We’re teaming up with chefs Gida Snyder and Ave Lambert on a year long campaign to help Naked Cow Dairy develop a cheese making operation on their Waianae dairy.

Sisters Monique van der Stroom and Sabrina St. Martin have always had their sights set on making cheese and they are almost there. They’ve raised the funds for a 200 gallon pasteurizing vat and now need the heating element, as well as funds to renovate a small existing room on the farm with climate control features that will make it the only cow milk cheese cave in the state of Hawaii.

With state and federal assistance funds to farmers dwindling (most also ban the use of funding awards for equipment) Naked Cow Dairy has joined the growing movement of businesses and community projects turning to crowdfunding to get important endeavors underway. IndieGoGo is the world’s largest global funding platform. Founded on the principles of opportunity, transparency and action IndieGoGo’s platform has helped raised millions of dollars for creative, cause-related and entrepreneurial projects that are bringing vibrancy back into local communities around the world. By providing the tools and a platform already integrating social media tools, IndieGoGo helps project makers create campaigns to get their stories out and raise funds.

In the case of Naked Cow Dairy, we see this cheese making equipment as infrastructure. As a community, we need to stop waiting and start building the food system we want ourselves. You want cheese? Who better to make some for you than your local dairy!

Coming up here at SGF are updates, profiles on Monique and Sabrina, the story of Naked Cow Dairy, and fun with cheese in kitchen with Gida and Ave.

We’re looking to help them raise $15,000 in 60 days. Let’s do it Hawaii!

Go to Naked Cow Dairy’s IndieGoGo page to add your support!

Naked Cow Dairy’s web site

photo: Bryant Lagmay

Art and Agriculture are the parents of all cuisine.

Yes, it is all about chemistry, think about it. Before the Periodic Table was ever conceived, women have been creatively obsessing, analyzing and experimenting with food (plant and animal) since the first sweet potato was tentatively dropped into the fire pit.

photo: Bryant Lagmay

Our Hog Wild Project started out as a way to help our remaining hog farmers recover by mobilizing support through community, chefs, and retailers. In these months, for a variety of reasons working on this project has impacted both Dan and I in unexpected ways. For Dan, it has launched a soulful exploration of his Okinawan roots. For me, it has reawakened a long held dream of invoking collaborations between artists and agriculturalists as part of an adventure in discovering ways to rebuild our food system.

With this in mind, we are very happy and grateful to be able to present to you this special feature. The Art of Pork is a collaboration with culinarian Noreen Lam, artist Tia Castro, designer/photographers Walter Sparks, Bryant Lagmay. This event was directed by Tia Castro.

Noreen Lam is my culinary hero. Locally-grown, CCA trained, Noreen worked alongside Jeremiah Tower and has been part of local food movement from early days. She’s a chef’s chef and likes to keep a low-profile so we are very fortunate to have had the opportunity to speak with her about our Hog Wild effort and were ecstatic when she wanted to lend her support.

photo: Bryant Lagmay

Noreen offered to explore classic pork-centered Okinawan dishes and to create recipes inspired by the Hog Wild effort. She cites two main books featuring culture and cuisine of Okinawa, “Chimugukuru: the soul, the spirit, the heart: Okinawan Mixed Plate II” (by Hui O Laulima) and “Of Andagi and Sanshin” (edited by Ruth Adaniya, Alice Njus and Margaret Yamate) as entry points to her exploration.

These three recipes are her contributions to this effort. As this event took place Noreen’s kitchen, it was visually documented by Tia, Bryant and Walter.

Many thanks to Noreen, Tia, Walter and Bryant for shining their creative light on the Hog Wild project, freeing up the etheric beauty of such an earthly subject. Mahalo nui to Amy and Glen Shinsato for raising such beautiful animals and for gifting one of them for this project. Also thanks to Jaycee Higa of Higa Meats and Todd Low of Hawaii Department of Agriculture for their help too.

To see previous incarnations of collaborations between Tia Castro, Noreen Lam and Bryant Lagmay, visit the Blanc Catering website.

I hope you enjoy these recipes Noreen created – an homage to Uchinanchu classics – Glazed Miso Pork Belly with Vegetable Stew, Sparerib Soup with Okinawan Soba and Rafute with Bittermelon Tempura.

- Lisa

photo: Bryant Lagmay

photo: Bryant Lagmay

photo: Bryant Lagmay

photo: Bryant Lagmay

Those seven men cared for the animals in makeshift crates aboard a military transport ship on that 28-day voyage from the U.S. to Okinawa. They encountered storms, seasickness and floating mines but they accomplished their mission. The last surviving member of those seven men, Mr. Yasuo Uezu recently passed away in July 2011.

The Chinese dating back to the 14th century influenced the Okinawans’ love for pork. Okinawa is just 400 miles from China and they established an economic and cultural relationship that thrived to the 16th century. When Okinawans started migrating to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations in 1899 they brought their food traditions with them. Practically every family raised pigs for special occasions and when the plantation contracts ended, some of those families raised pigs as major source of income. Today, a few of those Okinawan family farms are trying to keep the culture and tradition alive.

The irony given this historical backdrop is that Hawaii hog farms have been in steady decline for decades. According to the Statistics of Hawaii Agriculture reports, there were 650 hog operations in 1978 statewide as compared to 230 in 2008. Hawaii lost 430 farms or over 65% of its hog operations in this 30-year period. (These statistics include operations with one hog on up so the actual number of commercial operations will be significantly less). Competition with imported pork and the rising cost of feed coupled with residential encroachment and societal pressure will continue to challenge our local farms.

According to the USDA, Americans consumed roughly 50 lbs. of pork per capita in 2008 and for Hawaii the vast majority was imported. Hawaii’s food security or insecurity is a hot button issue as well it should be. The UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources estimates that 85% of fruits and vegetables we consume can be grown locally by 2020. Our greatest challenge will be protein security and keeping our livestock industries viable. The Hawaii cattle industry is dependant on an infrastructure that has atrophied and with limited processing capacity. We are down to two commercial dairies on the Big Island and 4 commercial egg farms on O’ahu. We have no commercial poultry farms supplying locally raised chickens and our aquaculture industry has its own share of challenges.

Hawaii’s people mobilized and responded to the crisis in Okinawa after WWII, and most recently to the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. People were in dire need of aid and Hawaii’s people didn’t hesitate and gave generously.

Can we afford a crisis before we act on our own behalf? Can we, as people of Hawaii today demonstrate our support and aloha for our own farming community? Only demand for Hawaii grown products will encourage investment in expanding local food production.

We were compelled to write this commentary after interviewing two Okinawan hog farmers. Their family farms date back to the early twenties and forties with multi-generations involved with their operations. Okinawans in Hawaii have a strong sense of pride for their heritage and culture, as do people of all cultures in Hawaii. If we can collectively summon our local pride in support of our own, we will position our communities to be more resilient and food secure as we move forward.

Lisa Asagi and Dan Nakasone
Co-Founders of She Grows Food

At the end of World War II, Hawaii’s Okinawan community quickly mobilized after they learned that Okinawa’s farms were nearly completely destroyed. They rallied their resources and sent seeds, milking goats and pigs to help restart Okinawa’s local food system.

This amazing story about the power of compassion and community was ironically revealed to us during a deep investigation into the disappearance of Hawaii’s own hog farms.

We went in with these questions: Why is it so hard to find fresh island-raised pork? What happened to all of the farmers?

Since the 1950′s, ever-increasing and encroaching housing development has shut down hundreds of hog and chicken farms on Oahu – from Kalihi Valley, Waialae, Koko Head, Ewa Beach, even Moiliili. In the early 1970′s, 60% of the pork consumed here in Hawaii were from local farms.

Leap to 2011. We need to recover our tradition of hog farming in Hawaii.

How can we help?

Step 1: Raise demand for local pork. Ask our retailers, restaurants, and friends to start serving locally-raised pork. A way to revitalize our hog farms is to increase and secure the demand for locally-raised pork. It is important to ask for locally-raised, not just locally processed. By increasing the demand for locally-raised pork we are securing and protecting our remaining farms. An ever increasing demand for locally-raised pork may encourage others to come back into hog farming or start hog farming.

Step 2: Buy local pork. Higa Meats has a retail outlet on Oahu and sells Shinsato Farm pork. Contact them at: (808) 531-3591. M & H Kaneshiro Farms is on Kauai and can be reached at (808) 742-7285.

Step 3: Enjoy local pork. Here are a few places serving up local pork: town, Heeia Pier and Deli, Morning Glass, Baja-Style Mexican Cuisine (Honolulu and Kailua Farmers Markets, sometimes KCC), Guava Smoked (Honolulu Farmers Market), 12th Avenue Grill, Kona Brewing Co., BLT, Kalapawai Cafe, Roy’s Ko’olina and Waikiki. If you know of any place else serving Shinsato or Kaneshiro farm pork, let us know!

Step 4: Spread the word. Pick up the phone, email, blog, tweet, post. Or write a letter to the Editor or Op-Ed like we did! Here’s a link to “Food Traditions and Food Security” in case you haven’t seen it.

Both Shinsato and Kaneshiro farms are piglet to plate operations. What we mean by piglet to plate is that these farms are full circle – both raise their pigs from baby and they are cared for by a family, day in and day out. In our industrialized world, this way of traditional hog farming is a rarity. This tradition of family pig raising has evolved and refined itself over centuries in Okinawa, and over generations here in Hawaii. It is definitely a craft, and after getting to know these farmers, you may even feel as we do, that it is an art.

Two of the remaining hog farms in Hawaii are owned and operated by families of Okinawan descent, speaks to the deep cultural relevance of agriculture and food in our lives and in our world. We are fascinated with this and will be posting more on this.

That women are a significant part of the operations of both farms is also completely intriguing to us. We’ll be posting our interview with Amy Shinsato, along with a pink hued spotlight on Okinawan cuisine’s love affair with pork. Then stay tuned for an interview with and profile on Val Kaneshiro.

They say that everyone has a story, that each life is a story filled with chapters and turning points, dark moonless nights of the soul and bright shiny epiphanies, all mapped out to look like chaos until the moment when the focus of our internal lens brings it all into sharp focus. Well at least most of it.

Taking a leap. Wandering into the unknown. Staying curious. Working. Learning. Showing up and sitting in. Taking the reins. Taking care.

These were the thoughts that surfaced as I edited the video pieces (two quickly grew into four), mesmerized by Lesley Hill’s remarkable journey into farming. One that starts as a 19 year-old student/tennis player in Florida, in trouble with the college dean for standing up for equal rights, lands on the tarmac of Honolulu International Airport for a year long exchange. It turned out to not only be a defining moment for Lesley, but for the agricultural community in Hawaii.

Can you imagine Lesley at her first Young Farmers of America local chapter meeting only to find herself the youngest, the only female and the only person with a five month-old baby wrapped to her body? Can you also imagine there with Lesley a year later (with a year and a half toddler in tow), attending her first meeting as elected president of the same chapter? Pretty cool.

Countless adventures later, Lesley is now owner of 110 acres diverse in tropical fruit, spice and flowers on the lush Hamakua Coast of Hawaii Island. A shared passion for travel and tropical plants brought Lesley together with Michael Crowell, her partner in life and business. They own and operate Wailea Agricultural Group – born after finding a suitable plot and years of growing business and expertise on acreage nearer to Hilo. (Like many other farms in Hawaii, the decline of the sugar and pineapple industries that freed up large tracts of plantation land for smaller farms to take hold.)

It’s hard to imagine the kind of planning, resources and work it takes to transform and renew old monocropped land, so we’re fortunate that Lesley and Mike were able to take time out of their busy schedules to give us a tour of their farm, share their experience, and allow us to share what they have done. They’ve studied the needs of the land and the plants that are growing there – taking great risk and dedicating themselves to taking great care to shape the landscape to help manage water, wind and erosion control. The result of Lesley and Mike’s knowledge and deep feelings of stewardship for the land is exhilarating. And so delicious.

Lesley can’t keep up with how many varieties of fruit and spices are living on their farm. Here’s only a handful: peach palm, avocado, lychee, mango, rambutan, chico fruit, mangosteen, starfruit, passion fruit, soursop, langsat, durian, jackfruit, breadfruit, açaí, Meyer lemon, citron, limes, cinnamon, all-spice, nutmeg, bay, clove. They are constantly playing with the possibilities.

To top it off Wailea Agricultural Group is the country’s strongest producer of the very renewable and nutrient-rich delicacy called Heart of Palm. Each year, they harvest over 15 tons by hand for delivery and shipment to restaurants and hotels – local, national and international. What is Heart of Palm? Very delicate in both texture and flavor, it is the tender point of the growing tip of peach palm. This palm is originally from Central and South America, and is considered a very renewable crop because new shoots are constantly replacing the ones that are harvested, doing no harm to the mother plant. Now that’s taking care!

Wailea Agricultural Group website
Lesley also has a cool home and plant shop in Hilo, Paradise Plants

More Lesley

Farm tour

On growing for the community and buying local

With help from our friends at the Department of Art at University of Manoa and co-sponsor Asagi Hatchery, we present a screening of “The Greenhorns” on Friday, July 1st at 7:00 p.m. at the UH Art Auditorium (campus map). Seating will be first come basis, sorry no reservations. The film runs 50 minutes. Admission is free because we’re hoping to entice you into becoming a greenhorn, and anyway, greenhorns need to use their money for stuff like seed, tools and medical insurance.

The film documents the reemergence on our national landscape of the young American farmer – second and third generations coming back home to carry on the farm, brand new farmers diving in, and community-styled urban farms popping up. Severine takes us to farms on the East, South, and West Coast to visit and talk with young people slowly revitalizing their local food systems. It may look like a new kind of farmer and farming at first glance, but it’s not. What we see is a process of recovery of agrarian roots as small holding farms – diverse, direct market oriented, and localized – community oriented.

These stories paint a picture of resurgence in a time when agriculture is operating on a longstanding trend of farmer attrition and aging, and the rapid loss of farmland to development. The average age of a farmer in America is 57, and in Hawaii farmland is being lost to real estate development at an alarming rate as our family farmers retire. Why? Because most farmers in Hawaii have been boxed into commodity gate farming – relying on distributors to market their products, distributors who require our farmers to compete with mainland imports even though farming in Hawaii is more than triple the cost of farming elsewhere. In this paradigm, farmers can barely make ends meet and are sometimes forced to sell their land as a means of survival after retirement or injury.

“The Greenhorns” spotlights how some young agrarians are choosing to respond to the challenges of not just farming but of marketing, and how they are working to reverse negative trends in favor of healthy food, local and regional foodsheds, and the revitalization of rural economies, one farm at a time.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s recent call for 100,000 new farmers is an encouraging sign of support from government bodies. With over 400 million acres of farmland poised to change hands over the next twenty years, it’s time to organize. The 2012 Farm Bill package of legislation is already in the pipeline. Severine’s work on this film has also given birth to a web-based network for young farmers to start organizing on a national level. This film puts it all in context.

We hope to someday visit Severine at her livestock and produce growing Smithereen farm in Hudson, New York.

My family’s business, Asagi Hatchery is pleased to be co-sponsoring this film. Not a day goes by at the hatchery without the delight of listening to someone share a deep-seated, sparkling wish to be able to live and work full-time on their own little farm. We support people who want to grow their own food and live simply!

So please come if you can. And let your dreams and the dreams of others, take hold.

Thanks for reading,
-Lisa

This project will develop 12,000 new houses, between Waipahu and Kapolei, on what is known as the most fertile and useful agricultural land on Oahu and considered by UH Soil Scientist Dr. Goro Uehara to be the best farmland in the world. The soil in this acreage are in the highest productivity categories (classified as A and B), which is very rare for our islands due to the geological age and volcanic composition.

Why would the Land Use Commission approve Ho’opili’s zoning change request when more than 38,000 new homes in Central O’ahu and the Ewa Plain have already been zoned but not yet built? We may add another 12,000 homes to that list of new homes not built and at what cost? These are questions we must take the time to ask ourselves. Take action and say NO. All it takes is 15 minutes of your time to send in a testimony, it WILL make a difference.

A recent Lloyd’s of London white paper on emerging risks stated that oil could spike in excess of $200 per barrel by 2013. We all know what our economy looked like when a barrel of oil hit $147 back in 2008. And a recent poll of global energy company executives conducted by KPMG Global Energy Institute showed that 67% of them believe that the cost per barrel of oil will hit $120 by the end of 2011. That’s more than enough to curtail consumer spending that drives our economy.

Can we afford to build homes instead of farms to feed our growing community? Will local people be buying homes in that kind of economic environment? We think you’ll agree with us that the answer is no.

Please say no to Ho’opili and send in your testimony to the Land Use Commission by Wednesday, June 29, 2011. Click this link to bring up an email luc@dbedt.hawaii.gov, “NO to Ho’opili” will appear in the subject line. Please scroll down If you’d like to read the letter we submitted, feel free to use it as a template.

We’re also working with several other groups to get a huge crowd out to show opposition. Please come if you can, we need to show numbers:

When: Thursday, June 30, 2011. 9:30 a.m.
Where: State Office Building, across from St. Andrew’s Cathedral on Beretania.

Please feel free to use Sgf’s letter as a template. Send your email testimony to Email Land Use Commission

Dear Land Use Commissioners:

We strongly oppose the Ho’opili development project for multiple reasons but the impending energy crisis looms high on our list.

A recent Lloyd’s of London white paper on emerging risks, states that oil could spike in excess of $200 a barrel by 2013 (www.lloyds.com/360). That’s two and a half years away. We all recall what our economy looked like when oil hit $147 a barrel back in 2008. But this time it’s not likely that the cost will go back down.

That’s a harsh reality but we should be preparing for the worst-case scenario. If Ho’opili is granted the up zoning, there’s a very high probability that this project may not get off ground. A poll of global energy company executives conducted by KPMG Global Energy Institute showed that 67% of them believe that the cost per barrel of oil will hit $120 by the end of 2011. Consumer confidence will not only shrink, it will take away their ability to make large purchases such as homes.

At $120 a barrel the cost to build the infrastructure alone will rise dramatically making this project a very difficult sell. And if the cost of oil continues to go up in 2012 as some of the energy executives are suggesting, Ho’opili may just be abandoned. But by then O’ahu will have lost what will be badly needed prime agricultural lands as imported food cost starts to skyrocket.

You are entrusted to make decisions in the best interest and welfare of the people of Hawaii. We trust that you will oppose D.R. Horton’s request for the zoning change.

Respectfully,

Lisa Asagi Dan Nakasone
She Grows Food, Co-Founder She Grows Food, Co-Founder

For his second Farmer Series dinner of 2011, Chef Alan Wong debuted Kuahiwi Ranch’s British White beef.

Michelle, her father Al, and daughter Ua flew into town to be at the Farmers Series Dinner. The debut received a great response – a buttery carpaccio and a velvety tenderloin. That night we learned that it was Sami Galimba, Michelle’s mom, who spearheaded the quest to raise British White Cattle at the ranch (as it turned out, she wasn’t at the dinner that night because she was in Nebraska shopping for British White bulls! She bought two!)

Distinguished, hardy and marked as a true heritage breed, British White are an ancient breed of cattle whose origins are speculated to go as far back as the Roman Empire. In 1940, under the threat of heavy bombing and fear of invasion by German forces during World War II, arrangements sought to preserve this special breed by finding sanctuary for select group of them in the American Midwest.

Sami is a creative thinker. She’s been researching the various breeds, looking for ones that can thrive on grass foraging, specifically the grass on their 10,000 acre ranch. To remain viable in this industry, they will need to raise their cattle on grass and market them in Hawaii. Her hard work proved successful, the British Whites are a perfect match.

Where to find: For now, very limited quantities. Michelle will be posting availability on their website: www.kuahiwiranch.com

You can also find her at the KCC Farmers Market every second weekend of the month. We’ll send an update your way too once we hear who’s serving and selling!

Missed the first post about Michelle Galimba and her family’s ranch? Go here.

Mahalo to everyone who participated and attended Chefs and Farmers Facing the Future: a Forum on Food. Over 500 people – chefs, culinary students, farmers, ranchers, food purveyors and other industry professionals along with the general public – nearly filled the 570-seat theater. This was the first event of its kind that brought together the food industry professionals under one roof. That in itself was a big step forward and we were able to start to conversation on Hawaii’s food security with the people on the frontline of our food system.

Six weeks out, tangible results are starting to surface, we’ll keep you posted more as they come in:

- Tilapia Demand: Tropic Fish (seafood distributor and processor) has reported an increase in requests being fielded for tilapia from restaurants and other customers. Our tilapia farmers are now ramping-up production to meet the demand.

- Beef Demand: Wayne Komamura, Zippy’s R&D Chef is now interested in featuring local beef in their chili program. They are already featuring local beef in the hamburgers, hamburger steak, and local moco, which amounts to roughly 255,000 lbs. annually. Featuring local beef in the chili will be a huge boost to our cattle industry.

- Pork Demand: The “Nose-to-Tail” feature story in the Honolulu Star Advertiser that promoted the forum has spurred lasting and substantial interest for local pork. The hog farmer who was featured in the story was having a very difficult year because of the economy but now their production is spoken for. It’s rewarding to know that the market responded and is willing to pay what the farmer needs to remain viable.

- Whole Carcass: Chefs like Peter Merriman, Ed Kenney, Alan Wong and now Jim Babian, Executive Chef of the Four Seasons Hualalai are purchasing whole or half carcasses, “nose-to-tail” to help ranchers defray risk. Our hope is that they will lead to way for other chefs to join this culinary movement to build our local food system.

- EBT in the Farmers Markets: As one of the managers at the Hawaii Farm Bureau’s farmers markets, Lisa has been working for the past year to integrate EBT/SNAP benefits into the markets. Public support expressed on this issue at the Forum has helped tremendously to accelerate this process! We might be seeing this service available as soon as Fall, if all goes well. Thank you to those of you in attendance who brought this issue up and voiced support – a handful of you who were there and are in key positions to lend official support have really come through.

Stay tuned, a forum video is in the works. We have five hours of video from three cameras! We’ll be editing that down to half hour. Or 56 minutes . . .

-Lisa & Dan
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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