Regeneration Is What We All Need Now

Civil Beat
By Vincent Mina

This is a story about the power of regeneration, and it starts where most everything starts when you’re a farmer: in the soil. If we want vitality in our bodies, we need it in our food. And if we want it in our food, we need it in our soil.

Healthy soil has an architecture, a web of microbial life. When that web is vital and intact, plants flourish and express themselves as complete proteins. Healthy plants are resilient and strong and able to fend off pests and diseases.

Our agricultural system is no different. I have been farming on Maui for 27 years. It has been a blessing and a challenge. As the saying goes, “If you want to make a million farming, start with two million.” We mahiai — farmers — are not ones to look for a free lunch. We produce that lunch.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for every dollar American consumers spend on food, U.S. farmers and ranchers earn just 14.6 cents. This value marks a 17% decline since 2011, and the smallest portion of the American food dollar that farmers have received since the USDA began reporting these stats in 1993. The remaining 85.4 cents cover off-farm costs, including processing, wholesaling, distribution, marketing and retailing.

Most of us in Hawaii are very aware of the issues with farming in our islands today: Land costs that are too expensive. Land ownership that is too concentrated. Soil that has been exhausted and depleted by industrial sugarcane and pineapple farming. Prime agricultural land laying fallow until it’s plowed under for housing developments.

People looking to get by on the cheapest food they can find for themselves and their families. Billions of tons of food coming from elsewhere on cargo ships. People with a passion for farming who don’t get support. Extreme weather that is growing more extreme every year.

Heat. Wind. Floods. Drought. Invasive species. Now, a pandemic.

But this is a story about the power of regeneration. In Hawaii our climate allows us to grow an amazing variety of crops, and we can produce three harvests of seed a year.

Hawaii is a brilliant impresario, producing a vast web of biomass in which plants grow and grow and grow and stretch their roots deep into the earth. When that biomass is allowed to return to the soil in the form of organic matter, it feeds our soil’s microbial life.

The world is waking up to the need to protect our agricultural soils from erosion, but the story goes much deeper than that. We need to nourish our soil. When we feed its microbes, they proliferate. They break down organic biomass and turn it into humus, rich soil that nourishes life and produces truly healthy food.

Humus holds moisture and creates pathways for water to filter down into our precious aquifers. It sequesters carbon and moves the planet away from climate change. Today, we can all use more of a sense of humus.

The Hawaii Farmers Union United

As farmers, we also need to be nourished. We need the metaphorical organic biomass that will cause us to proliferate and thrive.

My grandparents left Sicily for Philadelphia when they were young. I left Philadelphia for Maui when I was 24 years old. I worked as a decorative painter and met an extraordinary Hawaiian woman, Irene, whose son Kekai was just 10 months old. Irene and I married and I adopted Kekai.

When Irene was pregnant with our daughter, Kahanulani, she started craving sunflower greens and coming home with bags and bags of them. So I started growing them and that was the launch of our farm, Kahanu Aina Greens. Irene and I worked side by side. Kekai, the hardest and most disciplined worker you could hope for and a boy full of passion for farming, joined in as soon as the farm began, when he was 10 years old.

As we farmed, I learned more about soil and the relationship between its health and the health of our bodies. I began attending conferences and met remarkable experts in the field of regeneration. I befriended those experts and from 1998 to 2014, Irene and I invited many of them to Maui for “Body and Soil” conferences that we produced under our nonprofit Maui Aloha Aina Association.

A decade ago, I was a founding member of the Hawaii chapter of the national Farmers Union, which was birthed out of our efforts with Maui Aloha Aina. Today the Hawaii Farmers Union United has a thousand members. We have 13 chapters across the islands. We are made up of Hawaii farmers, gardeners and food lovers on all islands who value local agricultural systems.

As a collective, we have a voice at the table. The growth in our clout and credibility has enabled us to work as a group with our county officials, our Legislature and the Department of Agriculture. At the national level, I worked with the Farmers Union to create the Regenerative Agriculture Local Food Committee, which I currently chair.

In the week ahead, we will celebrate 10 years of the HFUU with a major conference. And because COVID-19 has moved everything online, it has never been easier to attend. All are welcome.

There will be virtual farm tours. Virtual chefs’ demos. We will have over fifty presentations, workshops from global authorities as far away as Australia and Austria. We will cover many topics, including composting, earthworms, trellising, Korean natural farming, bees, hemp, mushrooms and much more.

We will have five keynote presentations from leaders including one of Hawaii’s most esteemed elders, Maui kupuna Sam Kaai; mycologist Paul Stamets; and regenerative farming expert Joel Salatin. Keynote discussions will focus on nature’s soil rebuilding process and on the relationship between the soil’s mycelium network, our gut biomes and COVID-19.

At the end of the conference, we will have a free three-hour benefit concert curated by Micah Nelson, son of Willie Nelson. Many great musicians have volunteered to perform in support of Hawaii farming: the Nelson ohana, Jack Johnson, Flea, George Kahumoku Jr., Makana, Michael McDonald, Pat Simmons Sr. and Jr., Mike Love, Paul Izak and others.

If you want to learn more about food and farming in Hawaii, right now there could be no better place to start. Everyone who registers will have access to all presentations for a year and all of the costs of registering for the conference go to support the HFUU and educational outreach.

Cover Crops

When I think about agriculture in our islands, I picture a Tesla that’s just sitting in the driveway. We are playing a very small game if we continue to rely on outside food supply to feed our local population.

And since this is the IDEAS section, I would like to share an idea of my own. It is an understanding and inspiration that has come from my own growth and experience as a farmer in Hawaii.

Our islands are perfectly situated to become a global leader in cover crop seed. Cover crops are crops that are grown in between production crops. They allow the soil to rest and nourish and feed its microbial life. They are the very essence of aloha aina.

Cover crop seed holds tremendous potential for Hawaii’s agricultural future. In our islands, we can grow three crops of cover crop seeds a year — seeds our farmers can use to build their own soils and seeds that we can sell around the world.

Across the globe and here in the islands, decades of industrial agriculture have withdrawn life from the soil. Big Ag has produced food cheaply by using chemicals that bypass and destroy the life in the soil instead of feeding it. The thinking has been short-term, not long-term. We can change that. The earth will collaborate and cooperate with us as long as we respect its natural laws and architecture.

As the understanding of the power of regeneration becomes more widespread, the demand for cover crop seed will only grow. And the demand is already huge.

I envision a cover crop seed industry that could be created on state agricultural lands in collaboration with the State of Hawaii, the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture Human Resources, the National Resource Conservation Service and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

I sit on the Board of Agriculture and I have been working to help bring this idea to fruition. It needs the support of government and the private sector. Farmers cultivate relationships with the earth and advocates cultivate relationships with people. I am committed to advocating and doing all I can in support of building a cover crop seed industry that honors Hawaii’s soil, that is founded on the principle of malama aina. I have not seen any better plan that protects our existing agricultural lands while utilizing the resources they represent.

Kekai

As a regenerative farmer, I have a personal and ever–deepening relationship with the soil. It grows the food that nourishes my body and my body then works in service of the soil. Ultimately, one day I am going back to the soil. This relationship moves my spirit.

As a farmer, I let the soil decide what is going to happen. If I’m open and respectful, it teaches me. I act, I see the results. There are constant lessons. As a farmer, I haven’t arrived anywhere. I’m still learning. Nature continually forgives me and all of us.

This relationship is a primal relationship. For me, it is the only thing that gives reason to living and dying.

As humans we make plans and try to figure it all out. We focus on having, then doing, then being, rather than on being, then doing, then having. But we cannot control life.

Last year our family experienced a tragedy when Kekai passed away at 35. He was as healthy as a person can be and fell to his death in a hiking accident. Kekai, a Native mahiai who had farmed alongside us for 25 years, who sang songs in Hawaiian to the plants as he worked, who loved the family farm, who had planned to take over and continue it.

When he died, we shut down the farm for four months for the first time in its 26 years of operation. Burying one’s child is something a parent never gets over, and beyond what Kekai meant to the farm, we just miss him so very much.

After he passed, Kekai came to Irene in a dream and asked her to create a community cart. Irene described it to a neighbor, who built it. Now in honor of Kekai, we put the cart out in front of the farm every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

We fill it with produce from the farm. Others in the community take as they need and give as they can. The cart operates from and with the energy of regeneration.

We feel Kekai is with us. Life never ends, it just changes form. This is the great lesson of regeneration. When you farm, that truth is no longer a philosophical abstraction. It is the energy of your daily life.

We invite you to join us this week at the conference and gather with us in the spirit of regeneration. Me ke aloha pumehana, with the warmest aloha.

Bananas could replace potatoes in warming world

Climate change could lead to bananas becoming a critical food source for millions of people, a new report says.

Researchers from the CGIAR agricultural partnership say the fruit might replace potatoes in some developing countries.

Cassava and the little known cowpea plant could play increasingly important roles in agriculture as temperatures rise.

People will have to adapt to new and varied menus as traditional crops struggle say the authors.
Continue reading the main story

Responding to a request from the United Nations’ committee on world food security, a group of experts in the field looked at the projected effects of climate change on 22 of the world’s most important agricultural commodities.

Blooming bananas

They predict that the world’s three biggest crops in terms of calories provided – maize, rice and wheat – will decrease in many developing countries.

They suggest that the potato, which grows best in cooler climates, could also suffer as temperatures increase and weather becomes more volatile.

The authors argue that these changes “could provide an opening for cultivating certain varieties of bananas” at higher altitudes, even in those places that currently grow potatoes.

Report: Water shortages increasingly will offer weapon for states, terror groups

By Karen DeYoung, Thursday, March 22, 4:19 AM

Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, a U.S. intelligence assessment released Thursday says.

Although “water-related state conflict” is unlikely in the next 10 years, the assessment says, continued shortages after that might begin to affect U.S. national security interests.

The assessment is drawn from a classified National Intelligence Estimate distributed to policy-makers in October. Although the unclassified version does not mention problems in specific countries, it describes “strategically important water basins” tied to rivers in several regions. These include the Nile, which runs through 10 countries in central and northeastern Africa before traveling through Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea; the Tigris-Euphrates in Turkey, Syria and Iraq; the Jordan, long the subject of dispute among Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians; and the Indus, whose catchment area includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Tibet.

“As water problems become more acute, the likelihood … is that states will use them as leverage,”

Plant hardiness map revealed

The first daffodils have crept into flower and the snowdrops have peaked already. If you think winters aren’t what they used to be, you’re not alone.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday released a plant hardiness zone map of the nation that shows generally warmer winter low temperatures than the department’s previous map from 1990.

The new map divides the country into 13 zones arranged by minimum winter temperatures, in 10-degree increments. Among the shifts: The District and most of Virginia and Maryland are squarely in the relative balm of Zone 7. Specifically, they fall in the warmer half of Zone 7 where the mercury, on average, doesn’t go below 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Previously recorded in southeastern coastal Virginia, this zone now defines the coastal communities of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River.

The colder Zone 6, which once embraced the Piedmont area and included much of Fairfax and Montgomery counties, is now pushed west of the Blue Ridge.

“The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States,” said Kim Kaplan, of the Agricultural Research Service.

8.5 million trees planted in campaign

PETALING JAYA – MORE than 8.5 million trees have been planted in Malaysia as of March, said Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Douglas Uggah Embas.

The planting was part of a nationwide Green the Earth: One Citizen, One Tree campaign that was launched in April last year to fight global warming and to mitigate climate change.

A total of 26 million trees are expected to be planted by 2014.

On Saturday, Douglas Uggah joined about 200 volunteers including university students to plant 1,800 seedlings at the Ayer Hitam Forest reserve in Puchong.

The campaign carried out under the ExxonMobil’s 2011 Community Projects programme started two years ago and its goal is to plant a total of 5,000 trees at the forest reserve by 2012. — THE STAR/ANN

8.5 million trees planted in campaign

Trees provide natural record of El Niño trends

Studying treering records from the southwestern United States, University of Hawaii scientists have helped assemble a 1,100-year historical picture of the climate phenomenon known as El Niño, offering an avenue to understanding how weather patterns could change in a warming world.

El Niño, associated with warmer than usual sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific, typically produces a wide array of violent weather, including more rain and intense storms in some areas, less rain in others. The massive El Niño of 1997-98, for instance, caused flooding and landslides in Northern California, drought and famine in Bangladesh and drought and forest fires in the Philippines; 2,100 people died worldwide.

UH scientist Jinbao Li said by email that the record implies that warmer oceans will lead to more severe El Niños and the opposite phenomena, La Niñas, and more extreme climate conditions around the globe. But a final verdict awaits better climate models, he said.

Formally known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the phenomenon also brings rainy winters to the U.S. Southwest, where tree rings are wide in wet years and narrow in dry years.

UH researchers Li, Shang-Ping Xie, Fei Lui and Jian Ma analyzed the tree-ring records available in a database called the North American Drought Atlas and found that the results correlated closely with the 150-year sea surface temperature records in the tropical Pacific.

The Green Leaf» Grow aquaponics, Grow Hawaiian

The Green House is offering three workshops on Saturday, April 2.

How Does Your Garden Grow…Backyard Aquaponics
Environmental Engineer Jeremai Cann, aka Dr. Sustainability, will lead this workshop covering everything you need to know to start your own aquaponics system (organic gardening with fish and plants). Grow your own dinner and lessen your reliance on imported food!
The Green House
Saturday, April 2nd
10:00 – 11:30pm
Fee $20

“Turn used water into real savings” — Greywater Harvesting
Jeremai Cann will lead this workshop on how to create your own “greywater” catchment system. Greywater refers to the reuse of water drained from baths, showers, washing machines, and sinks for irrigation and other water conservation applications. Reduce your use of tap water while helping the environment and lower your monthly water bill.
The Green House
Saturday, April 2nd
2:00-3:30pm
Fee: $20

It’s Easy Being Clean…Natural Green Cleaning Recipes
Learn how to whip up a batch of handmade soap and explore simple cleaning recipes that are safe, effective, inexpensive. You may already have many of the ingredients in your kitchen cupboards. A booklet of natural cleaning recipes will also be shared.
The Green House
Saturday, April 2nd
2:00-3:30pm
Fee: $20

Advanced registration required for all workshops.

Go to www.thegreenhousehawaii.com to register online, or call (808) 524-8427.

A Bird That Likes Shade-Grown Coffee

I wrote in Thursday’s paper about the challenges that Colombian coffee growers face from climate shifts on their mountaintop farms, and how Cenicafé, the national coffee institute, is doing research to breed coffee plants to better resist warmer, wetter weather.

Most everything at Cenicafé’s lush mountain campus in western Colombia is coffee-centric. There are chemists who analyze the brew’s chemical content to understand what mix of molecules makes for great flavor. There are gardens filled with coffee plants from all over the world for breeding new heartier variants. There are geneticists studying the coffee genome.

But Cenicafé scientists are also studying a little bright blue bird whose plight has gained widespread attention in the United States: the cerulean warbler.

The cerulean warbler is on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s “red list” of threatened species. Once plentiful in the United States, its population is decreasing faster than that of any other eastern songbird.

A big part of the problem is that much of the cerulean warbler’s breeding ground in states like West Virginia and Tennessee has been destroyed by forest-felling and mountaintop coal mining. Conservation groups are fighting to save the species, and its plight features prominently in Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, “Freedom.”

So what does this have to do with Colombian coffee? It turns out that the cerulean warbler winters in Colombia and other countries in the northern part of South America. And it seems to prefer the forest canopy of its mountain coffee-growing regions.

So scientists are working to better understand the warbler’s winter habitat, and to make sure it is preserved.

Heat Hampers Colombian Coffee Crop, Jeopardizing Supply

TIMBÍO, Colombia — Like most of the small landowners in Colombia’s lush mountainous Cauca region, Luis Garzón, 80, and his family have thrived for decades by supplying shade-grown, rainforest-friendly Arabica coffee for top foreign brands like Nespresso and Green Mountain. A sign in the center of a nearby town proclaims, “The coffee of Cauca is No. 1!”

But in the last few years, coffee yields have plummeted here and in many of Latin America’s other premier coffee regions as a result of rising temperatures and more intense and unpredictable rains, phenomena that many scientists link partly to global warming.

Coffee plants require the right mix of temperature, rainfall and spells of dryness for beans to ripen properly and maintain their taste. Coffee pests thrive in the warmer, wetter weather.

Bean production at the Garzóns’ farm is therefore down 70 percent from five years ago, leaving the family little money for clothing for toddlers and “thinking twice” about sending older children to college, said Mr. Garzon’s 44-year-old son, Albeiro, interviewed in a yellow stucco house decorated with coffee posters and madonnas.

The shortage of high-end Arabica coffee beans is also being felt in New York supermarkets and Paris cafes, as customers blink at escalating prices. Purveyors fear that the Arabica coffee supply from Colombia may never rebound — that the world might, in effect, hit “peak coffee.”