Seeds Of Wellbeing - SOW

Ep 64. Facing Feral Ungulates with Makana Provisions

• Jim Crum / Iggy Fleishour • Season 4 • Episode 4

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If you are an agriculture producer in Hawaii, you have heard about feral ungulates. Those are the pigs, goats, and deer that run wild on the islands and can do such extensive damage to crops and the land. Many are frustrated by their impact and spend thousands of dollars to keep them out or even more to recover from the damage they do. When on Oahu, we discovered Iggy from Makana Provisions, who is trying to address this invasive animal problem by hunting them, processing them, and then selling them to feed the islands and beyond.

Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resilience (CTAHR), 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.

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Jim:

The views, information, or opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, our funders, or any of the organizations affiliated with this project. Welcome to a Seeds of Well Being Experts in the Field podcast, featuring Hawaii agriculture producers and affiliates working in their field of expertise to support agriculture in Hawaii, in the United States, and in some cases around the world. These podcasts are made possible by a grant from the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, also known as CTAHR, and the Seeds of Wellbeing, or SOW project, and is supported by a grant from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

Iggy Fleishour:

We are looking at doing a few stores, we're talking through right now about going into more convenience stores. We're mostly focused on online sales, that's it's where the money is. So we try to offset the cost. I mean, it costs us a lot of money to produce the product. We lose half the product when we make it right in dehydration, then we pay the USA to go on the hunt, so there's a lot of money going out and a little bit coming in, so our job is to sell half of it online, and then we move into, we love the military, we love working with them, they love our product, they're incredible organization to work with, and we're really happy about having them as a partner, and we keep growing. We used to be in Foodland, we used to be in all kinds of places, we've had all kinds of issues, but that's the nature of business in Hawaii, is you gotta figure out your niche and stick to it.

Jim:

Yeah, and adapt, right? It sounds like you're figuring it out, adapting as you need to, and that's that's kind of what it takes, right.

Iggy Fleishour:

Absolutely,

Jim:

if you are an agriculture producer in Hawaii, you've heard about feral ungulates. Those are the pigs, goats, and deer that run wild on the islands and can do such extensive damage to crops and the land. Many are frustrated by their impact and spend 1000s of dollars to keep them out, or even more to recover from what damage they do. When on Oahu recently, we discovered Iggy from Makana Provisions, who's trying to address this invasive animal problem by hunting them, processing them, and then selling them to feed the islands and beyond. In this episode, we have with us Iggy Fleishour, who's from Makana Provisions. And welcome to Iggy, and thanks for coming on the on the podcast.

Iggy Fleishour:

Thank you for having me. My real name is Ignacio Fleishour. Iggy's easier. Some people call me a chef, and I really.. I don't think of myself as a chef. I learn everything in the field, and just so happens I cook really well, and I do a lot of work in the community, feed people. Been doing that all over the world, and ended up back home in Hawaii, and I'm glad to be here. In Makana, yeah, we have Makanna Aina Foundation and Makana Provisions, which is a meat company. Makana Wild, was a jerky, and the reason we separate all those things is for business reasons, just in case something ever goes wrong with one, we can keep going. I think try to think of things as more business-minded, even though we try to be more spiritual-minded in what we do,

Jim:

We'll look at the websites, or maybe I'll, we'll comment on the websites and kind of different strategies that folks might use to navigate them, and why, and some of the things that you have on there, but if you wouldn't mind sharing with us, your, you know, sometimes we call it the Hawaii story, it's like, how did what's your connection to Hawaii, and how long have you been on island, and what's your what island are you on, or islands are you on, and what kinds of things are you doing in Hawaii?

Iggy Fleishour:

My father's originally from Hawaii, and he left in the Marine Corps, and he traveled, and he went to Nam, and he had him at home, and his dying wish was sail back home to Hawaii, and we grew up Hawaiian style in the mainland, in Texas, in California. And coming to Hawaii, we came in 1987-88 and we made his dream come true, was which was a sail back home to Hawaii when he was dying of cancer. We barely made it, so I know what it's like to go hungry. We're out there a while, but when we landed in Hawaii, it felt like home. And though I traveled all over the place, it always felt like home being here in Hawaii, and part of that is the feeling of being connected to the land and being connected to people who, when we first arrived, brought us in and welcomed us and showed us things. And I grew up hunting and fishing in the mainland, learning the Hawaiian style, but also the Native American. My grandfather was, in my dad's side, was half Apache, half German, who came here in the military, and my grandmother came from Spain, and they were both my males, Kauai and Big Island, and they were ranchers and farmers. All of our families were related to the Martins and the Pachecos. A lot of family here, like I said, I think I think coming here, being welcomed and taught and brought in as family, it cemented who I became as a person and what I want to do, and it felt like home, like that's the best way to say it, it felt like home.

Jim:

Yeah, and you're based on a Oahu now, is that right?

Iggy Fleishour:

Correct, I'm based on Oahu, mostly because all the businesses here, the sales are here, everything happens here. We've lived on Kauai for a bit, I lived on Big Island, and work on Molokai and Maui. Don't get to hunt as much anymore as we're too busy running the business, and, and so it's taken me away for a while from being back on the land, but we're hoping to get back on the land again and spend more time outdoors,

Jim:

and it sounds like you've spent a lot of some time on on most of the islands.

Iggy Fleishour:

Yes, did a lot of work, even as in high school, I was doing work in the community, doing gang prevention, doing bringing kids into the land and taking them outdoors out through leadership and all that kind of stuff.

Jim:

So, tell us about the Makana and the Makana products that you've, you've started. I think I read, I may have read on the website, 2012 was, is that about when some of the Makana stuff started, or how did that come about, and, and maybe tell us what Makana means, or means to you.

Iggy Fleishour:

Sure, so I actually got started doing catering, and I was actually doing teaching, and I'm a coder by trade originally. I never wanted to be in the food business, because I love food and that connection to food, but I was teaching hunting, and as a way of looking at life, and teaching how to use animals nose to tail, and I was doing pig and some venison, and and then I got asked to help Uncle Desmond Manama on bit on Mokai, who started all of the USDA wild harvesting, and he lobbied and I helped him lobby and did all these things to make things happen so that we could bring wild food to the table. And he started way back when, before that, and I came along and helped him grow the market, and we kind of kind of did a good job, and the name Makana was because I teach kids, and when I was teaching and doing all these programs, I was teaching that it's a gift that we're given by a creator, and whatever you believe in, and that there's these gifts that we have to take care of, because they are gifts, and they feed us, and they do, you know, this earth brings a lot to us, and every animal, every plant, there's no separation of life, and so it's a great gift, and so Makana is a special gift, right? So that's why I chose the name.

Jim:

Okay, so so folks are interested in finding out more about Makana, but either as consumers or potentially as ag producers that may want to work with you, how would you suggest they, they start like which website, and and what do you suggest is the best way for people to get to know you?

Iggy Fleishour:

So I think the best way is to just call me up or come visit our store in 1720 Palolo Avenue. It's kind of our food hub. We manufacture product there. We want to help other farmers. They can sell stuff there. We can help them bring products to market. They can test to market a little store and then grow from there, and we can help them get into bigger retailers. We have a lot of websites, so Makana Provisions is our, .com is our catalog. We have a lot of products on there, but we don't sell much anything on there. Makana Wild is what we're focused on right now, which is jerky. It made more sense to kind of focus on that for a bit, as that product is easier to ship and light. So, if you have ideas to make products, I recommend to people, make it easy to ship and light, and a shelf stable, and you're going to make more money that way than any farm product. Anything you do, if you can make that happen, is going to help you offset the cost of production.

Jim:

Okay, and I saw, actually, I saw on the Makana Wild website, there's a pop-up about a two-day hunt on Molokai?

Iggy Fleishour:

Oh, yeah, we do every year, we do a contest, so to, so people can come on a two day hunt on Molokai, and whatever you shoot, you get to take home, and we feed you, we, we provide guns, if you need guns, we provide everything.

Jim:

How do the, how do the airlines feel about you flying that, flying the meat back? Is it you, do you harvest process, do everything on island, and then just kind of wrap it and send it, or how do you bring

Iggy Fleishour:

Either, either way, we do it. We have a great deal. Alaska Airlines has really taken care of us, because we are an ag company. They, we ship me back and forth to the mainland. We make some products on the mainland, so we do a lot in, but we have good deals with the airlines and Young Brothers, and never, we, they've taken care of us, and so we've been very lucky to have that kind of help from those bigger companies.

Jim:

Okay, and are you looking for producers that, or hunters that are harvesting? For example, I was just talking to the County about the big problem on the Big Island, which is where I live and farm, and talking about they're trying to get a process where the people that want to get rid of the pigs are connected with people that want to process them and and use the meat right so it seems kind of the ideal combination so I'm just wondering if something like that I know you have Hawaii Big Island connection so

Iggy Fleishour:

We want to do all the invasives everywhere and we have ideas on what to do with it, and it's just the bottleneck is some of the USDA and the rules and the regulations, and I think if you catch pigs, you can feed them for a few months, and then they're domesticated, technically, then you can bring them to USDA.

Jim:

Okay, yeah, it sounds like it sounds like you know, you know, a lot of the rules have had to deal with them over the years, yeah?

Iggy Fleishour:

We would love to tackle the goat problem too. There's, there's, there's a lot of issues on Big Island, but we're kind of limited by, by resources, number one, how many USDA places can do it, and then the other part is, can/will the USDA allow us to do it?

Jim:

Okay, so at the moment, is your supply of meat, of animals, is that steady, and you're good, and you're just kind of working out the details, or are you interested in talking to people that may want to work with you to help you harvest more?

Iggy Fleishour:

We're interested in learning, will they want to harvest more, and do we know it's a hard road to get to USDA and to get a clean headshot every time, you need really good shooters, you could lose your license, you invest a lot of money, so it's hard to do that, and we have a good system down, so we don't mess with that system, but when we explore doing other things, such as pet food, then we could have more, more conversations about bringing in food and processing it. We have a USDA facility in our place too.

Jim:

I did notice you have partnerships with Kualoa Ranch, University of Hawaii, and it looks like the Defense Commissary. So tell us more, and Hapa, tell us more about that.

Iggy Fleishour:

So, Hapa is our food hub, and that's where we make most of our jerk can stuff and other value-added products, besides venison and bison and beef. We also, when we take food from the farmers, we make dressings, we make.. we just started a new sauce, we call it the Foundry Sauce that uses a lot of invasives, including the ape and the olu, whether it's invasive and strawberry guava, and so we made a sauce, it's a foundation sauce that you can use in many dishes, and it's real popular, so we do many things at our hub, and that's the Hapa market and grill, and we sell out of there. So the licensing with the sports with, uh, is we license to do product with them, the Warrior Bar. We're stoked to be in the locker room for the athletes, that's what partnership we have with them. Kualoa buys our product and they sell it, and we haven't done any stuff with their beef, yet we're trying to get there, but we'd love to have more beef and more people that supply beef all the time. And the Defense Commissary, they love our product. I was lucky enough to get a one on one with some of the main decision makers from Washington, and I fed them all our venison products, and we're, we, they accepted 32 items into the first year, 32 different SKUs into the program, and everybody's like, "How the heck did you do that?" And we make good food, and mostly because we put our love into it. It's not, it's not rocket science, we just put love into it, and the meat is really good. So,

Jim:

Yeah, and I did. I see on one of your sites, maybe it was on the Provision site. It was talking about the jerky is available, maybe through Hawaii Hata, so it's, you know, different different locations as well.

Iggy Fleishour:

I stopped working in Hawaii Hata, where we, we do most of it online in our store, okay, and at the Cromissory and. And we are looking at doing a few stores, we're talking through right now about going into more convenience stores, but we're mostly focused on online sales, that's it's where the money is, so we try to offset the cost. I mean, it costs us a lot of money to produce the product, we lose half the product when we make it right in dehydration, then we pay the USDA to go into hunt, so there's a lot of money going out and a little bit coming in. So our job is to sell half of it online, and then we move into.. we love the military, we love working with them. They love our product, they're an incredible instead of trading for money, we're trading organization to work with, and we're really happy about having food, and that we're really stoked about that new them as a partner, and we keep growing. We used to be in partnership, and we're doing that in Alaska, we're doing that FoodLand, we used to be in all kinds of places, we've had all kinds of issues, but that's the nature of business in Hawaii, is in Montana, we're doing that in South Dakota. you gotta figure out your niche and stick to it.

Jim:

Great, that's great. And you mentioned you do have a storefront on Oahu, so, so folks could stop by there too.

Iggy Fleishour:

That's the Hapa market

Jim:

yeah, yep, and that's Honolulu, I imagine, or

Iggy Fleishour:

it's in Paloma, which is a food desert, so we're stoked to be in that desert,

Jim:

Okay? And that was the address you gave out earlier

Iggy Fleishour:

1720 Palolo Avenue.

Jim:

Okay, great. Yeah, and folks that are off at that on neighbor islands, email is that you had an email address and yeah, phone number on one of the websites, but is that, is that are you an email phone guy? Is what do you, what do you prefer?

Iggy Fleishour:

Email and phone, and sometimes text, but I'm I'll do everything. So I'm either fixing fences, I'm driving, I'm delivering, I'm doing a bit of everything,

Jim:

Hunting? You don't know

Iggy Fleishour:

Yeah, but the email is iggy@makanaprovisions.com and our phone number is 808-838-9315

Jim:

Okay, great. I'll make sure, I'll make sure that's in the show notes as well. So, thank you for that. And is there.. can you tell where your sales are? Is it Hawaii? Is a big percentage Hawaii? is a lot of it mainland? Is it international? Like, where you sell.. where are you selling product these days,

Iggy Fleishour:

Mostly here in the Hawaii, and most of it goes to the military. They love our product there. Guys who come here, they're far away from home, and there's always a tension between Hawaii and military people, but you know it's not the military, the people that serve, it's a complex that's hard to maneuver, and everyone's trying to make the best decision for what they need to do. But you have people that are farmers, also their family were farmers, and they joined the military because they had, they felt like they had no other option, and they miss home, and they miss hunting, and so when they get some of the deer, they're super stoked. They get our hot sauce, they're super stoked. So, I think in terms of

Jim:

I

Iggy Fleishour:

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think knowing farmers how we share things that we look beyond all your military or your and their issues, and how to deal with them, how to deal with haole from here or here, that and just go like, man, people invasives, and that's where I try to focus what I can do. Meat are humans, and we're all trying to figure it out and work together. industry is really hard, and especially where you see the impact right away in Hawaii, and I, I've had several instances Yeah, we've been making veggie burgers, we.. we where I wanted to quit. I was like, what am I doing, and this smoke everything, so it tastes like it's meat, so we trick people by by the smoke, I think the smoke adds a flavor that cost so much? Does it, is it worth it? Is it worth for my, makes people think it's, it's meat. And learn tricks, how to the stress for me and my wife, and and I think it comes back to use fat, how to use avocado, and make it as fat, and so like it took me leaving Hawaii to, I went up to Montana and all

Jim:

Yeah, the chef, yeah, there's the chef coming out. So these things aligned and they gave me a wild horse that had you, you've been doing this, is it about 16 years? Does that sound about right? Yeah. What are some of the, you know, all these like and it happened to be from Arizona on the res' struggles that you've, you've had to encounter, and maybe how on Apache res' and so I got to ride this horse and I was like you found ways to overcome them, because I mean, Seeds of Wellbeing is about trying to help Hawaii ag producers address yeah I forgot what I'm doing. I'm here to feed spirit, and I mental health issues as they run into them. think it lightens the load when you think that way, and that you're feeding the community. It's not about yields. And how do you say, if I was to measure success, it wouldn't be by the money that we're making, so we're not making any real money yet, and maybe one day we will, but it's not about that, it's about feeding people spirit, and what are we doing in that process of bringing spirit to the land and connecting to land and helping people connect to what they need to. My job is really to help farmers. I see myself as my job is really to help them see other ways to sell their products, like I have farmers who are growing San Marzano tomatoes, now they're growing hundreds of them for me, because I plan on making a sauce, a spaghetti sauce, right? Ao I think that's where not really failures, but loss of hope, and when you get back to spirit and realize that you're feeding speed in spirit, that it lightens the load. I think. And it's easy to get discouraged, but when you really feel in your heart that that's the right thing to do then I think it lightens that. And it's easy to forget, you know. I, when I met Thao, Thao? she, she mentioned that, you know, there's a lot of farmers committing suicide, you know, and I'm like, "What?! and how can that be?" And I see that maybe it's because they're feeling disconnected, maybe there's not enough young people looking and listening to them, and what they know, it could be the system is not working for them, and we get hung up on success and failure, and you know the yield, the yield, what does it yield?!, that was like instead of like, hey, these people are a member our community, and they feed us, so let's see what we can do to help them out. And I think when you get beyond yourself, you forget, you forget the problems you have personally, so I think it's good that we connect with people, I'm lucky to have people I can connect with that have been in the food industry and helped me straighten out and look at the place and look at land and connect into land, and you know, growing up looking at community, you couldn't look at community without looking at the soil. And every teaching when I was taught to teach and to work with youth, it was like it's great you're working with youth, the elders would tell me, but what about the elders? You can't fix a tree and put it right back in the same forest and have the same issue, because the rotten trees are going to make that sapling rotten again. So, you gotta fix the whole community, work as a community together to fix the forest, and you know, a lot of those teachings is it goes back to even looking at, they looked at issues of strata, is just like the dirt, we have anger, resentment, and at the bottom is fear. How am I going to feed myself? How am I going to feed my family? And if we look at our environment and our connections to land, then we can see humanity a little better, I think. Yeah, so look to nature for some of the answers, maybe. Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like when you feed what I hear you saying is when you're feeding other people's spirits, it feeds your spirit. Is that accurate?

Iggy Fleishour:

Yeah, definitely.

Jim:

Yeah, yeah. Thao is Thao is my boss. She started the Seeds of Wellbeing Project and has been managing it from the early stages of the program when we did surveys of over 400 Hawaii Ag producers to.. It was funded by the Department of Mental Health, because of rising rates of suicide and depression amongst ag producers nationwide, and so it was started to study Hawaii ag producers specifically, as this, the Seeds of Wellbeing Project was for that, and based on the survey results, we've been trying to come up with a number of resources. And I know Thao has published a number of papers. She's, she works at University of Hawaii and psycho psychology department, and so has some, has some published papers there that list more details. We could, we could share some links there too, for folks that are interested. But yeah, it was, it's, it's pretty alarming, and so, so we hope that anything that folks can share about how to overcome those, those issues is, is really welcome.

Iggy Fleishour:

Listen to your elders. Go meet an elder before they're gone, before the knowledge is gone. I think that's always been, as a Native American, that's always been something that we look to, and, and I think you know, we have a, we come to society now with phones and everything else is,"Oh, look at me, look at me, I created this, I did this" No,you didn't like the elders did this. They fought with guns to give water rights for you to do what you're doing now, and you're forgetting that, you're not acknowledging that, and they feel alone, and so we should be talking to our elders and listen to what information they have. And I think connecting with elders is really important, and you just learn so much, and yes, there's there's a, there's a way for the future, and all that technology, but if you don't actually put your hands and your laughter into that soil and those plants, there's, there's, there's no real life in that product. And connect with them. Just have coffee. We're opening up, we're gonna.. I'm putting it out there right now that anyone that wants to have coffee, we're opening from 10 to six Mondays, Tuesdays through Saturdays, free coffee, come and talk story and connect with us. And if you're a farmer and you need ideas or you need to talk to someone, come by and talk with us. We'll help whatever we can do.

Jim:

What's the future look like for Makana?

Iggy Fleishour:

We'd like to build what we're doing bigger and go beyond, and we're looking at the partnerships with the Native Americans and the Lakota Sioux. They have an incredible program. We'd love to do it here. We've had no help here, so it's been easier to work with our, with our brethren and in the Lakotas. They have nonprofits to help kids, and they also have a warrior project where they bring people are coming out of prison or they're coming out of rehab and stuff like that, or abuse, they go and stay at the Warriors Lodge, and they learn how to be native again, basically, and then before they can go back into the community, and then so we're creating jobs, and we're creating, you know, opportunities. They're hunting bison in the old way too, finally. So that's become something that's growing, and they just did a hunt at Yellowstone for some of the original line of bison. We got some of that here for us to use, and so we're excited about that. We'd love to do more of that in Hawaii with more Hawaii products through our nonprofit. We have the Makana in the Foundation. We haven't done a lot lately. We do give food away. We'd love to give food away. I mean, that's, that's really the big thing. And so we're figuring out, how do we make that happen? How do we, how do we make enough to support giving away food and feeding people that need it? And you know, our kids, kids against family squeeze is not the answer. We're trying to find ways to, we're hoping, we're talking about the DOE this month. We're hoping to get venison burgers on the menu in the schools and see what happens. We'd like, we're, we're, we're hoping to go to 5000 stores with the military in the mainland, and the more I have a theory that the more we sell things abroad at a higher price, the lower we can keep it for our locals here. So that's kind of our goal, and we have other, we want to offer value-added meals, so complete meals, so we'll be looking at farmers to provide that for us, provide the foods that we need in those meals, and we'll have different companies, but we're gonna keep making a difference in Hawaii's food programs, and that's really what we're all about.

Jim:

I saw on the foundation website, there's Ola Farmacy, Farmacy with an F,

Iggy Fleishour:

yes.

Jim:

Is that, is that kind of one of your pet projects as well?

Iggy Fleishour:

Yes, yeah.

Jim:

Tell us about that.

Iggy Fleishour:

So, eating, eating as medicine, food is medicine, and the theory, the theory my grandpa used to say the best food for you is the one from your backyard, or as close as possible, to your backyard. So, whether it's from this island or your island, you eat your own food. Our goal is that we teach recipes, recipes, and ideas, and make the foods people. I like making my own food. I don't always like to eat other people's food, but we want to have the option, so that if you don't know how to eat the invasive, you don't know how to eat certain things that we make it for you, make it easy for you to access and eat it, and so that's treating food as medicine that it has spirit, that it's not, you know, it's a holistic approach to medicine, is it starts with what you eat from your mouth.

Jim:

Great. Well, folks, folks that are interested can check that out online. I think. I was.. I found it pretty fascinating myself. We thank Iggy for sharing details of the work of Makana Provisions and Foundation. While hunting is by no means a new way of obtaining food, it's a relatively new approach to addressing the feral ungulate problem on the islands, and is one that's being looked at by many as a possible win-win for everyone. Now, let's hear some closing thoughts from Iggy.

Iggy Fleishour:

We did grow up ranching. My dad had a construction company in Texas, and one of the things that we had was a ranch, and my mother's family is in Mexico, and her father was Sicilian, and her mother came from Spain, so they were fresh to Mexico, and people that worked the ranch in Mexico, so we've, we've been ranchers for a long time. And I don't know, as a kid, we, you shoot when moves at night, and you fix fences. That's what it probably was, you protect your animal, right. And so I didn't know much about the rest of it, but I grew up, and as I grew up, I learned more and more about it. And keep your animals clean, keep them fed and watered, and keep them nice. You don't ride animals, you don't, you don't, you don't do.. I'm going to get a lot of slack for this, or.. but you don't abuse your animals, you don't go to rodeos. I would get in trouble, and, and I know our family had, you know, people that were bullfighters. My grandpa's say "No, no, you don't do bull fighting. Why are you using animals?" And so, and everybody, every other ranch was family, nobody was like workers, everybody was treated like family, and it was, it was a nice way to grow up and visiting, and we weren't there all the time, but every summer we got to go hunting and go play rancher and play cowboys, so it was kind of fun.

Jim:

Any final words you want to share to Hawaii ag producers as our target audience out there?

Iggy Fleishour:

Not much, not much that I know, but you know, I think we're all learning as we grow, and, and that's part of growing, and that's part of farming, and I think going back to spirit and connecting with the spirit, I think that's the most important thing we can do. It's hard, it's, it's not easy, and me, business is really hard. I don't know if you know, but it was gangsters that ran in Texas in Chicago before I moved to Texas, and I think you still got some of that hanging out, and yeah, it's a tough business, and I'm sure I know what it's like to farm. It's not easy, it's hard, and they have a hard way, so I have a real heart for that. And whatever we can do, it all comes back to spirit. Is pray for the land, connect to the

Jim:

That's great, great advice. Thank you. Thank you for that. land, and put your hands in the dirt. If you've never put your hands in the dirt, you don't truly understand. So I encourage And, and aloha, people to help farmers and volunteer to help farmers and

Unknown:

Aloha. Thank you. help them help them get a leg up and really sit there and connect with them and connect with the land.

Thao Le:

The intention of these podcast series is to create a safe space for a respectful and inclusive dialog 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 agriculture ecosystem from indigenous methods, permaculture, small holder 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.

Jim:

Your last name, Fleischauer, is German, so do you want to do you want to translate what that means? And I thought it was pretty fascinating.

Iggy Fleishour:

Yeah, it actually means butcher. I think our family was butchers that came from Germany.

Thao Le:

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