 Good afternoon. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii. My name is James McKay, co-host for the Hawaii Food and Farmers series. I'm normally hosted by Matt and Justine and they're still off surfing and having a great time so they'll be very relaxed and back for next week. So today we are talking about aquaponics for food security in the right way. So a person that had an interesting experience in the first exposure to aquaponics in Hawaii, this background is kind of appropriate and the production crew didn't know this but I'm a retired solar energy developer. So I was building a lot of the solar farms out in Wainae, West Oahu and Kata was really struggling myself with how we develop solar in the right way for Hawaii and I don't believe that the solar farms being done where it's a single-use entity is a good way forward for Hawaii. So I looked at looking at raised solar farms and putting stuff underneath them and one of the things that popped up that's very in line with Hawaiian values is aquaponics because it uses fish to fertilize the food and I have the pleasure and honor to with me today Jason Brand from Kunea Country Farms and with him is John Young from the Executive Director of the Hawaii Asphalt Paving Industry and eclectic couple of pairs in titles. We'll get to the reasons why we're sitting here together today. So welcome guys thank you for coming down to the studio fighting the traffic in always good times on an afternoon. Thanks for having us. Yeah, pleasure. So you guys asphalt aquaponics, interesting mix. What have we got going on here? They do mix. Yeah, well obviously you need a good solid base for the aquaponics beds. I'd like to kind of focus on the relationship between you two what you guys have worked on together rather than the technology of aquaponics. I think Jason's been in it a long time, I believe it's nearly six years now. So a bit of history, you were on the show, I believe J.E. Fidel's first ever Ag Tech series which was back in May of 2014. That's right. So it's been a long time this has been in the making and it's awesome to see you're still in business and only getting to bigger better things. John you've been involved in mainly building our roads around Hawaii and all sorts of paved infrastructure. Yes. And as an engineer you heard Jason on the radio he loves to self-promote but obviously for the best reasons, right? Yes. So tell us a story. How did you guys end up meeting and how is the asphalt industry merging with the aquaponics industry? It's not it's not that's not exactly how we meant. I was channel surfing and I saw a comma in a business. I saw this banker that turned into a farmer and then when I saw the farm it was just amazing that they they just filled their tanks with water once the water you know goes around the fish maker do their thing fertilizes the plants and I thought that was a very neat show and as part of my asphalt business we're into sustainability or everybody is and I got involved with Envision which is a rating system for sustainable infrastructure and so we wanted to do a workshop here and we want to have a project to present and so the first project I thought of was Kunia Country Farms. Right so as well as the executive director of uh I call Happy the Hawaii asphalt paving industry. Yeah Happy's fine. It seems like you're a great generator acronym so I love this other one you're the leader of Teach Hawaii. Yes. When Teach Hawaii stands for the Envision Action Committee of Hawaii yes which is the program in Hawaii probably volunteers right like most other good things generally have to be here so you've got passionate people that want to do the right thing they're getting together to support a good cause and Envision is the software platform that has been produced by ISI which is the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. Perfect which is definitely what we need a lot more of in Hawaii. Right. So basically you were already a member of the Institute? No well actually through my happy work I'm on the public information committee for the Envision but through locally I'm a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Right. And so we we were had a committee already but then we partnered with also the American Public Works Association and the American Council of Engineering Companies in Hawaii to form this group to promote and or mostly to first to educate and then to promote Envision in Hawaii. Yeah yeah and so that and that's kind of an interesting thing and I actually only realized uh today when I was sort of just thinking what we should talk about and then I found your interview with Jay so not only was he the first ever interview with Jay of this ag tech series which has been kind of discontinued for a little bit but you know there's so much other good content on ThinkTet maybe he decided that he didn't need it but Jason's also earned the first ever commercial award through this Envision tool in America. That's right. So it's a first ever Hawaii project but also first ever US commercial. Yes private company. Yeah so congratulations and that is awesome we have a shot of the award coming up later which we can talk about just whatever you do with it and how many people you get to see today but I think that's really that's really cool stuff so congratulations for that. Thank you. It's good to see you know I think the thing that I find most impressive about your work is your and it's in Jay's talk and all these series are online which is so good about this program you can always find the content online which is I think I'd probably like to talk about the business side of it and how Envision could help other businesses do well and do better. There's a lot of information about aquaponics so the technology I think if you don't know what aquaponics is just get on ThinkTec Hawaii and search aquaponics and you're going to find a bunch of different interviews with all the leading farmers across the state or the nation of Hawaii if you want to call it that and then that's where the you can see really the close alignment with Hawaiian values and traditional food production with fish ponds and the lois and the taro and the whole flow of that ecosystem is kind of a microcosm for the aquaponics industry which is I think it's a beautiful sort of creation that you've taken this now to a commercial level to help feed us. And that was really the goal when we started it it was how do we help Hawaii become food independent with the constraint of two things one was make sure we're sustainable environmentally and economically and two actually try to lower and reduce food prices for the island right and so that just leads you hand over fist right into aquaponics as a grow methodology because it certainly is sustainable in fact our farm uses we call ourselves water neutral we use no new water from our initial fill and that's still the case that John mentioned right so you you you've still got you filled it once from the viewer water supply and that was the your initial fill that you what pumped in or you had a tanked in in trucks or no no where we do have access to water so we had the maps are up early on the cunea where you guys are so you're in part of the cunea egg park we're part of it well I guess we have two farms one's in the ag park and one is actually on the old right hand little dot there yeah so just up it's right right in the red basket right halfway up cunea road um it's a wonderful area it's the old Del Monte property and you did quite a bit of geographic or research as well as the financial sort of market research just to work out you know just not too much rainfall but just enough because you don't want too much rainfall but you'd ideally like some correct and I think uh I guess when you're looking for an aquaponics site there's a couple things one you want to make sure it's a safe environment two you want to make sure that you have access should you need it to electricity yeah we've now and you've saw it for the viewers out there you saw it in the background we are on solar but we still need electricity and then return it to the grid via our solar one day maybe we'll have batteries and then we can be purely off grid okay so this is what's called the net energy meter we're a net energy meter eco proof system and that currently covers your entire load yeah we size ourselves to basically be excellent yeah that control excellent um I'll water the same thing we filled up 186 thousands of gallons of water and that was the last time we filled up and basically rainfall replenish us and cunea is fairly dry as you mentioned but it does get rained once a month in the winter obviously more um and then we have such a large catchment area from our grow beds that will refill right away we have 10 000 gallons of extra holding capacity to catch any additional rain just in case um and then because we're aquaponics we don't grow in the soil so we're soil neutral so those nutrients are there for our keiki so this is what we are actually pulled off the website and I think it was probably a lot of your probably earlier marketing material now but is it are those beds still there or are they uh those beds are still there um when we first started the form we started with six grow beds uh and now we're kind of beginning to approach 70 wow we've expanded a lot in terms of size we're about two and a half acres at the moment by the end of this year we'll probably be a full three acres and we'll probably add two additional acres for next year okay great so we continue to grow that's amazing and have you changed the what the design of what the original ones were a lot like I noticed latest shots they were higher kind of warehouse yeah I'd say in terms of grow beds we're on design 8.0 oh right wow each one either trying to reduce our building material footprint um so to make the beds either cheaper to build quicker to build or stronger in the way that we build them or all of the above or all the above is a be ideal um and then we've also moved into salad mixes and salad mix is an interesting thing because rather than use traditional lumber and that type of stuff we actually recycle pallets right and that and that leads into the envision tool pretty nice because that's one of the things I was really impressed with and so both John and I uh what's called a lead AP or accredited professional with the United States Green Building Council program where that's kind of like a framework for the built infrastructure correct what's interesting about uh the envision tool it's kind of can be applied to any project really it gives you a whole list of it's designed for infrastructure projects predominantly so and so as a civil engineer it's very exciting because that's what we do so I'm also I'm a lead AP but I'm also what they call envision SP or envision sustainability professional which means you got the black belt to use this tool so yes don't damage yourself or anyone else and so and the pallets was that an idea you had anyway or was that something because this tool kind of gives you credits for well the the neat thing about envision is it sets up guidelines and ways to think about whether it's large infrastructure projects or even small private company sustainable farm type projects and really just laid out nicely in terms of points and ways to think about our interaction with the community our interaction with the environment our interaction on various social factors various you know ecological factors and eventually economical factors and just lays it out and there are things that we would look in the guidelines and say it's probably reasonable we should try to address that and do it and other points that they kind of want you to do but you're saying there's no economic reason that would justify spending that kind of right to use a business it's you're going to be discretional on what my sense really and so it's a great footprint or blueprint really to follow particularly when you're talking about you know in the bigger scheme of things for aquaponics for food safety you got to be environmentally and economically sustainable otherwise you can have the prettiest farm in the world it might produce food but it goes out of business yeah it doesn't do you any good exactly yeah yeah well I think that and that's the coolest thing like I think I don't know what it the stats are for ag businesses but most other small businesses go to business within two years is generally the national sort of average so I can't imagine ag would be any better than that especially in Hawaii when we are still competing with you know 90 percent depending on what statistic you read of imports so immediately that shows you economically you're kind of up against a hard obstacle and a nut to crack yeah that's what I'd say so the fact that you guys have managed to not only keep in business but scale up on the scale that you guys have achieved is really impressive it's a you know it probably is very inspirational for all the aquaponics companies that are thinking about or even other sort of farming businesses both outside and you've got even got one in Kakako the indoor guy haven't checked he's going but it's great to see that model well the community has been a tremendous blessing I mean they really are supportive of local farmers hopefully every farmer out there that's watching agrees with that the restaurants have been very supportive zippies zippies is one of our big uh I guess buyers and actually supply most of the greens for their salads excellent actually yeah well you're making me hungry now yeah we do have a bit of a pahana next so we're gonna take a quick break maybe grab something to eat for a minute and we'll be right back hi I'm Ethan Allen host of likeable science here on thinktech hawaii.com I hope you'll join me every friday at 2 p.m to discover what's likeable about science aloha this is kirsten bomb guard turner I host sustainable hawaii every Tuesday at noon on thinktech hawaii live streamed at thinktech hawaii.com and we also appear on Olalo we would love to have you join us for many of the interesting think tech shows that we have dealing with really important issues that impact all of us in hawaii as well as nationally and sustainable hawaii I try to bring up the issues that are most pertinent to those of us on all of the islands and also to help connect people I'll I'll give people a chance to look at what people are doing and see how they can plug in and get active hello and welcome back we're on thinktech hawaii's food and farmer series with me today Jason Brandt and John Young so we're discussing uh basically aquaponics for food security done in the right way because it's kind of a lot of people get excited by aquaponics then they realize it's kind of messy a lot of hard work things can go wrong pretty easy pretty quickly I know that from firsthand experience um and Jason's heading up co-founder one of the most successful businesses that we just found out has scaled up nearly 10 fold since it started so that's that's awesome to see in hawaii to set a precedent and not only did they do that successfully but they've they're now really addressing the social environmental model of how to create a good food business from every aspect so um that's kind of what we've been discussing and we just heard about the the whole process that they've actually gone through and they've been out of scale up to the commercial level with zippies and other sort of purchases and your model still remains pretty similar that you go to the higher end big bolt stores rather than sort of mum and pop or farmers markets that would well I wouldn't say higher end remember the goal of our farm is to drive food prices of lower true miss but it meant bigger bigger so in order to do that we try to achieve economies of scale and sell things in large lots so you'll find our products at large restaurants like zippies in supermarkets like Foodland or Don Quixote or things like that where it's able we're able to sell it in large you know thousand pounds yeah yeah um that's not to say that the wholesalers don't go ahead and divide it so eventually it ends up in smaller restaurants because on a price basis we try to be cheaper than the imported lettuces so that people on the island are getting fresh food locally produced sustainably grown less money yeah right so it and I think you said that too in jay series it's I think you said something about which made me laugh is even though you haven't done the tests like you taste your own lettuce and then you taste something that's shipped in from california like you know it's probably looks kind of similar although I think yours is more vibrant but I'm sure the nutrients are better for you there's no way it couldn't be right then well I agree with you I think just just on taste alone you know if you line up and for those that want to have a party trick get in-ground lettuce hydroponic lettuce and aquaponic lettuce and just do blind taste test sounds like a wild party let's come over to your house later on definitely need room for that one so and also so to get there like you we've talked about the the process you ended up implementing which is this the envision tool and so john you were just saying actually you didn't actually do the certification of the tool using the tool that was actually another group that they're off island right now at a conference to help talk about this so maybe if we can talk a bit a little bit about how that process happened and you know who was involved in the results so when we um when we want to do the workshop and we look for a project I needed someone to help me with um doing the awards a middle and so we would reach out to blue ocean civil consulting because um amber who's one of the principals there she's really into sustainability and when she saw the project she thought like wow she get paid in food on money or both and then and then seriously when when um then when we showed it to envision because we were a little concerned about it being a smaller project they thought that was a perfect project yeah and so from there it just took off well and they probably came out to hawaii to certify right like well I think yeah we have to do a trip every week just to make sure this is legitimate yeah and so that basically she does kind of would be like an audit really where she'll come out do the parts of the criteria she she helped us so she really was working on behalf of the farm to really help gather the data um put everything in presentable format and then guide us through the envision process excellent so she was our right hand person in fact more important than the right hand she was the leader uh to help farmers really access the envision guidelines right and as a farmer you know you're busy running your business right this is now suddenly above and beyond of what you normally do and she's like I need this document to justify you know whatever the how many pallets have you collected over the last two years and that's what it is is a lot of the thought at least for our farm that goes behind the envision award we had thought about you know and we had gone through a lot of the process it's did we document it yeah quantifying it yeah and so a lot of the work and effort we had to do was figure out you know how many pallets have we actually recycled you know how many tons of broken asphalt have we brought in to line our roads because that's what we use uh so that we can drive trucks and whatnot you know around the farm yeah um so how do you quantify all the stuff added up and actually see your environmental footprint whether it's positive or negative all right and that's where you need an engineer and then of course having engineers on hand they help make things a little better for the yeah well analytical by personalities around the yeah so and is there plans that you know of to do another kind of envision projects is that already somewhere in the pipeline or there be what we're hoping we had that workshop on august 29th and it got the engineering community excited it's typically a kind of a civil engineering thing to do right and so i know some of the firms are looking at their clients projects and see if they can apply the system to that we were we reached out to allopono to see if they'd be interested and they're they are very interested in this and we hope to have a training workshop so that more people can become envisioned sustainability professionals that'd be good and that'd be kind of a one or two day thing you think it's a one day thing one day thing yeah yeah probably in end of February okay cool yeah and even for us we are now on our second field trip of young engineers throughout hawaii coming to visit the farm and really think about you know won the envision award but two how do our principles fit into some of the structures that they'll be giving is this from u-h or no it's a c y m f yeah so the younger members we've got the website so they might be members of the institute of sustainable infrastructure maybe that's could be how they're finding it um that's the logo that you know we got there on there is your gold gold award yes so um that yeah there we go that's the award that's in probably your house that's that's that's that's on our on the wall on our deck as you mentioned in the beginning we don't let anything go to waste so we have a giant teaching classroom that we allow school children to come to and learn where their food is coming from or at least aquaponics is a farming method and that's the deck that in this picture it looks like we're sitting on okay the award would be displayed there it's very right next to it you see the solar panels but underneath both of these structures is just fish tanks right it's thousands and thousands of gallons of fish yeah which are the nutrients for the the the latest we saw earlier yeah and i guess i'd like to have a bit of a segue about about that solar so when i was out there last time that wasn't constructed yet so that's a pretty impressive array and i believe you got that through a department of agriculture grant in part yeah so we received a 25 grant from uh department of ag um to i guess subsidize or help get us started with regard to this project to take us energy neutral right exactly because otherwise your only option as a small farmer is you playing heco or the utility if you're on other islands each and every month and that's going to eat away at the profit margins which will eventually he's gonna stop you from saying a business so this array is really impressive to to see implemented and you know obviously i love solar energy so i'm a big fan of seeing this happen um but that huge plug to department of agriculture and you know i've seen liz uh she did the aquaponics programs i went through myself to learn sort of the aquaponics and why i didn't want to become a farmer myself so i appreciate you did a battle um the the department of agriculture and especially liz puts a lot of work to support farmers which is is great to see and you know super needed i think in hawaii so you know we couldn't have too many people sit around the table but you know big shout out to liz and all the great work she does for the department of ag and farmers in particular so this is kind of the the shot that we saw earlier but looking down with the sunscreens closed i guess to protect the lettuce from the sun yes so this would be uh probably peak summers here in june july type timeframe and we're preventing tip burn for the lettuce and so we'll put them in depending on really how intense the sun is between a 30 and 50 shade cloth and then in the cooler months remove it um just because it's not necessary and what's your um sort of next steps do you think you're kind of scaling up is there a point when you're gonna say oh that's enough beds or are you getting new products or are you still finding there's just more demand that you have to scale up yeah well i mean as a farmer we're in a blessing state meaning right now we are you know whatever if we can grow it we can sell it there's not much demand for local produce right now and you're not really affecting other local farmers because we import so much food right and so even if we doubled our production maybe we knock out you know a tiny bit of the caseload that's being imported to the state but we don't jeopardize any local farmers so there's room for everyone to grow yeah where we've been focusing is growing both in head lettuce because again there's a lot of demand for it and really increasing our solid mixes okay and that's kind of what you're talking about that's the new uh end that you've kind of just got into was the the salad mixes which you'd see probably more in restaurants than in supermarkets and that's this right here right yeah here's the salad mix great this one in particular is a beautiful spring mix full of reds and greens there's actually eight different lettuce types in that salad mix wow and you can see they're under a hard roof greenhouse structures um and that's a new thing for us again we was important to get it up before november to february which will be the rainy season for us and so we're trying to protect unlike head lettuce and most in-ground vegetables rain really does affect salad mix yeah because any drop will uproot it or or make them stick together and then they'll get bold and high so you know it's we learned that the hard way yeah that's great you know it's funny you say that figure about doubling your production if you duggle looks you know that's you're very well aware that governor ega now has pronounced that's our new goal is doubling doubling our local food production by 2030 yeah so we've got the aloha plus challenge that you know we're trying to implement and get going and so we probably need countless of these farms to hit that goal yeah so across all different types of commodities right and across all islands too yeah so yeah i think the the opportunity and the prospects for people that really want to do this engage are huge and very needed yeah and in my mind critical which is why this series exists yeah so yeah so i think i really appreciate the work you're doing hopefully you know all these young guys that are coming out to tour to see how to do this can take sort of books and i know you're a very giving and sharing person with your time and your knowledge so you know as long as they're not gonna come come rip you off eventually i look forward to the time when you're like oh this young guy has just you know taking all the way all our business because then we kind of have succeeded there right i think that would be as you say all of us can grow for acres and acres before we're at a point where we actually compete versus each other but that also means as you point out we will be food independent yeah yeah and so that's a good thing for the island right and then we can get into the more interesting crops if you really have to specialize into really bizarre stuff and i guess that you know that might be a good segue hopefully we do get at that point and the acupunct farmers have to sort of strategize amongst themselves as to what do they grow strategically for the market that we have yeah rather than just you know growing whatever is cool so it's where i try to look forward to so um we gotta wrap it up in about a minute so uh any kind of final words on what you'd like to leave with the viewers for today well first just to reiterate thanks for having us on and for all the viewers thanks for watching and be part of the farming community because you know Hawaii basically needs this i think becoming food independent as an island state and nation is important for us all who live here and all the people who visit here so thank you and if you guys do want to visit our website cuneacountryfarms.com our neighboring process of property it happens to be a rum distillery which grows a lot of sugarcane kohana rum.com and so it's a quite a fun tour yeah i was going to do that for the main the main thing but it's not really so much as food so yeah drink it and probably have to have product sample sampling as well so and how about you john i just want to mention that the envision is about our award but it's more about how to think about projects in a sustainable way right so we want people to start thinking about projects in a sustainable way yeah and that's the message yes that's a message we're trying to deliver yeah and they are what more important place in hawaii really to do that where we basically have to have most things shipped in and if we don't look at reuse like the creative palette reuse that you've done and the gravel and other stuff then that's like yeah we're paying for it we're shipping it in a big carbon and cost expense so yeah i think i'd like to wrap it up that i think it's still very inspirational to especially younger people and maybe you know even older people that want to find a more meaningful career is i don't think there's anything more meaningful and fulfilling than growing food for yourselves for your community and for other people for sale and i think uh everyone that's met the farming community as opposed to say the business community nothing against them but businesses about making money farming is about growing food so i think my personal findings have been that the farmers are much more well well-rooted and just more compassionate nicer people they're more fun to be around like yeah and it's still a business which i think why it's blending the best of both worlds it's still a business you have to be sustainable and always rather than strictly money business you can just have to be financially sustainable and that to me is the big sort of disjunct where we've got the developers here which we touched on the hoa pilly project which i'm kind of against so yeah a lot of hope for the future i believe so thanks again guys thanks