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Hawaii works to diversity cropsKEAUHOU, Hawaii (AP)--Roy Oyama has grown just about every vegetable possible in his five decades as a farmer on Kauai. "I've grown everything in vegetables from A to Z. I haven't found anything that doesn't grow in Hawaii," said Oyama, a third-generation farmer who hopes Oyama Farms will continue with his children and grandchildren. "Sustainable means different things to people. To me, it means being natural, nothing high cost or unnatural." Oyama was one of 150 farmers, ranchers, aquaculturists, fishermen, chefs and proponents of sustainable agriculture gathered in mid-September for two conferences at the Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort. "Partnerships for Sustainable Local Food Production," presented by the American Culinary Federation Kona-Kohala Chefs de Cuisine, was coupled with the Hawaii International Tropical Fruit Growers' conference titled "Sustainable Diversification of Tropical Fruit." "We realized these two conferences dovetailed really well. It just made sense to put them together," said Ken Love, executive director of the statewide Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers. "Chefs and farmers need to better understand each other's goals and limitations so they can partner together for putting local food on the table." Hawaii should take advantage of its locally grown products and produce, said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center of Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We're all on the same journey, putting culture back into agriculture," he said. "Hawaii certainly has a tradition of sustainability that it can go back to." Tracking agriculture through Hawaii's history, DeWitt pointed to a swing from diversity to a two-crop monopoly to the need to re-create an agricultural industry. "It went from a very diverse agriculture to a highly organized, monoculture system, and that basically went overnight" as the pineapple and sugar plantations closed, DeWitt said. Typically, new concepts are ignored, ridiculed and challenged before they are accepted and adopted, he said. Sustainable agriculture is starting to be discussed seriously in wider circles, he said. "When you look for a home, a car, a college education, you don't always look for the cheapest," DeWitt said. "So why as a society do we think food should be cheap and that cheap food will be good?" Although local produce may be more expensive, it is fresh, often better tasting and keeps the money in the local community, he said. That isn't lost on Oyama, who sells his freshly picked fruits and vegetables at a roadside stand on Kauai and has little left to ship to Oahu. And that's how he likes it. "That's where I get my greatest profit and quickest turnaround," he said. "It's all good." 10/6/08 Date: 10/1/08
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