 and welcome to Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm your host, Mitch Yuan. Our underwriter is the Hawaii energy policy form. You can see all the logos in the background. So just in case you missed those. And that's a program of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. I'm really pleased today to have a very good friend of mine and also the founder of Hawaiian Blue Coffee, Dave Donald. Dave, welcome to the show. Aloha, Mitch. Aloha, everyone. Thank you. So we're going to be talking, Dave and I are going to be talking story today about the electrification of agriculture generally and generally. But more specifically, we're going to talk about Dave's electric tractor, which brings on the electrification. So Dave, first of all, just to give us a little bit of background while you're even doing this, tell us a little bit about Hawaiian Blue Coffee. Well, back in 2016, I found a little coffee plant on my property was two feet tall and I inquired about it and folks told me it was 25, 30 years old and trying to figure out why it was only two feet tall and folks said coffee struggled in Waimea. So I thought I'd give it a go and six months later, I had it flowering. And then I had all these seeds. So I grew a bunch of trees and I planted them on a farm, a friend's farm in Lalamilo and they just started to grow like crazy and the coffee that they produced was a specialty coffee score and the plant interestingly was an experimental plant created as a hybrid by University of Hawaii, Hilo Campus Professor years ago. And so it was a hybrid of Jamaican Blue Mountain and we're not sure. Guatemalan, Konatibica, we still have to run the genetics on it but that's how it all began. And then I got really the farm that I'm on is completely off grid. So that led me into wanting to continue that practice of being off grid and farming in a carbon neutral manner. So let's talk a little bit about the evolution of farming and agriculture and power. And let's pull up the slide about the horcification of agriculture, the biofueled. And would you care to comment on the horcification of agriculture date? Well, that's what we had 100 years ago. We had horses or we had, depending on the country, they used different types of, I don't know, bulls or buffalo or whatever they had, you know. And luckily I never had to do that but the good thing about using horses is they're fertilizing the ground at the same time. But they can compact the soil if they're on the soil for the same piece of land for too long, just like a tractor. So that can be an issue for soil health. Of course you have to feed them and water them and take them to the vet every now and then because they get in trouble because they are animals. It's like having a baby for 20, 30, 40 years, however long they live. So they have to take care of them. Like many things, like we won't mention them but they're beautiful but very high maintenance, right Dave? We won't go any further than that. They're fairly high maintenance. And I mean, you know, there's pluses and minuses but if you're doing any kind of agriculture of size it's no longer feasible. So let's throw up the next slide and talk about the Dave's tractor. So it is also beautiful but it's low maintenance. So Dave, tell us about your tractor. This is the top level, first of all, yeah. Yeah, well it's manufactured by a company called Select Track and they're based in California. And a friend of mine, really good friend of mine told me about them in the first place. I wonder who that was. And what I like about this tractor is it's got a 48 inch width. So coffee farms grow coffee in rows, narrow rows. And if you need to get down those rows, typically your average tractor is going to be a little bit too wide. So that I really liked about this electric tractor. And we're completely solar here with blue eye on battery storage. So we have the ability of charging the tractor for free from the sun and the carbon impact is zero. So it just seemed like the perfect fit here. And it's got a front end loader. It's a skid steer attachment in the front but you have PTO power takeoff in the rear. So there's all kinds of farm implements that will fit on this tractor from various different manufacturers. So very versatile. So Dave, you're getting way ahead of us ourselves here. So we will bring you back a little bit, just rain you in as we do with horses. But let's throw up the next slide. Let's talk a little bit about the value proposition. So why electric? Why do we want to go electric? Well, I mean, you've listed it there. You're not using diesel so you can't spill it. You don't have to pay for diesel. You don't have to pay for the cost to transport the diesel to you or an island. And you know what your fuel costs are going to be because you're charging from solar and there's no diesel exhaust fumes. Diesel engines don't burn cleanly. They put off a particulate that floats up in the air and gently settles back down to the earth and you can breathe that in and it's not very healthy for your lungs. The noise is much less than a diesel. The electric tractor noise is much less. And you don't have to wear ear suppression all the time. It's similar to that. And it's just good for the planet. And there's a value to agriculture, whatever the product, I'm growing coffee, but whatever you're growing, there's a value to that product. Just how organic produce is more expensive in the stores than conventional produce. Well, produce that's grown in a carbon neutral fashion or a carbon negative fashion, there's a value, an additional value for that as well. So it's good for the farmer, it's good for the planet, it's good for the consumer, it's just a good thing. Well, good for you for recognizing that and being a true pioneer. I think how many electric tractors have we got in Hawaii, Dave? Well, there was one on Oahu. And so this was the second one in the state, but the first one on Hawaii Island. Now I'm told that there's about seven in Hawaii. And that was the company used my purchase to really start to promote the tractors. So around five more were sold thanks to this purchase here on Hawaii Island. And that got folks excited. There's one on Maui for sure, possibly two. So it started to take off now. And I'm pleased to hear that. And I'm looking forward in the future to getting my second electric tractor. Really, no kidding. I didn't know you were looking for a second one. Is it gonna be wider and longer and bigger or smaller? I haven't got the stats yet. It'll be more powerful, but if it's wider, it would be 54 inches instead of 48, that's six inches more. So we'll see if that's doable or not. Not sure right yet. And you can reduce by reversing the tires. The problem with narrow tractors is the tipability. And so if you have a heavy load on the front or on the rear and the ground is uneven, you can easily start to follow or slowly. Slow, slowly, slowly. Well, let's start the next slide. I'd like you to tell us a little bit about how you charge the tractor, what the system is at Hall Farm. And here we have a little system diagram. So let's starting on the left and going to the right and then down Dave, basically clockwise. Give us a little bit of an overview of what you have that actually provides the energy to run this tractor. On the far left, you've got the solar array on top of our barn. And then the blue battery racks are blue ion batteries, which are sold by Blue Planet Energy here in Hawaii. And then to the right of that is all your AC-DC conversion or DC-AC conversion rather. And then down below, there's a picture of the plug going into the hood of the tractor. And what's really nice about this tractor is the battery management system can take both 220 and 110. So it automatically recognizes what you're plugging in. And so they provide you with two plugs. And one is for, they both have the same fit that plugs into the tractor, but at the opposite end, one's designed for 220 or one's designed for 110. So whatever you're plugging in, the battery management system automatically recognizes that and adjusts accordingly. Of course, it's gonna be a little faster on the 220 and you can usually charge it in less than eight hours. And on the 110, maybe a few hours longer. So it's really, it's great. It looks pretty simple. Yeah, very straightforward. Let's pull up the next slide and we'll go through a couple of slides here showing you the capability of this tractor. So how about commenting on all the stuff generally that you have to move on a farm and how much time it takes and everything else that this thing solves. Well, you know, because it's a skid steer front end attachment, that's a front end loader that I got from Selectrack. That was one of the options. And perhaps in the future, they'll have more options. But right now that was basically the only option they were providing at time of purchase. But I did purchase additional clamp on forks and they just, they clamp on to the edge of the bucket and they're quite secure. The bucket is really solid steel. The tractor is very well-made. The bucket capacity, the hydraulics about 1,550 pound lifting capacity. What you see there is just the bucket not the forklifts attached. That's probably close to, let's see, it's just under 500 pounds and those are large sacks of meme cake. I have lifted with the extended forks up to 900 pounds but that's because the forks extend way past the extend four feet after the tip of the bucket. So your leverage is greatly reduced. But if I had a skid steer forklift attachment, I could probably get close to that 1,550 pound lifting capacity. So yeah, you're moving sacks of soil amendments or jugs of neem oil or insecticidal soap. We're organic here. So everything we use is USDA organic certified and all kinds of things. I mean, sometimes I'm moving buckets full of coffee grounds. Sometimes I'm moving tools, whatever it might be, horse manure, I move a lot of horse manure. So Dave, in the good old days, you had to lug all that stuff around with a wheelbarrow or by hand, right? And so having a tractor, it's the core of your farm. All your operations spin off the tractor. So you can take the bucket and tip it down and back drag if you have to even out a piece of land or you can scoop up boulders or whatever the operation might be. And on the PTO, I mean, you can do anything. Whatever kind of implement. I'm in the market for a manure spreader, PTO driven. And the reason for that is I make my own compost out of coffee grounds and coconut fiber and horse manure and a few other things. And using the tractor bucket, you fill up the horse manure spreader, but then you just run it in the station, you hook it back up to the tractor and you run the PTO in a stationary manner. Now, this is all electric, it's all battery driven. You're not burning any fossil fuels here and you spew out that mixture and it mixes the compost and it's literally turning the compost for you and it makes a brand new pile. And then once the compost is ready to spread, you put it back into the spreader weeks later and you drive down the rows of coffee. So, I mean, it's phenomenal. There's nothing you can't do. They have an implement for everything. So let's haul up the next slide. Wow, it's a real Flash Gordon picture. What is that that we're seeing, Dave? You're a big fog and all this stuff spewing out. What is that? Well, I'm not seeing the slide, but I'm assuming it's the rear, the rear-bounded, I don't see it on my end, but I'm assuming it's the rear-mounted sprayer. There it is. So that's a Cima, an Italian sprayer and it's a Venturi air principal. So that spray that's coming out of those six fishtails, how that works is a lot of sprayers, they just have a fan that just sort of blows the mist out, but this fan is enclosed. And so the full force of the air is funneled up that vertical green stack and then blown out through those six fishtails and there's outlets and the force of the air breaks up the particles of water and turns them into micro particles and you get this tremendous spray. And that's just water I'm spraying there, but typically it would be something like neem oil or it would be organic insecticidal soap. And that's all powered by that magic PTO or power takeoff we were talking about previously. That's right, it's a shaft, it's a rear, coming off the rear axle, it's just a horizontal shaft and it bolts right onto the tractor and right into whatever implement you're attaching. And it's got a three point hitch. So the hydraulics lift the sprayer right off the ground and there's the shot of that black shaft with the yellow collar, that's the PTO shaft. So it's really phenomenal. And once again, it's all run off an electric motor, correct? All electric, all battery, it's lithium ferrous phosphate, LFP, the good kind of battery, not the kind that explodes. So let's look at a couple of the specifications of this tractor. So tell us about runtime, charging, battery life, all the kinds of implements you can get about going through the list for us. And what's been your experience so far? Okay, so here it says three to six hours runtime. And depending on load is the operative phrase. So if I'm just running it as a tractor with nothing attached to the rear and just the front end loader and I'm picking up manure and moving it around and driving around, I'll easily hit six, if not eight hours run runtime. If I am spraying with that sprayer, it's gonna be greatly reduced because the power demand is much greater. Maybe we're looking at closer to three hours. So, you know, because I'm switching back and forth between different operations, you probably average it out in the center somewhere around four and a half hours, something like that, maybe. But I mean, you get a lot of work done. You know, with that sprayer, I spray, I can spray an acre in half an hour. So, you know. That used to take you three days, didn't it, when you did individual plans? It got to the point where I was spraying seven days a week. Yeah. And now you can do it in the half an hour. Yeah. Wow. And it's all electric. All electric and the electricity is coming from the sun. Perfect. Solar coffee. Yeah. Let's call up the next slide. I want to spend a little bit of time on the attention to details and your whole concept of higher value agricultural products, Dave, because, you know, it's this attention to detail that's making your coffee special. So, let's talk about that. And how that can be transferred to the rest of Hawaii. Okay. So, HVAP is the acronym for High Value Agricultural Products. And there's a lot of HVAP products. I mean, vanilla, cacao, wasabi, specialty coffee, lavender, saffron. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And pretty much all of that can be grown here, although vanilla is being grown here, but it's tough because it has been pollinated. The original pollinator doesn't exist in Hawaii. But where HVAP comes into play is agriculture is, there's not a big return on investment, ROI. And so, you know, kids today, they've seen their parents work hard all their lives and they put all the kids through school and everything else, but land prices have skyrocketed. Everything has skyrocketed. And, you know, farming lettuce or cabbage or whatever you might be farming, you're going to make money, you're going to be able to survive, but there's so many other competing jobs that are available that'll pay you a lot more money for a lot less hard work. But when it comes into HVAP, all of a sudden everything changes. The record, the world record right now, I think is $4,535 per pound wholesale for green bean coffee, coming out of Panama from a farm called 90 plus. You can go to 90plus.com and check that out. And there's another one, LaMastis, down in the same part of Panama. And they've been working hard for years, developing, you know, a really delicious strain or a variety of coffee, and they've been very successful. Well, we can grow that varietal here. In fact, I'm growing some and many other farms are growing it right now on Hawaii Island. And if we pay attention to our processing, to our fermentation and to our drying and temperature and humidity and a number of things, we can produce really high value coffee. My coffee is selling a lot more than the average pound of coffee is. And yet it's at the bottom end of the spectrum with nothing but room to grow as I developed the flavor profile. So I'm encouraging younger folks who would like to get into farming but are discouraged by a low ROI to consider HVAP crops and to see if there's something that they can do and they can enjoy doing and make a fantastic living from. So one of the elements of attention to detail and swinging back to the electric tractor is that you have no idea, we have no idea what kind of flavor that diesel exhaust fumes add to your coffee. Talk about that, Dave. That's it, you know, when you are operating fossil fuel vehicles, that exhaust is permeating everything. It's permeating your clothes, your lungs and all the plants that you're growing around you. And, you know, in different stages of processing, if you don't have your drying areas or your fermentation areas properly sheltered from cans of gasoline lying around or cans of diesel or vehicles running and providing exhaust, it does negatively affect and not just the smell, the noise, everything about it. And inevitably you're dropping oil or diesel fuel in the pastures as well. So with the electric tractor, that's minimized. And I mean, you still have hydraulic fluid and some oil for the axles, but, you know, the likelihood of a leak is extremely low. So you've essentially removed that from the equation. So I think it's a great advantage. I just, you know, I look forward to the day that everything I own is electric or fuel cell. Well, that's electric. That's true. It says so in the statutes, which we... That's true. I think it's only took us five years to do that, but hey, we got there eventually, you know. So let's call up the next slide and we'll see which one comes up. Okay, so let's talk a little bit, once again, bang on a little bit about the bottom line, what it's all about. So I put up this little equation, but why don't you talk a little bit more about that, David, you may. Well, let's see the slide. Oh yeah, perfect beans equals perfect coffee. Yeah, well, let me start from the bottom up. First of all, I wanna thank Howard and Pat Hall for all their support. I'm doing all of this experimentation on their farm and Howard's the master of solar and off-grid farming. So without his support, I wouldn't be able to do any of this, but you know, I'm in an area... Can I just interrupt and add, you know, the slide we showed of the blue iron, the solar panels on the roof and all the conversion equipment, that was all Howard. That's right. And it wasn't for him, we wouldn't be able to do this. And he's been such a champion of Dave at his coffee farm, and may I add, a real hydrogen champion. He's got his pad all ready to go when we put in that first... He's about to install it right there, feet from my coffee lab. So it's gonna be very interesting. Maybe we'll be roasting coffee with hydrogen, who knows? But so yeah, it's all about ROI and agriculture. And it's about carbon neutral farming, carbon negative, because I'm a no-till farm, it's an orchard. And so we're just trapping greenhouse gases and we gotta do something because sure is hot here these days. So that's not normal. Okay, Dave, one more plug. If you wouldn't mind giving a plug for the University of Hawaii and the College of Citar. I love Citar, and I love Andrea Calabada who is the extension agent for coffee on the Big Island. She's phenomenal. And without her support, her farm visits, her seminars, her courses, her webinars, her advice, I wouldn't be as anywhere near as successful as I am right now. And so bravo Citar and bravo Andrea. And in terms of the University of Hawaii, I love the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and all the efforts of HNEI and hydrogen. And we're headed in the right way. I think HNEI has been decades ahead of everybody and now everybody's waking up. And thanks to Mitch Ewing. Well, thank you, Dave. On that really high note, we've come to the end of our session today and end of the interview. So I'd just like to say we've been talking to Dave Donald of Hawaii and Blue Coffee on the electrification of agriculture, in particular Dave's electric tractor and the attention to detail to get those high value agricultural products. I mean, just think if all the coffee growers could embrace this kind of technology and improve their products so they can command these higher prices, we would have a lot of happy farmers here in Hawaii. So thank you so much, Dave. Thank you, thanks, bitch. And so this is Mitch Ewing signing off. We'll be back in two weeks with another exciting session with Hawaii, the state of clean energy. It just gets more exciting every day. 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.