Author: bigwave

August 27, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Preservation and value adding training for the people of Santo

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Around 60 participants from Santo rural and surrounding Luganville will attend a ten days preservation and Value adding training on local crops starting Monday next week Funded by TVET and World Vision it will be conducted by Kava’s store Charles Long Wah at the Agriculture College with the aim to boost the income earning capacity of rural farmers and improve food security (in off seasons) and processing at the village level.

“My techniques of value adding of natural produce is unique, whether to the most remote village or town with only a saucepan and spoon, now with a solar food dryer,” said Long Wah, after conducting similar workshops for 20 years all over north and south Pacific to hundreds of Pacific islanders. “These ten days training will upscale productivity and pass on lifetime skills of value adding a product in syrup, pastes, flavoring in tamarind, preserved mango, pineapple, pawpaw, nandau, naus, soursop, chutney, chilly and tamarind and candy (coconut).

“Equipped with four solar dryers we will be able to make over 100 semi and value added agricultural crops with no costs and obtain much safe food security with abundant in fruits, spices, indigenous nuts, root crops and bread fruits going to waste each year in the rural areas.

This, he said, will significantly decline in the coming months, in particular aggregated crops such as root crops, nut in shells, low value vegetables, fresh kava, fruits to town, ships and high costs of transportation.

“The Vanuatu market has not change much in the past 60 years, it is based mainly in low value crops with miserable profits, eventually creating more conflicts between farmers having the same agriculture crops generating mass exodus to urban drift and more poverty.

“We must produce the volume of agricultural crops in rural areas before we can talk about export.”

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August 27, 2012 General Ag News and Notes 1 Comment

Maui farmers’ group to hold two meetings

HAIKU – The Maui Farmer’s Union United, in collaboration with the Maui School Garden Network and Community Work Day, will meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Haiku School garden.

Haiku School garden coordinator Jenna Tallman will demonstrate how to brew bokashi to speed up the composting process, and Maui Farmer’s Union United President Vincent Mina will demonstrate how to make fermented plant juice.

There will also be a dedication of a Kahaluu avocado tree donated and planted by MFUU members for the school garden.

The MFUU’s regular monthly meeting will follow from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Haiku Community Center. The meeting will feature a locavore potluck and presentations.

Chef John Cadman will present “Chef’s Corner,” Ryan Earhart will present “Produce Scoops,”?Harriet Witt will present “Cycles of Light and Life”?and Jayanti Nand will present a tree-layering demonstration.

There will also be club announcements and updates about the annual meeting on Oct. 24.

Cost for the meeting is $10 for those who do not bring a dish and $5 for members.

This is a waste-free event. Participants are asked to bring their own plates and utensils; compostable dishware will be available for a nominal fee.

Attendees also are encouraged to participate in the produce swap by bringing vegetables, fruit, seeds, plant cuttings or other produce to trade.

The Maui Farmer’s Union United meets at 5:30 p.m. monthly, every fourth Tuesday, at the Mayor Hannibal Tavares Community Center Pool in Pukalani.

For more information, visit www.mauifarmersunionunited.weebly.com.
Maui farmers’ group to hold two meetings – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News

August 26, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Sugar imports soar

Sugar imports shot up exponentially in the 11 months through May upon expectations of a lenient government policy on refined sugar exports and the zero-duty status granted to raw sugar imports.

Imports rose 87 percent to 15.77 lakh tonnes in July-May from the same period a year earlier, according to Bangladesh Bank that compiles data on letters of credit settlement.

Golam Mostafa, chairman of Deshbandhu Sugar, however, suggests that the total volume of sugar imports could be even higher than the LC data imply as payments are typically deferred by six months.

Mostafa attributes the spike in imports to the processing capacity of refineries, which were expanded in anticipation of relaxation of government restrictions on refined sugar exports.

While ASM Mohiuddin Monem, secretary general of Bangladesh Sugar Refiners Association, attributes the surge in imports to the zero-duty import facility bestowed upon sugar — both raw and refined — imports.

“All parties reaped advantage of the policy and imported sugar as much as possible,” said Monem, also the deputy managing director of Abdul Monem Group which runs AM Sugar Refinery Ltd.

For instance, the state-run Bangladesh Sugar Food Industries Corporation and Trading Corporation of Bangladesh imported more than 150,000 tonnes of refined sugar in fiscal 2011-12.

Mostafa expects the sugar imports to hit the 17-18 lakh tonne-mark for the 2012 calendar year, a significant rise from the 14.79 lakh tonnes recorded for 2011.

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August 26, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Trouble brewing

Growing coffee in Kona just isn’t what it used to be.

The island’s coffee belt continues to deal with pests such as the coffee berry borer, warmer and dryer conditions, and the increasing cost of doing business. Nonetheless, for many growers, Kona coffee is a love and passion they will continue well into the future — whether the process is easy or hard.

“It’s a lifestyle,” explained Christian Twigg-Smith, third-generation owner of Blue Sky Coffee, located off Hualalai Road in Holualoa. “The industry here in Kona the last two to three years has taken hits with bugs, drought and additional costs, but you either learn to deal with it or get out.”

Twigg-Smith, whose 100-acre estate coffee farm in a good year produces upward of 500,000 to 700,000 pounds of cherry, described the start of the 2012 coffee season as pretty good, thanks in part to “decent” rainfall and good blooms during the spring. A bad season, he said, results in about 200,000 to 400,000 pounds of cherry.

“It don’t think it will be a fat year or a bad year, but an average year,” he said about the upcoming Kona coffee harvest.

Elsie Burbano Greco, with the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources’ Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences, anticipates this year’s Kona coffee crop will be good.

“There’s going to be tons of coffee,” she said, noting how thick the trees’ white blooms were during the spring. “There’s plenty of berries, but people have got to be spraying and cleaning up to protect the coffee (for harvest).”

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August 25, 2012 General Ag News and Notes, Vegtables Post a Comment

What’s Up with Carrots?

By Glenn I. Teves, County Extension Agent, UH CTAHR

When you think of an orange vegetable, carrots come to mind, but once upon a time the most common color of carrots wasn’t orange. It wasn’t until the 1500s that the Dutch stumbled upon an orange carrot and focused on developing more orange varieties.
Believed to be native to the area around Afghanistan, the first carrots were purple and yellow. Around A.D. 900-1200, they spread to the eastern Mediterranean, then to China and Eastern Europe by the 1300s. By the 1600s, yellow carrots reached Japan, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that orange carrots emerged in Holland and adjacent areas. White and yellow carrots are still used for livestock in eastern and western Europe, while red carrots are popular in Japan.

With the quest for new color choices in vegetables, we’ve gone full circle with the return of colorful carrots with names like Atomic Red, Nutri-Red, Purple Haze, Purple Dragon, Mello Yellow Scarlet Wonder and Rainbow. Breeding by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a high Vitamin A carrot led to the development of a cultivar called A Plus, which increased the carotene content by leaps and bounds. A collateral benefit was improved taste, especially sweetness.

A nemesis of the carrot is the root-knot nematode causing galls on the roots, and this microscopic eelworm is common in many of our soils. A solution is to grow cover crops, such as Sunn Hemp, African Marigolds, Sorghum-Sudangrass Hybrids, or a variety of cowpea called Iron and Clay.

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August 25, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Greenwell ethnobotanical garden to observe founder’s day

Greenwell ethnobotanical garden to observe founder’s day

Garden to observe founder’s day

Bishop Museum’s native plant arboretum in Captain Cook, the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, will observe the birthday of the garden’s late founder Amy Beatrice Holdsworth Greenwell on Friday, Sept. 7.

Born in 1920, Amy Greenwell was part of the well-known Greenwell family which settled in the Kona area in the mid-1800s. An accomplished native plant expert, she wrote many articles on botany and ethnobotany. Some of her letters and articles will be on display in the Garden’s new visitor center. She was also an acute observer of archaeology and often joined Bishop Museum archaeologists on their field work.

She left the garden property to Bishop Museum on her death in 1974. Admission will be free on Sept. 7 between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Birthday cake will be served starting at 12:30 p.m. and a Guided Native Plant Walk will be offered at 1 p.m. An award from the County of Hawaii Department of Research and Development and the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority funds the Guided Native Plant Walks offered at the garden daily, Tuesday-Sunday. Visitors may take self-guided tours these same days between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

The garden is located at 81-6160 Mamalahoa Hwy. in Captain Cook. For more information, call 323-3318 or visit www.bishopmuseum.org/greenwell.

Anyone who requires an auxiliary aid or service for effective communication or a modification of policies and procedures to participate in the Hawaiian Plant Walks should contact Peter Van Dyke at 808-323-3318 at least two weeks before their planned visit.

Greenwell ethnobotanical garden to observe founder’s day | Hawaii Tribune Herald