Musings: Down on the Farm

Today is National Agriculture Day, and Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. has shown his commitment to farming by totally eliminating the agriculture specialist position in the Office of Economic Development.

It would've been hard to replace Bill Spitz, who retired after many years of superb service. But to completely eliminate the position? 

The mayor certainly can't claim financial cutbacks, considering how he gave defeated Councilman Jay Furfaro a $110,254-per-year job — correction: it's $96,000 — director of Boards and Commissions — a post any secretary could fill — so that he can retire at that pay, rather than the $63,879 he'd earned as council chair before he was rejected by the voters.

Who loves ya, baby?

America's love affair with chicken, especially white meat, is “already pushing the bounds of what's biologically possible—and perhaps what's humane," according to a piece in the Washington Post.

The average American eats about 80 pounds of chicken annually — more than four times what was consumed in the early 1900s, according to data from the USDA.

In response, birds are being bred bigger — the average weight is now nine pounds, compared to two — with massive breasts. In fact, America wants so much white meat that it must export all the leftover dark meat.

Dr. Michael Lilburn, a professor at Ohio State University's Poultry Research Center, notes:

"What people don't realize is that it's consumer demand that's forcing the industry to adjust. It's a deceivingly small but vocal minority that are raising a lot of legitimate questions. The bulk of the U.S. population still doesn't care where their food comes from, as long as its cheap."

But that doesn't stop some folks from having very definite — and often unrealistic — attitudes about food and the folks who produce it. As Maui farmer Darrell Tanaka recently noted on Facebook:

Today I saw a post "Pet Peeve Vent.... You can't call yourself a 'Farmers Market' if you are buying your produce from the mainland, taking it out of its big cardboard box, and reselling it. Why can't we have real Farmers Markets where I might actually see and talk to a real farmer?"

I couldn't help myself but to leave this response.

Let me tell you why.....farming is usually handed down from one generation to another, eventually a generation either is lost or chooses not to farm, it is not instilled in us by schooling...high costs of land is a major obstacle to any new farmer, which is also why farming (land) is handed down to the next generation in the family....county taxes, one small nail in the coffin at a time, for instance, when the county taxed the area of land a farmers house sits on, citing that its not being farmed so it shouldn't get the same kind of exemption....anti-gmo sentiment, despite not all gmos being bad.....anti-pesticide driven by fears and not science..........the problem is very convoluted, hard to fathom unless you are a farmer...we take dings from everywhere, not just those problems listed above...even the idea that all farms should be organic carries an implication that non-organic should be done away with...small negative attributes like that all puts weight on the farming industry as a whole...until one day, its gets too heavy for a particular farm, then it closes, but no one notices because it goes down quietly, only thing the public notices next time they drive by, is a grass lawn and fancy house, where used to be a field of lettuce and cabbage....

because the public is naive when it comes to understanding the challenges of farming, because all they want to believe is that farming is all hunky dory, because all they see is the finished product at the market, they never get to see or experience crop failures, they don't get to experience what it's like for a farmer to have to rely on his own produce to put food on his plate because his crops failed and he cannot afford groceries.....

half of the public on maui only cares about their own agenda, their own selfish wants and needs, so they put unrealistic ideals upon farmers, when most of them have not experienced anything I've written here......shame

So although I agree that a farmer's market should be food that was grown in Hawaii, or in this case, by the actual farmer that is selling the veges....you all just remember one thing...somewhere, somehow, that food you bought, came from a farm, it didn't magically appear in the cardboard box you all are shunning right now.....and speaking of "real farmers"....they don't have time to be at farmers markets, because generally speaking, farming is A LOT of work, even to take a half day to attend the swap meet is a huge stretch in effort...this is why it is convenient for a farmer to sell wholesale to someone else who will peddle his produce, because he doesn't have the time to do it himself....

so go ahead.....make it so that anyone who sells produce at a market has to grow it themselves...yeah, do that....just remember, you will be adding yet another nail to the coffin of a farmer because of your own selfish ideals."

Now that's something to chew on...

And finally, the Senate Committee on Water and Land has issued a scathing — and justified — rejection of Carleton Ching, a development-friendly Castle and Cooke executive who was nominated by Gov. Ige to lead the Department of Land and Natural Resources. 

The panel noted that it “received testimony overwhelmingly in opposition to the nomination. Organizations and individuals submitting written testimony in opposition numbered approximately 1,120, and in addition there was a petition with over 7,596 signatures opposing the nominee. Those submitting written testimony in support of the nominee numbered approximately 272 organizations and individuals.”

But more importantly, the panel found:

[T]he nominee did not bring forward a clear understanding of the DLNRIs core values, or provide any vision for how he would approach the challenges of resource management. Neither was there any sign that he understood the administrative and regulatory processes the Chairperson is responsible for overseeing, which are the vehicles by which the DLNR ensures that the State meets its various public trust responsibilities.

Your Committee then presented specific hypotheticals to the nominee in order to determine what factors he would use to make policy, regulatory, and administrative decisions that the Chairperson is charged with. Most of the nominee's responses reflected the perspective of a career spent advocating on behalf of private developers of land, and not of a person who understands or fully appreciates the stewardship of public trust responsibilities.

Several times during the hearing, the nominee referred to land as “dirt” and the need to preserve Hawaii's “brand.” [I]t is revealing that the nominee repeatedly used them during his nomination hearing, when one would expect a nominee to this position to express the need to malama 'aina and affirm a commitment to the native Hawaiian culture.

As any farmer will tell you, land ain't dirt, it's soil. Still, in a state where agriculture is under full-fledged attack, and the Hawaiian culture has been relegated to a brand used to promote the ever-escalating tourism industry, is Ching's terminology any real surprise?

The full Senate is set to vote on the nomination today and those who oppose Ching have been directed to gather at the Capitol — and wear red, like all the good sheeple. What's up with that? In Hawaii, red is apparently the new green/blue.