Month: April 2012

April 18, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Coffee farmers, processors split over inspections

Coffee farmers and processors remain at odds over proposed legislation that would get rid of mandatory coffee inspections and grading.

The Kona Coffee Farmers Association, which has roughly 300 members, has vociferously opposed House Bill 280, questioning whether the bill will eliminate the problems it purports to address, such as transporting coffee cherry from one district to another, to sell as pricier Kona coffee. But many of the remaining coffee organizations, including the Hawaii Coffee Association, the Kona Coffee Council, the Maui Coffee Association and the Hawaii Coffee Growers Association, have submitted significant amounts of testimony supporting the measure.

The Department of Agriculture supports the measure’s intent, spokeswoman Janelle Saneishi said.

David Case, a member of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association’s legislative committee, said the proposed changes will affect the Kona coffee brand. But, he said, he’s fairly certain the measure will pass. He said he’s hoping Gov. Neil Abercrombie will veto the bill if the Legislature approves it. To that end, the association presented the governor with a petition with 320 signatures opposing the bill.

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April 18, 2012 General Ag News and Notes, Vegtables Post a Comment

Haleiwa Farmers’ Market gets a taste of state bureaucracy

Somebody please explain to me what I’m missing here. The State of Hawaii is telling the owners of the Haleiwa Farmers Market that they will have to move because they’re violating a state zoning law that prohibits vending from highways.

Have you ever visited this farmers’ market? I have, a number of times. I recall coming upon it about three years ago when it was in its infancy — a few vendors and a smattering of customers. We were back about a month ago, telling our out-of-state visitors it was something they should not miss on their tour of Oahu’s North Shore. They agreed, after spending about an hour chatting with some of the several dozen farmers and buying products to take back to Virginia.

I was delighted to see how the market had grown and how many people — an estimated 2,500 — visit it each Sunday. I explained that farmers’ markets were becoming wildly popular in Hawaii and that they were one thing that nobody could possibly find fault with.

I was wrong. I had underestimated our government’s ability to find wrong solutions to problems that do not exist.

To find the Haleiwa Farmers’ Market, drive through downtown Haleiwa on a Sunday morning to the north edge of town. Instead of rounding the curve to get back on the Joseph P. Leong Bypass, proceed straight ahead to a small piece of asphalt that used to be a highway. You not only have arrived at the farmers’ market, you have found the issue that has upset state officials.

The stretch where the asphalt still sits and the farmers’ market holds court on Sundays used to be a road. It stopped being a road when the bypass opened.

That was in 1993.

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April 18, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hunters hired to control invasive species on Hawaii island kill first axis deer

Hunters hired to control invasive species on Hawaii island have killed their first axis deer.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Tuesday the deer was captured in the southern part of the island.

Big Island Invasive Species Committee Manager Jan Schipper declined to say specifically where the deer was killed to prevent interference with the committee’s two hunters.

The animal native to India and Sri Lanka was first introduced to Molokai and Oahu in 1868, Lanai in 1920, and Maui in 1959, but they hadn’t been found on the Big Island until last year.

Non-native mammals such as like pigs and goats already damage the island’s environment. But axis deer are a new type of menace in part because they’re so large they can jump over fences that are meant to protect native forests.

Hunters hired to control invasive species on Hawaii island kill first axis deer – Hawaii News – Honolulu Star-Advertiser

April 18, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Sexual reproduction may produce long-term benefits

Researchers have discovered why courtship rituals – which can be all-consuming, demanding time and effort – might actually be worth it.

Attracting a mate – which can take significant effort, such as in a peacock’s show of feathers or the exhaustive rutting of stags – can produce benefits for a species in the long term, a study suggested.

Scientists have shown that animals and plants, which reproduce sexually are at a considerable advantage to those species – such as some insects and reptiles – that reproduce without a partner.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied sexual reproduction in tiny fruit flies to learn more about how DNA is randomly shuffled when the genes of two parents combine to create a new individual.

They found that this recombination of genetic material allows for damaging elements of DNA – which might cause disease or other potential drawbacks – to be weeded out within a few generations.

Individuals who inherit healthy genes tend to flourish and pass on their DNA to the next generation, while weaker individuals are more likely to die without reproducing.

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April 16, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Environmental groups sue over Lahaina treatment plant

LAHAINA >> Four community groups are suing Maui County in federal court over alleged environmental violations at a Lahaina treatment plant.

The groups claim millions of gallons of wastewater injected into wells at the facility each day surface offshore of Kahekili Beach Park, killing coral and triggering outbreaks of invasive algae.

Earthjustice filed the complaint Monday on behalf of Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Surfrider Foundation, West Maui Preservation Association and Sierra Club-Maui Group. They notified the county of their intent to sue last year, alleging Clean Water Act violations have been ongoing for at least 20 years.

“We notified Maui County last June that its Lahaina facility was damaging the reef and operating illegally, in hope that the county would voluntarily seek the required permit for wastewater discharges from the injection wells,” said Earthjustice attorney Caroline Ishida. “Unfortunately, it apparently takes an enforcement action to get the county to do anything, which is why we’re not seeking relief from the court.”

County spokesman Rod Antone said corporation counsel attorneys had yet to receive the complaint, but that pending litigation prevents officials from commenting.

The suit asks that the county be directed to secure a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit

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April 13, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Health officials issue notice of violation for 2011 HC&S burn

WAILUKU – The state Department of Health Clean Air Branch has issued a notice of violation against Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. for an unauthorized burn last year.

According to a news release, HC&S was cited for burning around 25 acres on Nov. 4 without prior written approval from the department. The company has an agricultural burning permit with the Health Department, but the field that was burned was not among those that were listed on the permit. The violation was self-reported.

HC&S has been assessed a $2,400 fine for the violation.

In a statement issued Wednesday, HC&S General Manager Rick Volner Jr. said, “HC&S takes compliance with its agricultural burning permit very seriously and has instituted safeguards to prevent a recurrence of this incident.”

Volner said the Kahului field was not supposed to be harvested until 2012. But about half of the field was burned in a malicious fire, and the burned cane was harvested immediately.

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April 13, 2012 Gardening, General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photos will debut online at Library of Congress site

In a picture taken in her Washington studio, photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston looks the part she set out to play: an artist ready to take on the world.

But if the 1896 pose with flashing petticoat, wispy cigarette and beer stein was meant to make a shocking declaration of bohemian genius, the world of fine art photography was not impressed.

Joseph Keiley, a disciple of Alfred Stieglitz, deemed Johnston’s art compromised by her work as a commercial photographer — “retarded by . . . an onerous professional life.”

The rest of us can reassess that view on Friday when the Library of Congress puts online its digitized collection of Johnston’s beguiling images of gardens, more than 1,130 glass-lantern slides, two-thirds of them hand-colored and created between 1895 and 1935.

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April 11, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Grave threat of pesticides to bees’ billion-pound bonanza is now clear

How valuable are bees? In the UK, about £1.8bn a year, according to new research on the cost of hand-pollinating the many crops bees service for free. If that sounds a far-fetched scenario, consider two facts.

First, bees are in severe decline. Half the UK’s honey bees kept in managed hives have gone, wild honey bees are close to extinction and solitary bees are declining in more than half the place they have been studied.

Second, hand-pollination is already necessary in some places, such as pear orchards in China, and bees are routinely trucked around the US to compensate for the loss of their wild cousins.

The new figure comes from scientists at the Reading University and was released by Friends of the Earth to launch their new campaign, Bee Cause. Paul de Zylva, FoE nature campaigner, said: “Unless we halt the decline in British bees our farmers will have to rely on hand-pollination, sending food prices rocketing.”

So what’s the problem?

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April 8, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Reforestation not taking hold in land burned by Station fire

Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation.

It would give him hope after a year of disappointment.

Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.

“That’s too bad,” said Bear, resource officer for the service’s Los Angeles River Ranger District, shaking his head in disappointment. “When we planted seedlings, conditions were ideal in terms of soil composition and temperature, rainfall and weather trends. Then the ground dried out and there just wasn’t enough moisture after we planted.”

Foresters estimate that just a quarter of the 900,000 seedlings planted across 4,300 acres are thriving. That is far below the 75% to 80% survival rate the agency wanted.

On most slopes, instead of small trees, the ground nurtures dense shrubs and grass in the shadows of skeletal dead trees scorched by the 2009 blaze.

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