bit of the broad themes of technology and agriculture. All these issues that farmers face day to day in the field and then how can we utilize the skills and training that our blossoming tech industry has and how can we utilize them together? So I thought the second half of the show, we could talk more about when this agathon is, this ag hackathon if you will, how farmers can get involved. Because farmers, they have their heads down in the field, they're trying to run their businesses and it's incredibly time consuming. So to say, oh, come hang out with us for a weekend, they might need some convincing. So I wanna hear about how we can bring farmers into the mix and then I also want Cindy to talk a little bit more about HTTC's mission and any funding opportunities and how they encourage small business here in Hawaii. Yeah, this is kind of a challenge to set this up so you can actually bring the farmers in, get them out of the fields because they gotta take care of their plants and the earth and all those natural obligations they have to do farming anyway. So how do you bring them in and make it easy for them? How do you have them suck up this knowledge and then take it back? How do you do that? Well, the purpose of the hackathon is really to start to hear what some of the challenges are. And so we are reaching out to people like the Farm Bureau, the Department of Ag, the College of Tropical Ag and having them come in and sort of do those pitches. Then get you started identifying the issues. Through those organizations, they have networks and they are putting us in touch with some of the farmers that are already kind of leveraging some of the technology or are of like mine. And what we wanna do is we wanna find good examples of what might be already out there. So we wanna kind of find the champions in the community. And then what we wanna do is, as a result of the hackathon, actually have some ideas sourced from this. So as a result of bringing everybody together, having the weekend to spend together, coming up with some ideas and we'll have some judges and we'll have some prizes, we will look at some of those ideas that come out of this and how can we help further develop that beyond the hackathon? Suppose I'm a coding geek, okay? I don't know anything about agriculture. How are you gonna bring me down there? Cause I'm the guy that's gonna come up with stuff, right? Well, so the coders, the developers, I mean they are, I think they're all interested in a variety of different civic engagement opportunities, whether it's working on transportation or working on energy. This is just another vertical that I think the government- Is it for money or love? Well, initially the hackathon is for surprises. It's primary for love. But the difference that we're gonna implement is that they own the code after the code challenge or the hackathon and the- We speak into the camera too when you say that. Camera four. They own the code. They own the code. They keep the rights to their code. Now- On the record. As a result of the hackathon, if there is interest in their projects that perhaps some organization or some company wants to help move forward, maybe HTDC wants to provide some granting funds, they can then take it to the next level as a team, as a small business, as a company. That's pretty exciting for you because you can be the incubator kind of organization to take them to the next level. You hear a good idea. You think it may be commercializable? Wow. What do you do then? Definitely. Well, HTDC has several different funding grant opportunities. So for an opportunity like this, we would recommend either SBIR or that's the Small Business Innovation Research Grant where you look for topics that are kind of relevant to your solution. And if the agency, if the federal agency gives you funding for it, HTDC can match that up to 50% of your grant, which is a really- That's pretty good. That's a great grant. A great incentive, a great incentive. Yeah, and then the other thing that we offer small businesses is a manufacturing grant. It's an assistance grant for equipment, for equipment training, for- This is agricultural equipment. It's for manufacturing equipment. Okay, but manufacturing can be agriculture. Yeah, it can be value added production. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I do want to make one small pitch. We did introduce a bill last session to create a program where projects that come out of a code challenge or an agathon could potentially get some funding. So we're going to the ledge to see if they would help fund this program. The monies would reside in HTDC as a granting source and projects that come out of, whether it's the agathon or the code challenge or others could be something that comes out of Purple Maya, Purple Prize. They apply and if they qualify, they can get, but we're going to introduce that, reintroduce that in 2018. It didn't pass in 2017. It went all the way to conference and then there was a lot of confusion. Oh, so often that happens. Well, I hope they watch this show and get the idea. Of course. Yeah, how much money are you going to ask for? Not a lot. We're looking at maybe $150,000. And we're going to match that. We're going to be half a million at least. Well, I start from humble. Cindy, what do you think about a million? What do you think? What do you think? I'll be serious about this. This is important for the future of the state and people who like tech and like agriculture and who would stay here instead of leave. It's a good career. It's a fine life. This is Hawaii. Maybe we'll start at a million and we'll trim it down to five million. Okay, we're negotiating in reverse. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I like what you were saying about bringing, you know, bringing in like this new generation, these new leaders, younger leaders. And I thought Cindy was talking to us earlier about why she thinks technology is really important being brought into agriculture. Could you discuss that a little bit? Just bringing in a younger generation of farmers. I know when we were talking before the show you had mentioned that the average age of our farmers now is 60. Holy cow, 60. So, I mean, I would think at 60, especially doing all that hard labor, I would want to retire, right? Sure they are retiring. Yeah, and that too. And with the governor's goal of being food sustainable soon, I think tech is a good way to make ag sexier and make it easier and more palatable, I guess, to a younger generation. Like if they can apply tech and do efficient farming. I think that would be more interesting for a new generation of farmers. Well, you know, so much of this is follow up, right? I mean, you have these challenges and hackathons and agathons, you know, you can't just stop at the end of that weekend. And so, Stephanie, what can you do as the real host of the Food Farm series, you know, to keep it going, to keep the conversation going, right? To follow up, follow through, make it happen. What can you do? Yeah, absolutely. So part of that ag conference that Cindy was talking about is we created these small commitment groups. So people would sign up on their email or phone or whatever to be part of conference calls and meetings, you know, quarterly or every so often, just to see what's going on in the technology and agricultural fields and kind of see what they can move forward. So our last call, we had about six people on it and it was a mix of tech and, you know, nonprofit, public, private, partnerships. And so I think continuing that conversation on Think Tech Hawaii, but also those networks you were talking about utilizing, you were talking about Farm Bureau, you were talking about going to farmers in the fields actually, because, you know, as much as advocacy or organizations can, you know, voice opinions, ultimately it's the farmers who are trying to help. So by bringing more farmers on the show and hearing them and maybe I could pass along any issues they have to you guys and saying, hey, I'm saying this common theme, what can your organizations do to possibly help this along and, you know, find a solution to the issue? Yeah. You know, one of the things that always interests me is that the restaurants, and they are an important element to this whole discussion. Absolutely. The restaurants need to have a reliable source. You can't say, well, I have it this week but I'm not gonna have it that week. So they can't put it on the menu that way and they're not gonna promote you. So you have to make sure they do. And this technology can play a big role in that. The other thing can play, and to make sure that it's there for them to connect them up. And one of the things you guys were talking about came out of the August conference was this, I guess it's a website which connects up the buyers and the sellers. Oh yeah, FarmLink. Yeah, to me that's really important. Yeah, we've had it. Can you talk about the status of that? Well, I didn't create or manage FarmLink so forgive me if any details are slightly off but Rob Bereka, a graduate of the GoFarm program started FarmLink because he was seeing all these new farmers getting trained and having this produce but not really knowing or having the connections to find these new markets. So he's an old tech guy or young tech guy, excuse me, young tech guy who was like, why don't I just marry the two? And so he's now a farmer with CounterCulture. Really? Yeah, he owns and manages CounterCulture Firmance and then he also has FarmLink which Hunter manages but so they were featured at the ad conference to kind of show you don't have to go to these wholesale produce organizations. You can just say, hey, I have 10 pounds of tomatoes. I'm trying to like unload. Does anyone want them for tomato sauce? So they're trying to do it on a smaller scale so these new farmers and small farmers can utilize new markets. Yeah, and it's interesting that you're bringing Rob up because Rob was brought to my attention and he has been collecting a lot of data on his network of farmers that contribute to FarmLink. And what he would like to see happen is there's some expertise in town that could help analyze that data. Can we help visualize the data? Can we bring some storytelling around the data that he's collected? He's collected a lot of data but he wants to get some help in seeing if there's a story or a trend inside of that data. And that could be another challenge that we present at the Agathon. I have all this raw data. What's the story? What does it tell me? What does it tell me? What is that? Well, and you can take that analysis and go further and actually create a market. You can create a market. You can buy futures. Restaurants can buy futures. And say this farm is able to generate so much product and we know that because we have data, right? And so we're gonna buy the possibility of the next crop. We're gonna be in a long-term relationship with this farm, even a bankable one. Oh, wow. Oh, if I were HDDC, I'd be so excited about this. Yeah. I wanted to mention just as far as the follow-on for the concepts, I think part of our awards package is mentoring to teams that do wanna continue on with their solution. Well, you guys have to follow through on this. You have to make it happen. So, Jay, I wanna tell you, kickoff is on January 6th, which is coming up in less than a month. We're gonna do it over at the Pro City Urban Garden. Okay. And then we're gonna do the actual hackathon on the 13th and 14th of January over at Impact Hub. So we will be putting out the marketing word on it. If anybody's interested, they can go to agathon.eventbrite.com. Outstanding. And you have to reach the technology guys, wherever they are and whether they have farm experience or not is a great opportunity. It's a local opportunity. And it's something that Hawaii could excel at lest we forget. This kind of technology is not only useful for the farmers in our state. It could be exported. The X word. What? X word. Okay, Stephanie, we're about out of time. It's time for you to summarize what we've covered here today. Sorry about that. And put it forward to our visitors. Absolutely. So today we were joined in the studio with Jay, obviously a close friend of the show, but also new friends of Food and Farmers series, Cindy Matsuki of HTDC and Bert Blum of Hawaii Open Data. I wanna thank them for coming onto the show today. It was kind of last minute, but I think they've shown that they are experts in talking about their fields and talking about how technology and agriculture can work together here in Hawaii and also maybe the world. So Hawaii can become this hub of agricultural technology and agriculture in general for the Pacific and maybe even the world. So again, I'd like to thank our guests. Next time we will have a new host joining us for Hawaii Food and Farmers. Her name is Pumai Weigert. I wanted to extend warm welcome to her. She was on our show last time. And so until next time, goodbye.