 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community Matters here. Welcome to another episode of Hawaii Food and Farmers series, where we meet with Hawaii's farmers, foodies, restaurants, politicians, all types of people that care about Hawaii's agricultural industry. I'm your host today, Matt Johnson. And as always, well, not always, always, but I think every other Thursday, you can find us here at 4 p.m., and you can also check into the conversation by tweeting at at thinktechhi. And you can actually also call in too if you're interested. So we have a hotline 808-374-2014. We'd love to hear from you. So we have a lot to talk about today because we have a great, fantastic guest with us today. We have a good friend of mine, Donna Ching, who's with the Pacific Center for Collaboration, but also wearing another hat, as you always are. We're going to be talking about the upcoming Hawaii Ag Conference, which is in less than two weeks, August 29th through the 30th. So Donna, thank you so much for being here. Happy to be here, Matt. I know I've been quasi-harassing you for a while now about coming on to the show, and we were in a meeting earlier today, so I literally grabbed you and brought you with me, so thank you so much. No problem. So we have a lot to talk about, but why don't we start off with the Hawaii Ag Conference. What is that all about? Okay. The reason I know Matt is because he's a member of one of the classes of the Ag Leadership Program, which is sponsored by the Ag Leadership Foundation of Hawaii. And one of the things the foundation does is provide leadership programs for our agricultural and rural leaders, but we also have had programs with youth. But the other thing that we did was every other year we used to host an Ag Conference for the state, and it's very difficult. Matt will know because he's on the committee to do that conference because it takes, you know, thousands probably of hours of volunteer time. So last year when the foundation, I facilitated the foundation in our strategic planning, we invited 10 stakeholders from the sector, the Ag sector, and the number one thing they said was we need another Ag conference. It's been five years. We need another Ag conference. And whereas typically in the past it's been every other year. Right, but it's so expensive and it takes lots of volunteer hours. So we got a huge support from the Department of Ag because Scott Enright really felt that the sector did need an opportunity to get together. He's a director, chairperson of Hawaii Department of Agriculture. Yes, and he put his money where his mouth was. So once he did that, the foundation, the board felt that it was a good thing to just put this conference together. But we've been real lucky, as you know, we've had lots of great sponsors who have really made this a very successful undertaking. At this point in time, two weeks out, we're feeling pretty good. Yeah, we just had our meeting this morning. It was actually kind of relaxed, which is surprising. I've never been involved in a relaxed planning meeting before. Two weeks out, right, right. So let's talk a little bit about the conference. So it's Hawaii Ag conference. So who's going to be attending? What are we going to be talking about? If somebody is just hearing about it for the first time, why may they be interested and why should they attend? Okay. We have, as you know, Matt, the committee has been at this for one year. We meet every other week for a half day. And so we really, during that time, really tried to hash out what were the issues that we had to talk about. And so I think the number one thing is that the overall theme is, you know, you can make a difference. And under that umbrella theme, we have three threads, really. The first one is really about the economic benefit of having agriculture. And how can we make that agriculture more successful? That's the first. The second one is the role that agriculture plays in the community, farmers and agriculture play in rural communities. And the third one is really about our stewardship of the land. That's the third thread. And so we send out RFPs, and we got people to decide what thread they really wanted to be under. And so we put together a great program that represents all three of them, I think. So we have the website, hiadconference.org, which I believe has been going across the screen there. How about, so we have the different threads, different conversations, so very important things. I mean, we're talking about the food and agriculture industry for Hawaii. And there's so many different things happening. Why do you think now is a good time for this? Or why now versus maybe a year or two years ago, why is it even more relevant than ever? You know, I think that one of the big challenges we have in Hawaii is the challenge of scale. We're so small that it's really difficult for us to get, to use scale to be able to do things. So the only way we can create it is by collaborating with one another. And it's really difficult in people in their everyday lives. You know, they're working hard on their farms or they're, you know, they're working as manufacturers. It's really hard to give them and for them to have opportunities to interact with each other, to see ways in which they can collaborate and really create synergy, you know, create much more energy than they could do by themselves. And that's what one of the main purposes of a conference is, I think, is to create those opportunities. But, you know, obviously the other thing is we're going to expose people on a lot of topics to really current information that they need to know to be successful. You know, food safety, invasive species, all of these things we have to be up to speed about. Because, you know, as you know, agriculture is so challenging as a career. So, yeah. So, I guess, yeah, that's even more so the, I guess the challenge of the place like Hawaii where the agriculture industry has changed from large mono crop plantation to these really small, diversified family farms. Whereas maybe a place like California or the Midwest where you have these larger farms that are more vertically integrated and have the resources. Whereas a small farm here might be one acre, five acres, ten acres. Right. Has the challenges of trying to figure them all out by themselves. That's right. And you and I were just talking before the show about the fact that you're going to be host moderating a session on co-ops and food hubs. And that is a great mechanism to help farmers. Because, you know, to be up to speed on everything. So, not only the food safety, but the marketing and, you know, transportation, all of that is very, very difficult. And so, you know, if farmers can get into a situation where they actually can work with other farmers or work with an organization that is responsible for helping them do all those things. I think that's a real benefit. Yeah. So, yeah, it's real exciting for me and I know for all of us just, you know, having the opportunity to network. And because right now I believe there's what, 500 registrants for the conference. Close to that, yeah. This is going to be one of the largest conference that we've ever had. Ever had, yes. Without doubt. I mean, when we were talking about 400 initially, I thought, that's a stretch. And now we're talking about 500. Yeah. And we're still a week and a half out. We are. And we know other people are going to be registering. So, yes. Yeah. We're setting up the separate room right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. The overflow room. The overflow room, right? I imagine that could be even more exciting. But then we have a pretty amazing set of keynote speakers. Yes. You want to talk a little bit about who that is? We decided that instead of having one keynote, because we had three tracks or threads, that we would invite three keynote speakers. So, we have to represent the economic aspects of farming. We have somebody from the mainland who wrote a book called The Lean Farm, and one of our participants had read the book and used some of his techniques and saw a great benefit in it. And so, the good thing about him is he runs a very small farm. I think it's just one or two acres, right? Yeah. And he actually shrank his farm and became more productive, right? So, we think this is perfect for our farmers because so many of them just have small operations. Right. So, he's talking about how to increase your profits and be more efficient. So, that's one of them. And then he's also doing a workshop, too, on the second day. Yes, on the second day, right. And we think that's going to be really useful for a lot of our people, and we're going to sell this book. And then the second person, looking at the issue of the Aina, is President Hilda Heine, from the Marshall Islands, the Republican Marshall Islands. And she has a situation where, actually, smaller islands than ours, and how to do agriculture sustainably, number one. But also, the whole issue of how can she make sure that agriculture is perpetuated in the future? You know, how can they steward the land so that's possible? And because they're Aina nation, there's lots of commonality with Hawaii. So, we thought she would be great. And then finally, of course, we asked Nainoa Thompson, because he's going to be talking about the whole issue of agriculture in the community. He's the president of the Pacific Voyaging. Yes, and just came back from the Malama Honua. And so, we hope he's going to bring back messages that are going to enable, that he can share during his part of the keynotes about how we can, you know, support and better integrate farms into our community. So, yeah. Unfortunately, because we have three of them, they're going to only speak for 20 minutes each. It's kind of unusual, but anyway, we're going to keep them to those times. Right, that's one of your responsibilities, right? Make sure everybody stays on track. Right, so we can start on time with the sessions. So then, what's also interesting too, like a lot of times we have these kind of conferences, you know, people get very excited, and we're having the conversations about where does this lead to after the conference? What are some of the, I guess, goals and intentions of... So, we all come together. We have great keynote speakers. We have great session topics that we're going to be going over. We're going to have over 500 people within the agriculture community there together. So, obviously, it's just going to be a great two days. But then, what would you like to see or what do you think could happen afterwards? As you know, we have a very tenacious member of our committee, Joey Char, who from the very beginning said, the conference cannot only be about these two days. And so, he really had advocated from the very beginning that we really should have people make commitments that go beyond the conference in terms of how they're going to help the sector move forward. And you know, in the beginning, we just kind of listened to him, but by the end of the whole year, we realized that that was a really good goal. And so, we have set it up so that Kano Hawaii is going to come in and... So, Kano Hawaii is a nonprofit that, I guess, identifies different, I guess, ways that Hawaii could be better, whether it's around sustainability, so a lot with energy, food supply. You're really good at this. Anyway... We'll be doing this 77 times. Yeah, right. So, Kano is coming in, and they're going to either solicit on video or people can write individual commitments that they are going to make after the conference. Things like, I'm going to buy more local products. I'm going to support my farmer by going to the farmer's market. So, they're going to do that. But what we have discovered in planning the conference is that, in your session, for example, is that... The co-ops and food hub sessions. And food hub sessions. When your people got together to organize, they realized that this is a good idea coming and talking about things because you have some real common challenges. And, as Kevin in your group said, everybody doesn't have to make the same mistakes we did. We should actually get together and work with each other so that people can learn from one another. And so, what we're hoping is that every session, we're asking our moderators at the end to ask people if they would like to continue the conversation in some way after the conference. And so, we are going to collect the names of people who want to do that. And our responsibility will be to make sure that we send out back to the group the names of everybody who wanted to be in that committee. So, they can get together and hopefully start working on some of these issues. I mean, we already have two people who are really tackling challenging problems. One is housing and one is land. And they want to do something beyond that. Yeah. But sorry to have to kind of stop our train of thought there, but unfortunately we have to go to a quick one-minute break. Okay. So, hold that thought. Okay. Let's talk a little more about Ag Leadership Foundation and then also about Thana Ching. Okay. Okay. We'll be right back. Thank you. Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii. This is Prince Dykes, your host of The Prince of Investing. Coming to you guys each and every Tuesday at 11 a.m. right here on Thin Tech Hawaii. Don't forget to come by and check out some of the great information on stocks, investings, your money, all the other great stuff, and I'll be your host. See you Tuesday. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate, empower, and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Hawaii Food and Farmer Series. I'm your host, Matt Johnson, where we talk to Hawaii's farmers, foodies, restaurants, politicians, all kinds of cool people that are interested in Hawaii's agriculture industry. And we are talking today to Donna Cheng, PhD, with Pacific Center for Collaboration. And we're talking about the upcoming Hawaii Ag Conference, which is going to be at the Hawaii Convention Center August 29th through the 30th. As you can see below, there is a website where you can go and get more information and also register. So we just talked about how awesome this conference is. I just get more and more excited now that we're talking about it. That's just kind of the whole thing. But let's talk a little bit about Ag Leadership Foundation of Hawaii, which is the organization that is hosting and putting on the conference. Talk about that, but also your involvement with the foundation. Okay. Back in 1982, obviously, as you said earlier, a lot of the pineapple and shurikane plantations were going out of business. And some very thoughtful leaders, agricultural leaders on the big island, Hawaii Island said that, you know, we're going to have a vacuum because the pineapple and sugar industries actually train their own leaders. So they decided to go to the county and they got $25,000 to start a leadership program. They used it to leverage, they leveraged it by going to the Kellogg Foundation, which at that time was going around the country and sponsoring, setting up these leadership programs across the nation. Right now there are 29 of them. The agricultural leadership foundation. Yes. Well, there are different names for them because some are natural resources, you know, so they're, but they have agriculture as a common core. And so they got money from the Kellogg Foundation and they started with the first two classes. But the commitment that they had to make to Kellogg was that they were going to make sure that the program was sustainable beyond the Kellogg Fund. So I entered with class three when the funds were almost gone. And for the first time we charged the tuition. But I worked with the foundation as a faculty member of leadership in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. My dean said, maybe you should run this program and I went and talked to Jane Yamashiro and she made me believe that she made my life work. Anyway, 25 years later and 11 classes, we're now on class, we just finished class 14 or 15. 15, yeah. I think I was across 13. 13, yeah. I can't remember because I only went to 13. But we had two more afterwards. So we, the foundation now has been around for 35 years and we've trained well over 100 leaders. And they're out in the community and providing leadership for their commodity organizations, their communities, some of them have gone into legislature. So we find them in many, many different arenas. Many of the members of our planning committee are ag leaders. And so I feel that that's a great return for the foundation that the leaders really have turned around and volunteered their time to this kind of endeavor because the conference is something that helps the whole sector. And it's beyond just your own narrow self-interest. So my responsibility has always been to... I did a lot of the leadership components but probably the thing I'm most known for is facilitation training as well as strategic planning training because I think those are two critical needs that every leader has or needs to be successful. You know, be able to facilitate groups and be able to plan strategically. Well, that's a great segue into you talking a little bit about... So when you say leadership training, that can mean a whole variety of different things. Harry mentioned facilitation and strategic planning. But can you talk a little bit more about what is the structure? I know it's definitely changed over the years but where there's the classes but then also the field trips. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that structure? Right now, because I haven't been involved with the last two classes, we have another person who's the program director and that's Pauline Svato. What we do is we have a number, so seven to eight, four-day seminars. And these seminars are all over the state. Okay, so we try to expose the class to actual in-classroom work where we're doing leadership training, et cetera. But also I think one of the really big benefits of the program is the field trips where they actually go and visit farms. They go and visit manufacturing operations, retail operations. They have a whole session at the legislature. So they really are being exposed to a much wider perspective relative to what Ag is about. And then the event that we have at the end of the program is a two-week trip to the mainland because we really feel it's important for them to be exposed to the one week spent in Washington, D.C. So really be exposed at the national and international level what things are happening that really impact Hawaii, that we don't even think about. And then the other week is spent in a state that the class selects because we really want them to see what agriculture looks like in another state. And so I think the members of the class really gain a wealth of information from that kind of perspective. But I think you'll agree that sometimes the greatest things that they learn are from their own class. And the network they form as a result of this, you know, when you live with each other for two weeks or even four days, it's pretty intense. And you learn a lot about yourself, but you also learn about the operations of your colleagues, you know, and can really figure out how you can, those things that you learn can be applied to your own businesses. Yeah, I think it was really interesting and I think it was definitely deliberately planned this way where you kind of pick and choosing different members of the cohort from a variety of different industries. You'll have your, you know, typical rancher or farmer, then you'll have your nonprofit organization. There's typically your seed corn company that is going to be represented. And then you usually have kind of like your... Some government people for some time. Government people and... Conservation people. Conservation. I think we're getting some more people from media into the trainings as well. So it's a really nice diversity of, that makes a cohort, you know, clash a little bit. But really I think at the end, it's like you said, that journey together and people have that, I mean I agree on all the issues, but have that strong network that you can relate to. Yeah, I think that the great thing about it is absolutely we don't get people who are all alike. So one of the things we're trying to help them do is be able to, in a very civil way, deal with disputes, things that they don't, they have differences of opinion about. And so I think that's really important because we can see in our society today that that's really necessary civility and respect for others. Yes, so I think we learn that when we actually live with each other. I think that's a critical part of the program. That's fantastic and it's great that Ag Leershire Foundation is taking the lead on putting together this conference. Right. So that's fantastic. So we don't have much time left. So I want to make sure we have time to talk about Dona Cheng, PhD. So give us a little background, like how did you start your career and then how did you transition into working in agriculture? Okay, so the dean said to me, at the time I was the dean of our college, Tropical Agricultural Human Resources, said, you know, you're a leadership person, so you should go and be the coordinator of that leadership program. So that's how it happened. And you know, I'm not, my husband is a horticulturalist, but as he says, there are many parts of my yard I've never been in. So I'm not exactly somebody with a green thumb by any stretch of the imagination. But you know, we're giving them the kind of people skills that they need, you know, to be able to be successful. So I did have those and I, you know, I could, because I was in the college, I had access to a lot of people who could help me set up tours and do that. And the great thing is that people, when they knew we were a part of the program, a lot of people were really willing to host us, you know? So we got to see things. I know in my 25 years I got to see things. My husband used to say that I got to see things that even our dean had never seen before, you know? So it was really a wonderful experience. Cool. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And unfortunately we're running out of time. Okay. And so maybe after the conference. Yes. And we've had some time to relax and settle down. Maybe we could do a follow-up conversation with you and maybe bring on someone else from Ag Leadership Foundation to talk more about it. Oh, that'd be good. Because it's definitely an organization I think is not really well known. Yes. We're doing a lot of great things for Hawai'i culture. So Donna, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. And that's it for this week's show, Hawai'i Food and Farmer series. And we'll see you in two weeks, Thursday at 4 p.m. Aloha.