In this episode we speak with Gail and Cab Baber who are long-time ag producers in Hawaii and early adopters of growing Hawaiian hemp. We talk about the many issues they have faced related to growing hemp and its many uses and promise as a crop, but also talk about a number of important issues and possible solutions related to Hawaii Ag production in general too.
Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resources, and the Seeds of Well-being (SOW) Project. This podcast is supported by the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Associated Links:
2023 State of Hawaii Legislative Bills:
Find out more about us:
In this episode we speak with Gail and Cab Baber who are long-time ag producers in Hawaii and early adopters of growing Hawaiian hemp. We talk about the many issues they have faced related to growing hemp and its many uses and promise as a crop, but also talk about a number of important issues and possible solutions related to Hawaii Ag production in general too.
Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resources, and the Seeds of Well-being (SOW) Project. This podcast is supported by the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Associated Links:
2023 State of Hawaii Legislative Bills:
Find out more about us:
The views information or opinions expressed during the Seeds of Wellbeing series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources our funders, and any affiliated organizations involved in this project. Welcome to a Seeds of Wellbeing"Voices From the Field" podcast, featuring voices of Hawaii agriculture producers for Hawaii agriculture producers. These podcasts are made possible by a grant from the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, also known as CTAHR. And the Seeds of Wellbeing or SOW project and is supported by grant from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Alex:Aloha mai kakou. Welcome back to another podcast episode of The University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, Seeds of Wellbeing project. Today we have Cab and Gail Baber, founders of Island Herbs and Hawaii Royal Hemp with us to talk story about what farming on Big Island is like. Aloha Cab and Gail, how're you doing?
Gail Baber:We're doing well. Thank you.
Alex:So I got a bunch of questions in the lineup for you today. Let's just start with the first one. Number one. How did you originally get into farming? Where did you start farming for the first time? What crops did you initially grow? And why those specific crops at the time?
Cab Baber:Well, originally, I've been farming on my aunt Toobeeʻs farm ever since I was a kid, and so I've had farming, a lot of exposure, and a lot of gardens in my backyard through the years and I started farming in 1979 and Waimanalo. And I was really enthusiastic about the U of H corn, they were very proud of their corn seed at the time. And I had two and a half acres in Waimanalo so I was into planting corn, I had a lot of other vegetables for myself, yellow watermelons and things like that, but Waimanalo is where I spiked out. But then when I moved to the Big Island, I felt I really found a place that could really do great agriculture. So...
Gail Baber:My background is in natural resource management and civil engineering, but I have a mom farmer, and cousins and uncles that farm and she actually started two CSAs, community supported agriculture, projects in the 80s, which, to me didn't seem like a big deal, but back then that was just my mom. She's also a medical scientist. But it wasn't really until I married Clarence and started, you know, working in agriculture that I understood the profound gift actually that my mom had brought to community. So I'm not the green thumb, he is. But I've got a little bit of a background in it.
Alex:Gail what crops do you like growing?
Gail Baber:I like eating.
Alex:Okay, okay.
Gail Baber:But yeah, and honestly, I can't think of anything he doesn't grow, that I don't love stuff that I wouldn't normally do because he grows regeneratively. And there's so much nutrition packed into it, the taste is just off the hook. Plus I just happen to have married a wonderful chef, so not only tremendous farmer, he's a great cook so that does make me more of an eater. That's my contribution oftentimes. But I did the palapala side of things, a lot of paperwork and organizational development and compliance and all that.
Alex:Which every farm needs. Every farm needs the person that does the palapala, right? It's a team. Farming is more than just the green thumb. It is it is everything.
Cab Baber:So on the Big Island, we expanded by taking on herbs and fruits and vegetables for CSA for about 50 families. And that was a really nice way to go for a number of years. And then I took on tomatoes after that. And our tomatoes was shipped all the way to Kauai for quite a few years as well.
Gail Baber:Yeah, you had the largest organic tomato operation in Hawaii for a number of years. Yeah,
Cab Baber:Yeah. So I kind of went different places and I did a lot of companion planting along the way. I kept feeling like I needed to continue to go to school. Dr. Higa came by. The EM technologies, effective microorganisms, came into my world and it really changed my abilities I felt and so I like to share that with the farmers and new gardeners and things like that.
Gail Baber:You also had the University of Hawaii came out and studied his farm in the early 90s because he had, it was a smaller farm, less than and acre, and he had incredible production off of it and it was also making money. They couldn't, he was bending the rules of agriculture as they knew it, so they came out and studied, you know, what he was doing to be able to produce so much food for this 50 family CSA and a lot of it was based on his regenerative farming techniques. I donʻt think that you shared but he also co founded the Hawaii Organic Farmers Association decades ago and also the Hawaii Hemp Council for sustainability reasons. And like you just shared he was a pied piper for Bokashi and beneficial microorganisms decades ago. So I think you've really been a pioneer here. In modern Hawaii agriculture, at least, me the bragging wife thinks so.
Alex:It's and honor to finally get you on the podcast and talk about your perspectives on everything that's going on right now in sustainable agriculture, but also in this other, this other realm that you have interest in. So second question, besides the vegetables, what crops are you focusing on now?
Cab Baber:Well, we're focusing on our hemp crop and food for ourselves and a few other families. But it's really about our high quality hemp and keeping that at a level that is going to be exquisite. It's going to be the finest that we can think of in Hawaii until somebody else starts trying to do this somewhere else. But the the multi cropping of species and the amount of food that we put into our soil for the results we get and the complementing cropping is been something I've done for a long time. And we know for 1000s of years, people have, you know, companion planted. So it's about producing the highest quality medicine in the world and really making that available. And then sharing that with other farmers is really the way I think we're going to go. As CBD becomes more well understood and known, eventually Hawaii will probably be the major producer for the United States and a lot of other people go into other crops. It's just kind of the writing on the wall that we see now, even though we haven't gotten our party started quite yet. But it is going to be very strong here in Hawaii, and I think it's going to do very well for all of us. And so I think the CBD of the highest quality in the world is really what we're focusing on right now.
Gail Baber:Yeah, I think what you're seeing in the hemp industry is kind of divergence. There's a lot of multi state operators or big guys gobbling up the smaller farms, but the ones that are still standing are smaller, super high quality boutique hemp farms. And what Clarence does which is unique and only couple of hemp farms in the country do this is he polycrops hemp with food. And and we don't use plastic. I mean, even most organic hemp farms use plastic. So he really takes seriously his mission is reestablishing ecosystem services. I mean, we have pollinator habitat, we capture carbon he mulches, you know, obviously, no, no runoff of any kind, and he makes all our fertilizers or inputs on the farm. So we're, we're, I think we're differentiated a little bit that way. And that's where the quality come from, comes from obviously,
Alex:Not just environmentally, but economically, would you say that multi-cropping, hemp with food production is the ideal way to go in terms of production efficiency, regenerative inputs? And like, just longevity of keeping your farm going? Is that is that theoretically, the better way than mono-cropping hemp like how everyone else tends to want to farm?
Gail Baber:Yeah, I think it depends on your objective and how you're measuring. Right. So and, and also I think the consumers changing and what the consumer wants, if it's just about the cheapest, most greatest mass produced product, then yeah, you know, I mean, we can look at more traditional, you know, modern agricultural methods, but you're talking about I think, internalizing the costs, right? I mean, to a whole system's approach, a way of looking at things rural economic development, your community, human health, mental health, and then the quality of the product. So I can I can say, without a doubt that when you take a systems approach like my husband has, yeah, it makes economic sense. Financially has it yet paid off? Not yet here in Hawaii, just because we've had significant rural rule hurdles and law hurdles, even though we're some of the first to pass hemp legislation
Cab Baber:I will say part of sustainability and encouraging people to grow food in Hawaii since it has been challenging at times for people to raise food and have enough money to live on. By raising enough food and having a hemp crop to complement that, not only are you getting the greatest quality food, locally delivered and highly fresh, but now you're getting the highest quality medicine so to speak out of that as well. So I think it's a real compliment and it kind of relates to heightening the whole civilization, not just the product that we hope to sell out of Hawaii to everybody else, but also right here at home. It should really make us all more food conscious, and we'd be able to share food with our neighbors and not have to worry so much about the boats coming or not and that kind of thing. So I think it does something different to our psyche when we talk about sustainability on that kind of level.
Gail Baber:I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, there's more sovereignty within the individual when they're able to not only have a value added crop, but they're also providing just basic food sustenance for themselves. I know one of the visions of Clarence and some of the other farmers that helped get the hemp legislation passed in our state was define a value added crop or a crop that could provide enough margins that would subsidize our food production, because as you know, most farmers food production is subsidized by spouses outside job or some kind of outside job. And the margins in CBD production even even now, even though that we went through a period of time, a couple of years where the market was flooded, now it's less flooded, the margins were were nice, and especially for for handcrafted. Again, unfortunately for Hawaii farmers, our hands were tied. We've got a really beautiful import market of about $56 million of CBD coming into the State, so that means $56 million worth of Hawaii residentsʻ money is being exported. So it'd be really nice to turn that around and support more of the local farmers but but the Genesis obviously for a lot of these farmers was insustainability again, going back to Clarence and others founding the Hawaii Hemp Council in the 90s, and obviously CBD was not well known, hardly even studied at that point. They were looking more at like, how can we transition the plantation crops, the sugar cane into something that will provide many products and benefits for people food, fuel, and fiber. And I know that their group actually got permission to do a pilot project in the 90s. But you know it was still scheduled one, so it was nice pie in the sky, but you really have to give you a lot of hats off to these pioneering folks. And we are about the only state that, that except for Colorado and maybe one other, where the hemp movement has been primarily pushed by farmers. And a lot of the States, the legislation, the most recent legislation, was to get hemp legal was pushed by more by businesses and people that saw the bottom line. And our farmers saw it not only as a potential way to make money, but a way to increase food security and food sovereignty here because of the margins. And also because there was already enough research out about the way hemp can mitigate soil. So I know that was some of the motivation for these guys to keep at it for decades. You worked with Representative Thielen for forever to get the legislation passed.
Cab Baber:And that's a big part of it, too. We've inherited a beautiful place Hawaii, and as a farmer that looks over the land and just drives places that have been tilled and drilled and poisoned, you know, I kind of feel for that land. I'm like, Okay, well, it's still here. It's kind of hurting right now, but what can we do? How can how fast can we remediate? And so when we did the work with like the University and showed them how to not only grow hemp there and in a fine way, but also show the remediation of 90% of some of the toxins in the soil, especially Atrazines, right away in the first round, first crop. And know the third crop is going to have roots 50 feet deep and really do a water savings and cleaning and ariation and what a rejuvenation we can really have with the lands that have been, I would say challenged by outside interests here in Hawaii.
Gail Baber:Yeah, that was a research project you did with Dr. Koh wasnʻt it? Over on Oahu, right, where they had to prove again, even though hemp has been around for 10s of 1000s of years, and was grown in Hawaii over 100 years ago during the sailing time. They had to reprove that hemp could be grown here before they would pass the final legislation. But that was a great project that you guys participated in.
Cab Baber:Yeah, it was really sweet. Dr. Koh accommodated us. He said, here's some soil ready to go by the University standards, gave me some seeds. I said well, can I have a few plots of my own little three by three foot plots and, and he gave me three to dress up"Island Herb style" with the EM Bokashi, minerals and compost. And so we did get 12 footers in 120 days in the University plot and we got 16 footers and the Island Herbs plot on the same land. So we showed that, yeah, University's top grade soil needs a little help to bring it on in and so we can do that and it'll make a big difference. A big, big difference.
Alex:So it sounds to me like with many other things outside of agriculture, that the battle of philosophies is between the corporate bottom line, and quality and heart in terms of what sets, what could potentially set Hawaii apart from the rest of the industry, in terms of our ability to potentially produce a objectively higher quality product, if done correctly, with the right techniques,
Gail Baber:Yeah, and I think that we can make, make money and make a profit off that. I mean, especially as people are starting to wake up and become more conscious, and we need to internalize the cost of business, then business will become very equitable for regenerative farmers.
Alex:That's, that's the key word right there. Equitable. Equity.
Gail Baber:And I need, you know, there was a recent, there was a study that came out of what's the business school of Penn, on the east coast, some Ivy League school, for getting... Oh, the Wharton School of Business last year. And it was looking at what consumers were willing to pay for more sustainable products. This wasn't just agricultural products, but across the board, and the amount of money across all generations from, you know, teenagers up to, you know, whatever would be much older than us, was significantly more from even just two years ago, pre COVID. And so the there's a mass acceleration and exponential jump, I think, in terms of people's awareness. I mean, we're seeing here locally, even within our own family, and so I think the handwriting's on the wall, it's just hopefully, the pioneers and those of us that are in farming can hang in there until we get to these new models of being, basically.
Cab Baber:And we also know, very clearly, that every dollar that a farmer makes is locally circulated 10 times. And so pretty much for every one farmer, you know, that's 10 more people that are handling that money, and that 10 more people that are, you know, helping that farming sustainability happen in Hawaii. And so if we can even say, oh, one day a month, you're going to eat nothing but local produce, you know, that in itself will change the food system, because people will see things differently about what they're eating, and how good it is. And they want more of that. And then the local supply goes up, and farmers are supported, and it happens more and more. So the more successful, again, the small farmers, kind of distribution of wealth so to speak, you know, 1 to 5-10 acres, maybe, but very intensively handled. Very lovingly, heart filled connection with the the produce and the land that their, the produce is coming from. So that I think is the essential ingredient. As we know, vibrationally, plants respond. You know, it's the love that you feel in that field. When you go, wow, why does this field look so good? And so green? And you're like, I can't believe that? Well, the farm, look at that farm is so happy, he is just, he's a happy guy. She's a happy gal. It's the plants are reflecting that back.
Alex:That's the green thumb, right? The vibes,
Cab Baber:The vibes, and then that translates into actual nutritional benefit for everybody. Not just the farmer that gets to, you know, share that produce, but then the people that consume it. I will suggest strongly that your consciousness is going to be raised if you have a better functioning body and brain to work with. You are what you eat. Yeah, yeah. The more Hawaii we can be I think the more Hawaii we will feel, and these things will become clearer to us. That yeah, the more local produce I become, the more local food I eat, the more earth I am from Hawaii, unless I am a visiting country, somewhere in the world. So if
Alex:Or you've never been where you don't know what's going on over there, you're disconnected geographically.
Cab Baber:Know your farmer, and then you get to know your neighbor a lot better if you're both eating from the same dirt.
Alex:So in a nutshell, try buy local, right? Keep the money in the family, keep the money in the community, right? Then get that money circulating amongst us small farmers, us small business owners, residents who live and work here, right? Oh, which brings me, for everyone's clarification, multi state operators, MSOs right? That's the acronym that I'm hearing these days, MSOs? What's the situation going on with that in the hemp realm with with what you're seeing here in Hawaii? MSOs. Is that a threat? Is that a potential opportunity?
Gail Baber:You know I think it was more of a threa,t quite frankly, about three or four years ago because we had a number of individuals from across the country looking to invest large amounts and type large amounts of Hawaii land in hemp and we were weren't even comfortable with that, because we knew that they were not going to be farming regeneratively or providing the quality. And most of us founding hemp farmers really wanted to have more of like a Kona coffee industry in terms of the CBD part of hemp, where the focus will be on quality and garner some of the nicest margins in the world like Kona coffee continues to do. And we weren't seeing that initially. We were seeing people that wanted to come in and I mean, they were, they suggested some pretty outrageous things just to do in terms of farming and gardening and acreage, and we just said, No. And I'm glad a lot of other people do, and they failed and so I don't see that really as a threat to Hawaii. There are some larger fiber projects planned on Oahu in a couple of the places Iʻm aware of, but they all seem to be done, being done on with kind of more consciousness and with, with people that live here, so I'm not concerned about that at all. But, but nationally, so when you look at what's happened to the hemp industry, a lot of farmers washed out for a whole lot of reasons. Some of it was a flood in the market, but a lot of that flood in the market had to do with not having infrastructure and processing in place. There were a lot of chokes in the value chain. It was a new industry, and that can sometimes happen. And then there was a switch and rules. The, a lot of the pilot programs under which farmers launched beginning in 2014 with the passage of the Farm Bill, it changed in 2018 and that was difficult for a lot of farmers in other states to deal with. Hawaii farmers not, because we've always had the toughest rule to comply with. So we're like, "Yeah, what's the problem? We can handle." But what we're seeing now is yes, and I think you see it in a number of potential agricultural spaces, where you get very large corporations that are owned that had been, they start out as hemp companies and actually had been bought up by some pharmaceutical companies or pharmaceutical companies have large interests, and other companies as well. And they are gobbling up kind of more the middle and small farms and consolidating their operations and so they have economies of scale. You don't necessarily know your farmer. They blend the oils together. And none of that's necessarily bad. I mean, you can do all of that large scale regeneratively while consciously, I don't know that that's the case. And so I think that it's not an issue here in Hawaii, but and so we will be able to carve out a niche, hopefully compared to some of the other states that are now under some of this MSO, multi state operators, pressures. I will tell you, it was a little interesting to see just last month that a very large hemp lobbying group that represents some of these MSOs came out opposing some of our Hawaii pharma legislation. And so we got to feel for the first time, that pressure of really big money in industry, potentially swaying what Hawaii people and Hawaii farmers wanted to support their big operations in multiple states. And basically they're opposing an origin bill. You know, they don't want Hawaii consumers to know the percentage of Hawaii hemp oil or whatever.
Alex:Okay,
Gail Baber:Yeah, yeah. And so they were, they're reaching out
Alex:Great. That's great to hear. There's a difference to their constituents and saying, you know, offering them letters via emails to contact our senators and representatives, saying, "Oh, I'm your constituent. I'm between the people that come here and try and insert the opposed to this bill for this reason." And I know for a fact that none of their constituents are here, because they don't have a representation here in Hawaii. So it was a little bit corporate model, right, that it lacks, it lacks a certain, it misleading. But I mean, that stuff happens in all sectors, not just agriculture, not hemp, but it was, felt a little bit intimidating, at first to bump up against that, but I'm happy lacks Aloha. I don't think there's any, any other way to to say that that bill is still progressing, even with or without that outside pressure.
Gail Baber:Theyʻve done a good job because I mean, there are a describe what it lacks, but it lacks something that makes it is lot of brands out there that claim Hawaii name or roots. so disconnected. So disconnected, and it's contrived. And the fact that they're trying to dilute down their product and still force it onto the consumer that that trips me out. There's like a Kona Gold out of Florida. There's other brands too, that I won't list, and they have no Hawaii hemp oil in them at all. And if you look at our hemp industry, again, it's a $56 million industry, but most of the brands that are being sold, and actually a lot of the products that are not legal in the State are being sold, are being imported. So they did really good in rushing our state, when Hawaii farmersʻ hands were tied, so we are asking the State and residents to kind of allow Hawaii farmers to do some of what all these outside folks have been allowed to do in our own backyard. And then we're hoping to educate and outreach to to our neighbors and say, hey, you know, take a look at where your CBD is coming from and if it's working for you, or, or maybe just try a locally grown product, because man, we are good.
Alex:Do the Pepsi Challenge, yeah do the Pepsi Challenge. It's a bit disingenuous, it's a bit disingenuous, it's phony to do that. What's the word cultural? Is that cultural appropriation?
Gail Baber:You know, I can't speak to that in any technical or legal way, but it just feels The way to combat that is there? So it's like champagne, yeah? Champagne has to come from Champagne, right? And thatʻs what we trying to really brand is that atoa of Hawaii. I mean, Hawaii I already has a name for agriculture, and a variety of different products, and so, so if we can cultivate It protects the consumer, right? It protects the consumer and own that, it seems like we should be able to own that. Which just means, which is actually good for the consumer. And it reflects... It's consumer transparency. I mean, the consumer, I want to know, how my food has been treated. I also want to know where it's from. Is it, is my pork from Cambodia? Or is my pork from France? Or is it from Ohio? Or is it from, you know, my guy down the street? So I think that that's, I think that's just fair. I mean, we deserve to have that knowledge so we can make the types of decisions we want to make.
Alex:Yeah, yeah. Honesty, honesty, trust. Yeah. That's the foundation of a grassroots economy. And that's what we are, we are trying to build, right is, is an economy that is run
Gail Baber:True. Yeah. and benefit, directly benefits the people that live here.
Cab Baber:Those that want to be agrarian, to live outside and have a nice life and enjoy the food and the spirits we have. And you know that they say that 40% of us really want to do that just right away. And others, you know, we have diversity in our population, but we need to really support those agrarian efforts. And, you know, if you're a Hawaiian style, it takes 25% of your time to grow your own food. So if everybody started spending 25% of their time growing their own food, they'd get in touch with things, but not many people are ready to commit to that because of how much money they need to make to live in Hawaii.
Alex:Yeah, and, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up, because one of the philosophies I think that all of us, everybody who lives here, in the pae ʻāina, can can apply to their lives is just farming part time. Just a couple hours a week. One half day a week. One day a week. If you can just be consistent farming part time, many hands make light work, right? So farmers, based on based on this study, the Seeds of Wellbeing project study, and the survey that we did have over 400 farmers, farming full time is draining, right? Farming full time, is what breaks our local ag producers. Like that's, that's when you hit a wall, you get depressed you deal with the mental health stuff. If everyone just farmed part time that's the way where we can raise the bar out here. That's the way we can...
Gail Baber:Well maybe, except for people that are addicted to farming like Cab. He's been farming full time for, you know, 45 years
Alex:Well if you're one hammer, you could just be one hammer, just do what you got to do. Right? All power to you, you know, right on.
Gail Baber:So I do, I do, I hear the value in what you're saying. It makes so much sense, I mean, because what it does is it brings sovereignty back to every individual, which is what we want. And, and not everyone wants to farm, I mean, some people kill plants, myself included, even though I'm a very happy person, sometimes. So I think, so if we look at that, it's like well, then, you know, there there, I think I'm looking for opportunities for all people in all sectors to be able to live an abundant life. And of course, to me, abundance means everything. It's your abundance in your relationships, your health, but it's also financial abundance. It's not just saying, you know, oh, we can live off good vibes because we can't. Our farm mortgage, we can't pay off our mortgage and good vibes, unfortunately. So, so I think we have to start looking also at, you know, what's missing, in terms of in, in what we've already looked at. I mean, we've looked a lot at how can we make land more affordable? How can we bring water in? How can we bring infrastructure in? How can we get housing on farmland for farmers? What do we do about workforce housing? These are really important questions, and we've looked at them, and there are solutions out there. I mean, I did some research with the Kohala Center about six years ago and we looked at Community Land Trust's and I mean, there's, there's just things to mimic. One of the things I really, and it may be out there, I haven't personally seen it yet is, again, how are we going to support the farmers to own more the value chain all the way up. Because there's certain, certain things in agriculture that are not going to make a lot of margins, at least not yet. There's not gonna be high margins in it. But if every farmer could have some crop or, or participate in some product that's value added, and own a piece of that value added all the way through the process and the manufacturing, to the retail, to the consumer, they get X percent, now farmerʻs making some money. And we know that from all the studies, right, what do we make like two cents to the dollar, by the time that the consumer gets it? So, so it's really about farmers finding a way to empower themselves in terms of, you know, business negotiations and kind of referral agreements almost in terms of working and actually huiing together because we have to stand strong and some of our price points. Not to the point that we make our food unaffordable for other people, but, but we have to find those value added crops for farmers as well. And there's tons out there, there's, I mean, Hawaii can grow can grow anything. And I think that's where the State can be a benefit. And where we can have greater marriage with the business and venture capitalists community is farmers shouldn't have to become VC people or the best business people on the planet. There's got to be a way where we can merge that expertise, so that farmers can also share in the financial abundance of the product that they're the primary ingredient that they provide that product to.
Cab Baber:One of the cultural things that are practicing in Japan now, north of Tokyo about an hour, there's a rice farm that has a very nice convention center, right over the rice paddy itself. And what they do is they allow a certain group of people, about 20 people come every weekend out to the rice paddy. Maybe they spent one day maybe they spent two. And they have areas for people to sleep and clean up and everything. But the idea is to allow the city dwellers that do want to participate in ag, to actually come out and be part of a community for a minute, where they may not get that in their regular workaday place. But all of a sudden, you're immersed with 20 other people that are all there to do a same thing, same project, and many hands light work, and then you all stand back and look and go,"Wow, that's going to be some rice field, we're going to have a really good crop this year." And everybody singing that same song creates an even better crop. And the farmer knows that and everybody will learn that if they don't see it right away. They'll learn that and that the more goodness that they can bring into that and then ease up their their stress of being in the city or their jobs or whatever and celebrate being with other people and just celebrate having food with other people and making food and doing something collective like making another taro loʻi. Opening up an ancient place, you know. Bring 300 people together and open up a loʻi that's going to grow and grow and grow for another hundreds of years. New establishment for the generations to come. So it's really important that we make collective effort like that somehow. That we form that to help people just get in touch with the land and they get educated by the land just doing that.
Alex:So Hawaii. We are blessed with these great conditions to farm year round. Right? It, it's kind of like the jewel in the crown. And yet we have an even bigger jewel in the crown right now, which is tourism, right? Which gets a lot of funding from the State, and yet at the same time, I would say I believe the number is less than 1% of the state's total budget is allocated towards agriculture.
Cab Baber:This is true and this has been going on. When we got statehood in 1959, many people don't know this, but Hawaii used to ship produce to the West Coast of the United States and supply a tremendous amount of produce of all kinds. Not just fruits, but all kinds of vegetables as well. and cabbages and, you know, even Korea used to get lots of cabbage from Hawaii. So we have been a world producer, it's just that we decided in our State that we were going to be a tourist company, a tourist place, and that meant ag had to be defunded or decontrolled and then you know change it up so we can have that labor force for the tourism. And then as long as agriculture was just held up as the showpiece, but we don't do too much about it, nobody squawks then we'll just keep feeding that 80 to 90% of food from somewhere else in the world, and nobody will be the wiser. So thatʻs what happened for us.
Gail Baber:I think it was a slow boil too because there was statehood and the plantations were still, you know, very viable. And it was a very different, I mean, it, you know, Hawaii has like as other places, a strong history of kind of top down governance. And so I think that's beginning to reverse, just through shows like in podcasts like this. People's voices are rising up. There's a greater diversity of thinking. It's more systems thinking. It's how mother nature works.
Alex:It is, it is, like, the tide, the tide is shifting. I think we mentioned the consciousness, the collective consciousness seems to be like, you know, got a little bit more information at our fingertips. We can communicate a little bit better. Maybe we can get the wheels greased a little bit more, get this thing going. Another thought I had while you were talking about direct to consumer, is I learned a new term recently called "farmgate." Are you familiar with this term farmgate? It's the idea that the farm itself becomes a commercial enterprise. And kind of like how you're talking about north of Tokyo, where people come to visit that farm and participate. Like that could possibly be incorporated into getting a little bit more of the control, you know, the price point, into under the control of the farmers and the farm itself. Going direct to consumer. Having people come doing maybe a little ag tour, learn something. An ambassador-type program, right? The way to exchange ideas. I think that might be a potential model for where this is all going in terms of propping up and really supporting local farms that are trying to do this right, regeneratively, organically, getting the community behind it. Turning every farm into a community center, a hub for cultural and intellectual exchange. So I learned this term farmgate. I think that might be what what you guys are envisioning, is that, Does that sound about right maybe? We can go look this up later but...
Gail Baber:I thought you were gonna describe some kindaʻ conspiracy. I mean, whenever usually, when "gate" is used, it's like, some horrible thing like Watergate, but I'm really, I'm really happy to hear that what you're proposing makes a lot of sense, really. You know, driving the tourism down to the local level, and to the farmer where you get the diverse, you know, the the money's spent, it's shared around people. Tourists aren't locked in a resort. And I know, studies back from 2004 and 2006, that the HTA, Hawaii Tourism Authority was doing was, you know, even back then, you know, almost 20 years ago, tourists were stating they wanted to interact with the land more. They wanted to interact with residents more. So, you know, it's, we're a relational world. We're in relationship to our crops, to nature, and to one another from other countries, other States and that's, that's actually a beautiful thing. You know, when we can all learn to be better guests and better hosts. You know, we're learning to be better hosts as well, right? So I like, I like what you shared it because it also sounds like we're diversifying our income streams, which just follows financial sense, right.
Alex:In addition to that, another thought, when that inspired me when you were talking was the fact is, is that we are trying to implement a solution, right, because because the state of Hawaii has recognized that the huge influx of tourists to the islands have caused negative effects on our natural resources. So there's this Senate Bill 304 going on right now. The visitor green fee, right? Have you heard about this at all? The visitor green fee is they're trying to tack on an extra fee for every tourist that comes to Hawaii, that utilizes any natural resources. Whether it be beaches, hiking, trails, anything like that. And I believe that the current bill is to have money hooked, this money earmarked, and then given to State and to State entities and agencies like DLNR, to spend that money to fix and clean up after the tourists come through. But is there anything that we could potentially do for getting something to support ag, right? And, and having the tourist industry to shift to directly benefit the bottom line for ag producers? Because we talked about this 80 to 90% you know, import, importation of all of our food that we consume in the islands and how are we going to, how are we going to reverse that around if we don't start somewhere?
Cab Baber:I think if you have the ability to teach people and show people how farming can go, on a small scale like we've talked about, we can take large tracts of land and grow hemp, three or four times, clean that land, and then diversify, not just the hemp, but make food forests so that it grows in so we have plenty of food with very little effort and energy. And so it's important to let that fire come inside other people as they see it happen and go, "Oh, I'd like to go ahead and take on four acres and have a family farm and, and plant it in this style and, and live in Hawaii." And so it may be that, you know, population increase might be part of that in a healthy way. If everybody's, you know, farming and, and has success in that farming so to speak, then you're you're building an agricultural community base. Maybe not the whole community is agriculture, but if we can get up to that 40%, we'd be very, very strong, then. Very strong.
Alex:Thatʻs a very interesting idea. So in instead of like thinking in this box of long term, long range, urban development, if we just changed our focus, our lens to think long range, agricultural development, so that we can supply housing to the population, but they're all working in ag in some capacity. Okay, I think we're on to something here.
Cab Baber:Weʻll grow the hemp houses, weʻll grow the hemp houses that people will live in and will grow the food that we eat. And yeah,
Alex:That sounds like an attraction too. That sounds like a, that's something that people might want to visit, right?
Cab Baber:Better than Disney World.
Alex:Okay, better than Disney World.
Gail Baber:That's actually very doable. I mean, we're, you know. There's a number of hempcrete houses, housing projects going on. We're just missing some of the infrastructure to make that plausible. And the cool thing is, it only takes about four acres of hemp to grow a house. We can be growing houses non stop if we if we wanted to. Itʻs be really a fun thing to see. And a comment on the bill. I think that many of our natural resource agencies in our Department of Ag, are horribly underfunded in the state, given their level of responsibility. I mean, it's just it's atrocious. So so I definitely want to see them funded. I would hate to see money go always to the general fund for these types of projects, I think where we're gonna see success is when you have the money, the tourist money, and those fees going directly back to the areas that are impacted, not, not through agencies. So the fees are being collected on the local level, quite frankly, if there's a way to do it, and then that money circulates even more. So I know there's ways of doing that, for sure. And there's other states that have implemented all sorts of programs, natural resource management programs, like jobs for the environment, or jobs for agriculture, that we could look at modeling
Cab Baber:Extra tariff on imported food.
Alex:Okay. okay.
Gail Baber:Well, but you know what, that's tough, though. I mean, think about all our families on SNAP, and all our ALICE families. So what maybe it's, it's, we gotta find more supports for farmers, or just subsidize our food. I mean, how many countries out there subsidize the food production? Most of ʻem. Most of the developed world subsidizes their food production so farmers have an OK living. So if you subsidize that through free infrastructure, free marketing, free shipping, whatever you do, there's there's lots of subsidies and farmers have, you know, nice, nice quality of life without putting that on the backs of people who can't afford it. Last thing we want to do is drive a SNAP family off of buying local produce. So we've got to come up with ways of doing that. So the tariffs is a great idea. Put them in the right place.
Cab Baber:Tariff on the imported produce, to be clear.
Gail Baber:Oh, okay.
Cab Baber:So if you went to a restaurant, and it was all local produce, you're gonna get higher quality food at a cheaper price.
Gail Baber:There you go.
Alex:That sounds reasonable. I hope the legislators take a chance to listen to our podcast episode today. They might learn a thing or two.
Cab Baber:Thatʻs be great. Again, if we were all just to choose to eat at a locally supplied local restaurant, you know, once or twice a month, it would change our economy terrifically. Just that.
Gail Baber:Look at your value added products too. Find out where they're sourcing, and so choose your value added products that are using the Hawaii ingredients. Whether it's mushrooms, CBD, a vitamin, whatever it is, you know. See if you can't support you know, local farmers even through your value added products.
Alex:That's right try by local and mama farmer right. Did you get your stickers Gail?
Gail Baber:Yeah, I did.
Alex:That's the new campaign that this project has launched. The "malama the farmer" stickers is meant to be distributed amongst food trucks, restaurants, retail, any vendors that support local farmers and are a opportunity for local farmers to get their produce into the community. That's what the whole malama the farmer campaign is for. And so if you see those stickers floating around the islands, your favorite local restaurants, your favorite local food trucks, or pop up vendors, like, if you see that that symbol then that that means that that entity is supporting local farmers in some capacity. So you're talking about infrastructure. My next question is, what are some specific stressors that the two of you face farming on big island over there, and just farming in the state of Hawaii. Dealing with all this that's going on in the state of Hawaii, what are some of your major stressors at the top of your list that that you can possibly shed some light on or share some of your, your coping mechanisms, or maybe some of your solutions for how you can manage and take your responsibilities and puka them up into smaller bite size, manageable chunks so that you don't hit the brick wall and burnout? Or just give up on farming altogether? Because you've done it for years Cab. How do you stay in the game for so long, without getting burnt out, or just throw your hands up"Over it, enough already, no more farming.",
Cab Baber:I think, you know, really just wanting to bring Hawaii into its greatness has been the motivating force behind all of this. And working with legislators and the government to really show a better way that we could actually do Hawaii and live in Hawaii. Because I put a lot of faith in that and a lot of my own time, money and energy and Gail and I've done that plenty. Working with State agencies, working with the University, trying to toe the line the best we can with the rules and regulations. It is wiped out, I I'll probably 80% of the farmers that wanted to farm they just can't do it. They can't keep up with the paperwork and the headaches, much less you know, when we're given seed by the University, and then they call me and tell me "Oh, you have to destroy that crop because it's not going to pass." And I'm like, "Well, wait a minute, how am I supposed to make money here? I'm growing the seed that you say I need to grow. I need this crop to grow my next crop. Now how am I supposed to grow the next crop? Even though you gave me the seed? How am I supposed to grow the next crop because I got no resources, I just used my resources." And when you do that three or four times with the University, you kind of go wow, okay, "Where's where's the action in this? How am I supposed to actually make money if I'm playing by the rules and doing everything, as you say I'm supposed to do when I could have done many other things. I didn't have to go looking for New Zealand seeds I could have gotten from Colorado. Guys would have sent it to me." But no,"You got to go to China or Vietnam to get your seed buddy." And it's like, wait a minute, what's going on here. And then Gail spends 1000s of dollars just on overseas calls trying to get us seed.
Gail Baber:And again, he's talking about the hemp program, the origins of the hemp program. We had such ridiculous rules even in bringing seeds in we could only bring him in from other countries that had certain types of seed. We couldn't even bring him in from the mainland that already had some successful crops. So you know, so how has he hung in there for 40 years, because this isn't just him. This is tomatoes. This is the banana bunchy virus he made it through. He was the only farm in Kona that didn't have to destroy his bananas during that. But but he couldn't export him anymore, because of the whole on the state. It didn't matter that he was a regenerative farm. And they couldn't you know, and his bananas were clean. Because if you farmer generally you don't always get the pests and the viruses is not a blank slate. You know, if your immune system strong, you're not always going to get every virus that passes through. So how is he survived all these ups and downs? I mean, it's been insane. I would have to say, if I were to answer for you, he is a very optimistic person. I mean, although we can get down for sure. But I think he's mission driven. I think this man is mission driven. And so and you started out saying that you he has a vision for what Hawaii could be what the people could be and I think that mission and passion keeps them going and so we keep keep finding a way to to make it happen. I think some of the tools that the sowing the seeds of wellness program have put forth to farmers is super valuable. What's the one that Thao made? That cool minds...
Alex:Cool mind, main thing.
Gail Baber:Cool mind main thing. You know so many of us, doesn't mean just farmers but everyone in the population. We weren't taught a lot of these emotional management, how to release trauma skills. And so that program has brought a lot of I think good skills to the table. And I'm hopeful that we can help more farmers and our neighbors, you know, share those skills as we move forward. But I'd have to say, for Clarence, it's him being mission driven. And for me just hanging in there for with ag for him, it's. He's just super supportive of me, because I get frustrated. I'm very practical. I want to move the ball forward now. I think he has very long term vision on things, which which helps as well.
Cab Baber:One of those, one of those short visions was to take on 2000 acres of the Hamakua and go ahead and set up two acre kins, so that every family had two acres. We combine resources, we combine buying abilities, we combine marketing, equipment, whatever we need to do. So you have agricultural lifestyle, So maybe maybe we can bring back the plantation agrarian everybody has their own responsibilities, You have people that are there to help you through, you know, the tough times and get yourself going and you can lean on your neighbor. And having something like that going, you know, agricultural villages that you actually live in, you don't have to drive away from every day. And then people really working together on small scale, not on the large scale and out of control, but you know, helpful for everyone that that's in the neighborhood. And I think this is a model that this is going to be becoming, and they're doing some work like this with HFUU on Maui. I know they have 1000 acre project there. They're trying to do that kind of creativity, and very helpful. It's kind of a model out of North Carolina as well with the hemp over there. They have kin, so they have 500 acres, and they bust them up into two and a half acres each, and then those families all share in the infrastructures necessary to plant and produce and like that. And then everybody has to also have their own acre of vegetables. So it's not just hemp. You have to have fruit trees or vegetables or something. You got to be a producing farmer. Yeah, this is not to just to put up, you know, one goat in the front yard, and then you know, "I'm farming." No. That's not how weʻre going. You have to be actively, you know, farming, and producing. And that's what it's about. Those people that really want to love producing.
Gail Baber:I think there's aspects of it. And I think it's gonna be fun to see what the next couple generations do, right? Because we tend to reference the past to find lifestyle, but not bring back the plantation. Yeah? solutions for the future. And that's, that's often not where the solutions are. They're generating from that new level of consciousness. So I'm, I'm curious as heck to see what's gonna happen in the next 20 years. But I think I'm also optimistic. And in that way, too, I have a profound optimism in, in humans. I mean, you look at I mean, sometimes you look at us weʻre pretty slow and dumb to evolve. You know, just the fact that we war on each other seems kind of crazy if you look at it from one light, but at the same time, you look at how far we've come, just even in my lifetime, in certain things. I'm, I'm hopeful we can, I'm certain we'll be able to crack the nut.
Cab Baber:in Hawaii the kukui nut is very famous. Thereʻs folklore. She's one of the best fertilizing trees and medicine trees. And if you watch a Kukui tree grow, and see how fast it grows, and then you do a few more things to and it grows even faster and better. Then you go, wow, we could do this. This is not that hard. And I was at the University one day talking for a few hours, answering all kinds of questions from the youngest to the oldest retired professors. And there's this one local boy, I just appreciated him so much. Because he just stood up. He said, Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to just plant one kukui tree, come back in a year, break down the branches, come back the next year and plant your Taro. That's all you need to do. That's all you need to do. And he was so wise in his delivery. And I was just like, well, there it is. You know, let's not make it complicated. Let's not involve a bunch of chemicals and a bunch of study and a bunch of tilling and all this. Let's just get back down to basics. Let's watch it grow. Let's break it down like they did. Everything smaller than your arm is coming down for compost, and then next year, that's your food for your field. And now you're eating and you didn't go to the store and buy anything. You planted a seed and that's what you did. And you had to take care of that land somehow. Look after it. Whether it was leased land or borrowed land, however you got it. But that's, that's really great I think. That that needs to be understood. And if you see it and watch it grow then you understand it. Me talking about it? You heard the story, but you didn't understand it. You just heard the story. You have to watch that happen and then you understand it.
Alex:That's right. The best time to plant the seed was yesterday.
Cab Baber:That's right. That's right.
Alex:Okay, I got some questions about hemp, could because you guys were part of the original pilot program. Yeah, you were one of the original guys out of out the gate for Big Island, right? So hemp. Hemp has gotten a lot of hype in the last several years, since the industrial hemp cultivation was legalized in 2018 yeah? And the farm, the Federal USDA Farm Bill. So my question to you is, what makes him so special? And does it truly have the potential to be a viable cash crop in Hawaii? Is that, is that possible? Can that be something that, can that crop will subsidize all the food is that is that?
Gail Baber:I don't think that there's any one panacea for most problems. I mean, one, you know, I mean, that would be lovely. But I mean, if you look at Mother Nature, she's very complex and there's, there's not usually it's not just the redwood tree, you know. It's the shrubs and the microbes and all this stuff. But I think hemp can play a significant role. And I think that's what Clarenceʻs expression was like "Yeah, but you know, there's 50,000 uses to hemp that, you know, it's food, fiber and fuel." And we're beginning to see that here in Hawaii. I mean, it was because of the lack of infrastructure, not not just here, but in Hawaii, on the mainland. And especially here, because we don't have a legacy of combines and big silos and all this stuff. So a lot of the the, the other hemp products, you know, weren't even, it's not something that was readily available for farmers here in Hawaii, but there are more emerging projects around the food, the grain side. There's a project that's really looking seriously at hemp milk. Hawaii-produced hemp milk? Oh, my gosh, and hemp seed. I mean, you know, if you study that for its nutritional value it's, that is such a great, wonderful thing. So there's certainly opportunities for that. And we could have large, large acreage, for sure. And we would need the infrastructure to do you know, more hempcrete and some of the other more industrial things, but you know, I mean, that would be. The cool thing about where we've evolved with technologies more and more is that they've become more and more micro, right. Some of the things that used to take a city block in terms of processing now come down to a container, half a container, so in terms of size, you know, a freight container that you'd see on an ocean liner, something down at Young Brothers. So yes, there's plenty of potential for Hawaii to develop many sectors in terms of hemp and I still the margins right now are still the best for CBD. That's where we're going to get the highest quality. But Clarence was just sharing with me yesterday his experience in first really understanding the value of hemp for biofuels, actually a biofuel. That's not the word. I shouldn't be using that because I know that people in that project, don't want me to use the word biofuel. Because biofuels have gotten such a bad name, you know, I mean, for good reasons, but it is it has has a great potential for fuel. You're explaining to me the BTUs behind that are something. The efficiency.
Cab Baber:Yeah, when we gave a talk story at a local high school many years ago, we had a four inch stem and Roger Christie gasified it, and then in that, lit the gas that came from this four inch stem, and it made a four foot flame. So that in front of a high school class was very impressive. And I was very impressed. And then what was left over was biochar which is what we really need for our Hawaiian farmers as well. So if we move into that kind of on power, point production, where it's needed, then you losing a lot less than the lines. They can be localized, they can be grown and powered. So we're employing people to make our own power here, and pelletize and feed and very clean product and then have the the rest of leftover for the farmers. So we're increasing the fertility of our lands for the generations to come. So on and on, there's just more and more benefit. And when you see people like BMW has bought 40,000 acres of farmland in the United States to grow hemp cars. They've been doing side panels for a while. So have other manufacturers that have nice high end cars, and they don't even color that material. You see the hemp stems pressed in their side panels and they're happy to roll out this hemp stem. "My car is hemp," and the whole car will be made from hemp. What if Hawaii could grow a car and have the solar panels to power it? These are all very possible now in our world. The technologies are there. The people have to have the drive and the desire to see it happen. And you know all of our own housing, for example. If we turned it around and grew houses for everybody, it would take us about 20 years to refit all the houses in Hawaii, with really good, ecofriendly, healthy houses, which unfortunately, a lot of the mainland materials and the way we build is very unhealthy in Hawaii. So we want to have a house that petrifies with age, that can be handed down generations, and just get better and better. And we don't have to rebuild or rethink it or tear it down because of construction error. And we could really make a difference in the quality of life for the agrarian and anybody that wants to live here.
Gail Baber:And yeah, this is where the state can really, I think, be a benefit in fostering the private-public partnerships. Because one of the bills we have before the State - I have to look at its status right now, I think it's a little bit stalled- was to fund a study, the Department of Agriculture would hire a consultant to study the value chains of the various sectors in depth. Not just a broad thing but you know, what would be the dollar amounts for the various pieces of infrastructure that the farmers need on the various islands to really create a vibrant hemp industry. And I am betting you dollars to donuts, that that investment is not going to be significant but the payoff would be huge in terms of as being able to provide sustainable products, creating an ag product and jobs. And, and, and then depending on the sector can be you know, larger ag or smaller ag for sure. So, and just as a side, if I had extra money. Let's say we make money this year on our farm, I would be investing that in the super capacitor and microchip research that's been going being done on a hand. You know, yeah, hemp cells are so super efficient and transferring electrons, more more efficient than graphene, which is mined. So we soon will be able to grow things that we mined the earth for, and that we don't do very well. We're doing it in other countries. and it's disturbing, it causes health issues for other people and environmental issues. And, and we can grow hemp in a manner that's super regenerative and in high quality. So if I had the ability, I'd invest in one of those research companies and be first to be manufacturing, some of that. So looking at those public private opportunities for identifying where the most strategic placement of funding could be for the hemp industry, I think is a place that is there a role the Department of Agriculture can play. And I think if Sharon Hurd is confirmed as Director, she seems to have an interest in hemp, you know real interest in hemp. First time, we've seen that in a number of years, so we might be able to do something like that.
Cab Baber:Japan already has a battery that charges your cell phone for and it's like a $6 battery, it's a throwaway battery. And so it's made out of hemp. And in that, you get two charges out of it like really quickly, but then you throw it away, or put it underneath the plant as a fertilizer. So it's very eco friendly. And that's the same thing with the like the solar panel materials and the graphene, it's going to be a maybe 1/100 of the cost of mining so solar panels are going to drop terrifically in the cost and ease of production. And so we can actually have our own plastic companies here. And all these wonderful things can be made with the new technologies and the CNC machines and things like that. We can create a lot of those things we want, right here, once we have those natural resources that weʻre growing at hand. And the other thing I wanted to point out is that Hawaii has been known for plantation culture for many hundreds of years. And in this production of hemp, we don't want to see monoculture necessarily, but we can still do lots of reculturing of hemp. In orchards in between rows and things like that, so it's not a monoculture. It is broken up with different species and we can continue to harvest for some time. But really, most of them are cattle lands and things like that need to be grown in with trees and there again, we can start with hemp first and then replant them with forests and then get down to the actual hemp we would need for our community to, you know, survive and what we want to produce for ourselves and what we might want to export. And then it may come down that we only need so many acres of land so to speak, of hemp actually growing to meet those needs and everything else should be in forests. In food forest and native forests and birds and species that we want to see grow here.
Gail Baber:I've seen others. The hemp looks differently in terms of how it grows oftentimes, and I've seen fiber grows in other countries where they do long rows of the fiber hemp, but in between each row is a food crop or a flower crop. Number one is we lead the nation in plate lunch, baby. We need to It's quite beautiful. So you can do the larger scale hemp production farming because sometimes you need the large scale for machinery just for it to make sense for the capitalization of everything but there are ways of doing it differently for sure. And we're I'm not talking about turning Hawaii into some industrial wasteland. Well just the opposite. This manufacturing is often done on a micro level, you know, like in like even on an ag Park. So there are lot opportunities here for rural economic development with hemp, and we've just hardly even scratched the surface of it. make all our own plate lunch boxes and cups and containers. Here we go.
Alex:No, that's a great idea. That's in terms of import substitution. Just our packaging alone in Hawaii.
Gail Baber:Exactly.
Cab Baber:Compostable compostable eco-friendly.
Gail Baber:Yeah, they have new coping technologies for hemp and some other grains too, that that you can do this stuff on a much, much smaller level.
Alex:That's awesome. Okay, so hypothetically, best case scenario. you said, Sharon Hurd, hopefully, sheʻs a she's an ally. Right. And then this whole...
Gail Baber:She is the Acting Director of Department of Agriculture right now. She has been with the Department of Ag for a long time. It's nice, because she's got a little bit of a business background, and so she is, she seems to have a grasp on hemp, or at least an interest for sure. And I think she does seem to really care about the fate of farmers. So it's the first time really since the initial legislation was passed in 2015-2016 where we're getting people outreaching to us from the Department of Agriculture. And that's not a dig on the Department of Agriculture. You know, I'm a former regulator so I know that, you know, a lot of times you're just overwhelmed. And hemp is complex. But we have had a lot of rules and regulations imposed on us that no other farmers have had, that have set us back and wiped out many farmers unnecessarily. And so it is really gratifying to see that Ms Hurd seems to, or not seems, has a genuine interest in finding a way to support hemp farmers.
Alex:Even even when you're fortunate enough, where there's an administrator or an appointed official, who is sympathetic or you know, they're an ally with an agenda that's set forth by the people by the by the farmers. The sometimes things just kind of break down in the communication and implementation because there's nobody working in that agency in that department that has any clue about what hemp is at all. Or we talk about anything, education, public education. They if they have no clue how, what it's like to be in the classroom, or to be on the farm, how is the government, how is the State or the County going to effectively communicate and work directly with the farmers?
Gail Baber:You know, I can speak from experience on this one. One as a farmer who's frustrated as heck it the lack of I mean, I guess, to speak bluntly, listening by the agencies. And part of that is overwhelmed. When you're overwhelmed, you can't hear, you know, or you may not even have a staff person here. So I'm empathetic. But I'm also frustrated, because I worked in the state agencies and one of the tools that we used was Task Force and industry groups to help us understand what were the specific needs on the ground. Because oftentimes, what I see happening here, and I think it's shifting quickly, not just in hemp, but in agriculture in general, is, you know, laws are passed and those laws may be informed by farmers or not, but then they get implemented, and the rules written by the agencies, those guys don't live on farms. They don't understand the subtle nuances of when you write this bill this way, you basically now prevented all hemp farmers that were before processing on their farm to be able to legally process in ag buildings that are allowed per HRS 4688. You know, I mean, unpermitted ag buildings that we that we allow processing of cucumbers and washing there but now we can't wash or do simple wash processing of hemp there. So it's that, which is which is normal, You'll find that in any organizational structure, right? A University or Boeing, you know, I mean, I did research avoided in my young graduate school days. So between the people on the ground, the people making the rules, and then those crafting the rules. And the way to overcome that is through consistent and deep listening with in the industry from from a variety of sources. And so one of our bills was to I think, unfortunately itʻs dead - I'm gonna have to look if it made it out of the Senate - but was a hemp Taskforce, where Department of Ag and Department Health would be interacting with farmers on all the islands proportionate to the number of hemp licenses that are issued, but also with experts and farmers in each of the hemp sectors that are out there. Because there's CBD, there's food, there's fuel, there's microgreens there's all sorts of wonderful things out there. And so for us to share and learn from one another because I sure as heck have learned from the Department of Health last year. You know, when we were able to have a couple of conversations about their concerns and good manufacturing processes on farms and, and we have some of the toughest labeling and testing rules in the country for CBD hemp products, and we embrace that as farmers. Even though it seems like kind of a pain, we embrace it, because that means we've got a quality seal. Hey, you can trust our products. We we just tested for everything under the sun, you buy something from Ohio? I mean, sorry, Ohio, I don't know. You know, they don't necessarily have that, you know, we have to quote specific code on our labels so the consumers feel comfortable that we're complying with Hawaii State law. So I, you know, hemp farmers, we've learned from agencies too. So I think to kind of address your question, if there was one in there, if I remember correctly, I think so much gets lost. You know, when you're a farmer, you have all these understandings of the sun setting the sunrising, when to plant when to not factories breaking, you know, what, what actual processing means for particular crop. And the folks in the agencies don't necessarily have that, unless they happen to grow up on a farm, doing those specific things. And then it's changing all the time, especially specifically in the hemp world, but it is in all, all sectors. So by by creating these types of forums, and industry groups, where there were the agencies are allowed, because they are so underfunded, and so pulled in so many directions. But if they are mandated, I wanted to say allowed not mandated, but they're mandated by a bill to do so, it frees them up to actually take the time to listen and hear from us. So they I know, I mean, having been a former agency person, they want to do a good job. They want to make sure their rules and their policies and their strategies are effecting change on the ground and that's going to come from more boots on the ground, interacting directly with farmers, and doing more applied science on the farms, not just in University plots, and engaging the farmers in the science. My farm, my husband, is probably one of the best scientists in the State, and I mean that hands down. We don't document everything, you know, everything's not done to the best statistical level, but he's continually doing trials and doing observations, all the things that great scientists do. And there's often a disconnect between, you know, a science it's done in the lab and on the farm, and I am one of those people that did science in the lab so, you know, I'm actually talking about myself. And then, and getting it right on the ground. So obviously, I'm passionate about that. Thanks for listening.
Alex:No, of course. One thing that that you said that stuck out to me was variety. Variety of sources. When when in terms of working with your constituents and listening to farmers, you have to survey a variety of the community of the population. Not just listen to maybe like this lobbyist or this MSO, right? A variety. We need to get a lot of the community's input, so that we can have equity built into the rules and regs and the laws, and all the things that we that we have to follow to work together, right? So variety. I think that is that is a crucial key word there in terms of working with your legislatures. And the other thing, too, is you mentioned, you know, unless they grew up on a farm, but we know it's been it's been a few generations now, since the plantation era. How many local people have grown up on a farm in Hawaii these days? How many of our politicians represent constituents that come from areas where farming is even a thought?
Gail Baber:True. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we've both been in the legislature the last 10 years and me more the last few and a lot of the urban member members of the Senate in the house, they have big, big hearts, and they're doing their best but you're right, it's, there's a there's a large disconnect. I'm really happy that our Senator from our district, Tim Richards, I mean, as a generational farmer and rancher, and he spent ranches backgrounds more in ranching, but he is he's studied agriculture, and I'm hopeful that people will listen to what he has to say. And I think he's a conduit for, for farmers to in the legislature. So yeah, it is a challenge. I mean, if you don't know you don't know, right? How would you know the nuances if you're not grown up, or if you're not growing up on a farm?
Alex:Okay, we're almost pau. I do have a couple more questions left for you. So we talk about 80 to 90% of all the food bought and sold in Hawaii being grown elsewhere and then imported. And in order to in order to significantly increase food cultivation and production in Hawaii we are going to need a lot more local residents farming. So my question to you is what incentives do you think we need to get the next generation farming so that our Representatives, our Senators, have constituents that they can talk to, that can give them good feedback, good advice and good input to make good bills and good laws?
Gail Baber:Yeah, it has to be profitable. I mean, number one, young people are not stupid. I mean, you know, you can give them a lifestyle, and that's great. And some will be just happy with the lifestyle, but, you know, they're very aware, and they're gonna want to have financial freedom, too. So what is it that us as older people can offer is financial freedom. I think the lifestyle farming you guys were talking about, where you can go like half half, you know that's, that's one potential model. I think looking at where the farmers can own the value chain all the way up on value added products, is part of the solution. I don't know that there's going to be a magic bullet there rarely is a nature, right? Cumulative effect, multiple intricate systems. So I think it's going to be a variety of those things that looking at, like, how can we help farmers make money? We're gonna have to pay for more infrastructure, we're gonna have to subsidize production, that's just. For local people to be able to afford locally produced food the government is going to have to step in subsidies, like we did during COVID quite frankly. I mean, that that was, you know, we're kind of at that point, critical mass, and we need to do it for health reasons, too for goodness sakes. I mean, when the most affordable food is, unfortunately, fast food and all these other things, it's that and going hungry or consistently feeding you're feed, your child. Itʻs really understandable why people choose other foods. So I'm not in any way bashing anyone. I mean, economics are real. So let's get real. We want another generation of farmers, we got to get real on the economics. We got to look at like, where we can move the dial. And that means looking at providing infrastructure. Looking at providing land that cost. Fencing. You know, it's absolutely, this is just an example, it's absolutely crazy to me that there's only one or a couple places in in Hawaii, where a farmer can get funding from NRCS for fencing. I think they're trying to change that, you know. You can do it in other places on the mainland, but not here, but pigs are such I mean, in terms fencing. I'm talking about hogwire fencing, and for pigs, you know. That is a need on most islands across the board, and it is expensive. So, so there's lots of things that we're gonna, we're gonna have to do to shift this. We're gonna have to make it financially viable for the next generation. Theyʻre smart kids.
Cab Baber:Well, one of the things we have discussed in HFUU, and something else that came up for me recently is making places for young people to have a chance to experience farming to see if that's what they really want to do. You know, where it's maybe temporary dwelling structures or permanent dwelling structures, they're only in there for a time, like a school kind of positioning. So they could transition and once their hemp house is getting too small, because they decide they want a wife and a family. And they want to take out a farm than we go ahead and grow them a house and we set them up. And we set them up for success continually, as opposed to right now the kid graduates high school goes, "What uncle? What I go do now? I go mow grass over at the resort? What do I do?" And so you gotta go, "Well, no, here's the thing you can do, we can set you up farming." And then if we had a hybrid, wherein we're going to take some of that farm labor to the resorts and at times take a busload of all of us down there to go work, the resorts to make the money we might need to make the compliment are farming. That's kind of way I've been doing it for many years. So it may be another way that we could still service both industries and encourage the higher quality of life along the way. That's kind of a hybrid that came up in my mind recently.
Alex:Maybe, if you're familiar with Department of Education, right? You have common core standards, things that you must learn and pass in order to graduate high school. Maybe make agriculture Common Core for everybody? Make it a required class for graduation?
Gail Baber:And financial literacy for everyone.
Alex:And actual literacy, yeah. That would definitely give the bottom line a leg a leg up, you know, in terms of being able to make it out here financially, as a resident as somebody who's just trying to live in Hawaii and do their part. You know, many hands, right. Okay. I do have a question about what's going on right now in session. What's going on with these bills? Here's your opportunity to highlight any Senate bills or House bills that people need to be paying attention to right now. March 2023. What needs what needs to be passed what needs to be supported? What needs to be amended, and what needs to be
Gail Baber:I was just looking at my cheat sheet spreadsheet killed? because we have 18 head bills this last session. Yeah, the a number of them didn't make it out of the House. We have a number coming out of the Senate. So what was really gratifying this year about that is they're almost all trying to help the farmer. In the past bills were just like trying to put more handcuffs on us. More rules. I mean, we've had the most onerous rules in the country. And and we spent a lot of time in the legislature last couple of years, I think educating bringing in doctors and nurses and, and sharing data we've had. Bo Whitney, probably the leading hemp economists in the country, in the world. He does work for the UN. States and also other countries regularly hire them to help develop hemp policy. And he's drafted a number of white papers, you know, when we when we've asked him to address issues for farmers, so I think we've slowly built some education there. So that's, I think, why we had, you know, more favorable bills than not this year, and it was surprising to see 18 because hemp farmers only put forward six. And so there was, oh, that's not true, there were two more that the Hemp Farmers Association was not aware of, but they were also very pro farmer. But all of them were all pretty nice. But to get specificly to your question about what we want. There's a labeling bill that made it out of the Senate and I think it's SB516, and it has origin labeling billing requiring CBD products to disclose where their hemp oils from and the percentage. If you're saying it's Hawaii hemp oil, how much is it? But for sure, saying, it's Hawaii hemp oil and you say Hawaii hemp oil. If it's not, then you say it's from the mainland, or if it's from another country just say foreign, which to me is a consumer bill. Obviously, that helps farmers because a lot of people in Hawaii have been prime to buy local. So now they really know they are if they go to see that Kona Gold on the shelf, or a few other names and they look at the label like "Oh, well actually, it's not from here. Oh, but here's some nice farmer brands. We can support those." So that bill is important to farmers SB516, origin labeling. There's a bill SB132. It's it started out as an infrastructure bill just for Maui but we've been working to amend it. Looks like there's a lot of support to ammend it. So it will convert it to consulting study, a consultant study that we were talking about earlier, where the Department of Ag will hire a consultant to look at what the infrastructure is needed for all the sectors of hemp in Hawaii, and not just some blah, blah, consultant study. I can't stand those anymore. I've actually generated some of those myself. But where you're actually getting down to the nickels and dimes of what are the specific, what's the specific infrastructure needed for the specific sectors, so people can go forward and just raise the funds. You know, either come back to the State for CIP project or, you know, go out for private funding. Right, that bill, SB132, to help support infrastructure for hemp is really important. There's another bill, SB655 which is really important for the fiber, fuel and food sectors in hemp. And what that will do is provide an exemption to farmers who are farming hemp for those purposes, because the seeds are typically different the plant is different. And and what it will do is allow Department of Ag to immediately align Hawaii rules with federal law, because there's an exemption that's, that's going to be passed likely at the by Congress, that will allow hemp farmers that are growing for these other purposes, not CBD, to forego certain testing and inspections, which are super, super expensive. I mean, you know, we're talking, you know, $500, and you have to inspect your crop several times each crop so and then sampled at the end. So that will allow farmers to be able to grow for other purposes and lower the cost, which will help make Hawaii farmers competitive right away. Because one of the problems we had with Hawaii hemp rules was our laws were pretty good right off the bat, but we could not amend the rules to keep pace with what was going federally. So we're trying to give Department of Ag the authority to do so and so that exemption Bill 655 is really important to hemp farmers, I'd say a super, in with two more, another really critical bill is SB637, Senate Bill 637, and that has to do with allowing hemp farmers to process on their farm again in ag exempt buildings per HRS you know what is it 6688 4688 So and that's for processing that doesn't involve heat, or volatile compounds. So if you're just doing a water wash or a coconut oil soap for your hemp to extract the CBD, you don't have to go you don't have to prove that you're in this huge fireproof building or or even permitted you know. You can be in a steel container building that secure to the ground, but you're still following all good manufacturing practices that's coming down by FDA, so the consumer is still protected. But right now, processing has come to a halt for for many, many hemp farmers, because there was a rule that was passed that inadvertently excluded us from doing those types of processes on our hemp farms. So SB637 is very important. Last Bill I'll talk about is HB, I think it's 153 or 1359. Let me look real quick one second. It is HB1359. And that's kind of an omnibus bill, it was based off the bill that came out of conference last year that allows the production of hemp products that are being sold already now and why everywhere like gummies, and food to be illegal and allow Hawaii hemp farmers to do that. It would restrict, what we propose is restrict the age on gummies to like 18 or 21 or something, and and allow some other products. It also supports the origin labeling Bill, but I think that one is what's important about that is it opens up more products for farmers to be able to manufacture and sell here in the State that are already being sold. Let's make no beans about that. You go to any gas station, any store, you're gonna be able to find CBD chocolates, you're gonna find certain smokeable products, which I don't necessarily support, but they're out there. Gummies everywhere. But Hawaii, Hawaii folk, Hawaii hemp farmers are not allowed to participate in that at all. But Hawaii residents are buying it you know, by the boatload. There are provisions in that bill to make sure that we're not supporting high THC products. So they're not fake CBD products that can get people high. We are the Hawaii Hemp Farmers Association is the probably one of the only hemp farmers associations in the country that has came out loudly against Delta-8 products, because because it's just confused people. Because people, when people buy CBD products, they expect they expect it to be more like an olena product or mushroom product or B12 product. It supports health. They don't necessarily expect the the dysphoria or the high that you can get with a Delta-8 product that's made from CBD. So we're we you know, we're supporting a ban on that. So when people get CBD products, they're getting CBD products. If you want a higher THC product, you go to a dispensary for that. We're about health products. So we're trying to make that clear division.
Alex:Or grow your own under the medical license.
Gail Baber:What's that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you know what, that's an interesting point right there because it is so much easier to grow medical marijuana here with with a medical card, and many people do it for legitimate reasons, so I'm not in any way, you know, disparaging that. I think that's important, right, that people have. But it's way easier to do that than to grow hemp. We are fingerprinted, we have to cross background checks, we are in USDA databases, they know what we plant when we plant, we have inspectors out to our farm, we have a ton of paperwork. So it is way harder to grow hemp then pot in this state. That's just a fact. And one of the Kauai Representatives, we were sharing that before this we started recording, asked us that in the hearing, you know where the State is supposedly going recreational with marijuana this year. And she said "Wait a minute, we haven't even fixed all these problems for the hemp farmers yet and we're going rec'?" I mean, and she asked the Representative from the Attorney General's Office, you know, God bless her, to come up and try to explain it, and she couldn't because it's nuanced. She's not a farmer, that the HUF and she hasn't been involved in trying to figure out how all these rules have actually handcuffed farmers if you're playing by the rules. And why is there such a burgeoning CBD industry to the tune of $56 million, but almost none of that is local product. You know, they're actually all illegal products, so what are we going to do about that? DOH doesn't have the bill to enforce on it. So are we gonna' legalize what people are already doing and allow him farmers to participate, or continue kind of this, this this odd behavior? So, but that's that's HB1359. But the origin Bill, really important, like all ag products need origins. SB516 the processing Bill. SB637, the exemption Bill. SB655. So thanks for asking.
Alex:Yeah, Mahalo for that. Um, I will include the links to those bills in the description and the YouTube videos. So there will be some information for people to follow up and check it out for themselves. I highly recommend everybody do your own homework. Read on your on your own time. Go straight to the law and learn it yourself. That's the best way to understand what's truly going on rather than hearsay. You know what your friends told you or what your politician told you. Just go read it yourself. Okay, last question, I promise. Last question. And this is like the bigger picture question. We're gonna step back now. Step back from hemp. Step back from the little things that we've been talking about, the details. Do you have any additional thoughts, parting opinions or advice about the current status of agriculture in the state of Hawaii, and how it can be improved upon in terms of economic viability. We touched on some of this. Sustainability, and food security, food security. Any parting thoughts?
Cab Baber:I think hemp is going to lead the way for us to do precisely that. To change the lands that we have currently designated for agriculture into something more beautiful than we've ever seen before. As we've heard in the HFUU before, we have a Ferrari in the garage, we have never even taken it out for a test drive. Our agriculture is that find in Hawaii. We have the quality that is best in the world of many, many products, and it's time to let that happen. And it's time to let that enjoyment of that success happen for everybody, not just the visitors that we want to have keep coming in and enjoying, but also ourselves on a very large, large way. And so because hemp is a healer, going to take care of that land right away, and then it's going to give us so many other things, the fuel, the housing, the food, all these things. It's such a sustainable way to live and a healthy way to live without impacting the environment, actually improving the environment. So there's going to be so much abundance, so much abundance, that that will be what Hawaii will be known for not it's, you know, other things that we've done in degrading our land and shining in that way. We need to really show that we can shine in a natural organic way, and people just be in awe. And even local people that have never seen it before. They've just seen plantation, myself included. It will be a different Hawaii that we have not yet been able to conceive.
Gail Baber:I think there's some policies probably that we can put in place. And we already talked about price supports and whatnot. And one of the other things I would say is, I love big picture questions, and I love strategic planning, and those things and, and I think a lot of times simultaneously what we have to do, we just have to start doing more on the ground. You know, and just fund it. If it doesn't work, we learned, move on, you know, so we can develop a new ag plan. The State needs a new ag plan. But let's just keep putting stuff on the ground. Direct the money to the farmers for infrastructure, price supports, whatever it is. We don't need to go through a bunch of middlemen, not even a lot of nonprofit middlemen, you know. Find the commercial production farmers and, and, and, direct the projects there. And we don't have to wait. A lot of times people wait to do things. Just start launching I guess would be my thought in terms of overall picture.
Alex:Well, aloha and mahalo nui for your time and all of your manao for sharing your experience your perspective with all of us. Is there any contact or website you'd like to provide so that people can follow up and follow your your growing story?
Gail Baber:Well, sure, yeah. Are we've got a couple of things. We've been farming so long, you know, we actually have generations of websites, but there's HawaiiRoyalHemp.com that shares some of his, Clarance's agricultural story, and also our hemp farm HawaiiRoyalHemp.com. And then also on Instagram, it's HawaiiRoyalHemp. That's HawaiiRoyalHemp. He also has a lovely website, cabbaber.com c a b b a b e r.com, and it talks about some of the some of the services and products he provides. But it also shows the importance of those. What they can do. So if you're just curious about certain things that you know, it talks about the benefits of some of these regenerative practices. So if you don't know much about regenerative farming, you can go to CabBabor.com. And then I think he has an old website, it's like 14 years old. We are I don't think we've ever updated IslandHerbsHawaii.net. That's IslandHerbsHawaii.net, and it talks a lot about Bokashi. So Clarence was really a pioneer in the use of micro organisms in the State in modern agriculture. Of course, all traditional agriculture had ferments and microbes in it. But you know, he helped remind us of that. And he's been a manufacturing a product for over 25 years. It's really kind of a farmer's best friend. So people can go to what was again IslandHerbsHawaii.net
Cab Baber:Along that, this EM Bokashi technology is being used to clean up not only the land in Hawaii, on the projects that I am able to put it on, but it's also cleaning up the Ala Wai Canal, the dirtiest water in America. And this is now going to be cleaning up land and water here on the Big Island. Hilo Lions is looking at cleaning up Hilo Bay, and they're doing some trials right now. So we really want to see this type of technology, the fermented technology, remediate the water in our whole State. And we can do that just by flushing it down the toilet, even with our current systems. And then the big water quality issue on Oahu, for example, the leaking fuel tanks from a number of years, we can also do a tremendous remediation on that. We don't have to wait for mother nature necessarily to do it and several 100 years, we could accomplish it in 20 years and be very, very clean the aquifer and everything. So this is technology that we just really need to get busy with and clean up the whole place. And then we'll have higher quality life. And the humans are the major pollutants on the Hawaii. So if we can start where our pollution starts, then we'll have a big chance at making a difference in our water quality, which means our agriculture and our life quality goes up.
Alex:All right, so regenerative ag will save us all. Well, mahalo nui loa, a hui ho. thank you so much. This was awesome.
Cab Baber:Thank you for your fine work. Aloha.
Thao:We want to thank our guests for their generosity and manao. We also want to thank all our app producers throughout the islands, and especially those we have heard on the podcast for discussing ways they address the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of Hawaii ag production. Each story, each voice contributes to a broader understanding of what it takes to survive and thrive as we feed our communities. Wherever you may find yourself within our island agricultural economies, if you would like to share your story in our podcast, please contact us. Thank you for listening to the Seeds of Wellbeing "Voices From the Field" podcast featuring their perspectives of ag producers throughout the Hawaii islands. If you have found it helpful, please follow like and share this episode with others. And if you have any ideas about how we can make it better, please let us know in the comments or use the link on our website. Mahalo for tuning in. The intention of these podcast series is to create a safe space for respectful and inclusive dialogue. With people from across a broad and diverse spectrum involved in growing and making accessible the food we share together. A diversity of voices, perspectives and experiences can serve to deepen mutual understanding, to spark creative problem solving, and provide insight into the complexities of our agricultural system. If you, our listeners, have experiences with Hawaii agricultural ecosystem from indigenous methods, permaculture, smallholder farmers to large including multinational agricultural, industrial companies and everywhere in between, and you would like to share your story, please contact us. We welcome your voices and perspectives