Author: lisa

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Climate Explore Issues

Winds of Change

The first clues came from Hawaii. A year before statehood, traces of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas responsible for the unnatural warming of our planet, were picked up in the wintry desert summit of Mauna Loa by a monitoring station installed by scientist Charles Keeling. The measurements revealed massive influx of carbon emissions in our atmosphere even in its most remote and pristine places. Now famously known to climate watchers as Keeling’s Curve, these numbers have climbed without pause ever since.

Sixty-two years later, we’re again the canary in the coal mine. This time it’s about wind, in particular the trade winds that cool our days and bring the rains to our islands.

A recent study by a University of Hawaii meteorology professor assisted by a graduate student sounded the alarm – a marked loss in trade winds – from 266 days in 1984 to 209 days in 2009. That’s a steady 22% decline over the last quarter of a century. The report indicates that researchers are looking further into broader historical data to explain the decline, but we wonder how this might impact rainfall numbers, since the hydrology system of our islands is based on trade winds carrying moisture from the atmosphere into our ranges and aquifers.

Looking at NOAA’s rainfall totals at the Honolulu International Airport revealed a possible direct correlation. From 1957 –1966, the average annual rainfall total was 23.37 inches. From 1997- 2006, the average was 16.16 inches. The difference, 6.76 inches less, means a 29% decline in rainfall. These numbers are our wake-up call.

We’re not schooled in meteorology or climatology. However, what we’re hearing from our farmers, confirms the immediate impact climate change already present here in the islands. It’s causing us to take a closer look and explore these issues further.

We’re finding that we as a community need to start asking some tough questions:

  • What does this mean for alternative energy projects like the windmills going up around the state?
  • How are we going to increase our food self-sufficiency when our most precious resource, water, is in decline?
  • What steps can we take to preserve our water supply and recharge our aquifers? We can desalinate water for drinking and to irrigate our fields but to do so will be expensive when when the cost per barrel of oil is expected to increase in the months and years to come?

If we continue to avoid these issues and proceed without a comprehensive and long-term plan to transition our state to be water conserving, food and energy self-reliant – we’ll find ourselves facing food, gas/electric and water bills that’ll make living in Hawaii for most of us extremely difficult.

We’re proposing a re-think:

  • Move up the state mandated timeline of 2030 for being 70% energy independent to 2020.
  • At corporate and county levels, retain run-off and build or reinstate reservoirs to store water. Run-off that normally goes into the ocean can irrigate crops and help recharge our aquifers.
  • Retain and protect prime agricultural land for growing food. Once these lands are developed they will never again be fit to grow food. We’re currently importing 85% of our food and we’re exporting $6 billion dollars in the process. Much of this food can be grown here and much of that money needs desperately to stay in our local economy.


As a community we need to talk with our families and rally our neighbors about taking steps on our own, like conserving water and looking into alternative energy systems for our own homes.

At our governing levels we need leaders who will task innovative planners and designers with a long-term plan to conserve water and transition Hawaii from our fossil fuel dependence to renewable energy alternatives that make sense.

Can Hawaii transform its role from the world’s tell-tale canary to innovative survivor by achieving energy, water and food independence? This decision is ours to make and it needs to be made right now.

Lisa Asagi & Dan Nakasone
She grows food, co-founders

Categories
Meet Farmers

Sharon Peterson Cheape: Getting to the Heart of Agriculture

When 2010 rolled around, the Peterson family knew that they would have to do something special and they are still figuring out just what. Their family farm in Wahiawa had reached its 100th year of existence. That it would come at a time that is so bittersweet and hopeful has put so much into perspective for them and for all of us. The Petersons have been through and continue to make their way through more than their share of trials. The road has been a long one. A hundred years old to be exact, which is equal to a miracle for a farm these days. So how are they celebrating? In the most meaningful way you could ever imagine. They are slowly rebuilding. They are slowly regrouping. And with the help of all of us, they will even grow into their dreams of being able to supply our community at full capacity again like they did for decades. Fresh eggs for us and a promising livelihood for their entire family again.

We visited with Sharon at her family’s farm and got her thoughts on the efforts that brought all of us together – the nearly disastrous crisis of the Hawaii egg farms, feed subsidy help and the marketing plans in 2007 that saved them. It was during these months of working on the marketing strategy for the egg farmers that Dan and I started working together. In some ways it was our first She grows food project. Here’s a link to the website islandfresheggs.com. Visiting again with Sharon opened our eyes even more to her and her family’s incredible story. As humble as they are, we can still see how much more we can learn from them about the history and the future of farming in Hawaii. So please stay tuned for more about Sharon, her family and Petersons Upland Farm as we venture into the month of August.

Why August? Why, it’s been declared Hawaii Egg Month! When Petersons Upland Farm fan and Wahiawa-raised Chef Alan Wong realized that 2010 marked Peterson’s 100 year anniversary he decided to commemorate it with an Egg Recipe Contest! alanwongs.com and an egg-citing menu for the entire month of August. Well, word got around and we jumped on the band wagon to refocus on the August issue and soon to be announced collaboration with our friends at Share Your Table!

We think a 100 years of farming is definite cause for celebration. If anything, to honor all of the love that Sharon and her family have for what they do and what that love fosters in its hometown, Wahiawa, and beyond.

Categories
Explore Issues Food Systems

Visit with Michelle Galimba and Lorie Obra at the Hawaii State Farm Fair

She grows food featured farmers will be sampling and selling their fine products at this year’s State Farm Fair, brought to you by the Hawaii Farm Bureau. Come to the Bishop Museum, the site of the fair on July 24 and 25. Michelle of Kuahiwi Ranch Natural Beef and Lorie of Rusty’s Hawaiian Ka’u Coffee are coming from Ka’u on the Big Island. This is a rare opportunity for you to try & buy their world-class products direct.

Go to: www.hfbf.org for more information.

Categories
Build Projects

Mahalo for helping the Weidenbachs!

They Got Their Lease!

It was do-or-die for Lita Weidenbach’s family farm when their lease application went before the State Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) on Thursday, July 8. The Weidenbachs pulled out all the stops. Twenty years of developing this pristine farm was at stake.

They had asked She grows food for testimony support and we put out a call for others to do the same.

“We read the letters and we were touched by the outpouring of community support for you and your farm”, said the BLNR spokesperson, “You are exemplary members to your community”. The board members voted unanimously to approve their lease application.

A BLNR land agent said that testimonies just kept coming in. We want to thank those of you who answered the call on the Weidenbach’s behalf. Your action not only helped this one farm, it also demonstrates that each of us can be part of the solution. And if we can do it for one farm, we can do it for others.

Read about Lita’s story here.

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Build Projects

Action Alert

Write-in for the Weidenbachs! Deadline July 5th. Lita and Ron Weidenbach need your help to protect their 18 year old tilapia farm’s land lease. Send in your testimony. Find out how here.

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Eat Well

Grandma Fely’s Tilapia Soup

From Lita Weidenbach

When my mother’s beloved rosebushes withered away after many years, she tenderly set into that hallowed ground another plant that she admired just as much—the tomato! Tomatoes, she would say to me with enthusiastic conviction as we watched the little seedlings grow, to add flavor and sweetness to any dish! And so she did, picking the red ripened fruit and tossing it into her salads, stews, and soups. Ah, the fish soup with those fragrant bits of tomato, onion, and ginger! No other dish would so clearly remind me of my parents’ nurturing comfort—the fresh fish caught by my patient father and lovingly prepared with my mother’s delicious tomatoes, sometimes right away over an open fire as we children played at the beach. Accompanied by a large pot of rice, fish soup went a long way towards feeding a growing family. It was a simple dish, but a difficult recipe to pin down precisely as my mom’s usual measurement was “just do it according to what you want it to taste like”. Despite the many fish dishes I have tried, I still like my mom’s basic fish soup best. How sweet is the broth and how much sweeter is the memory of the fisherman and the cook behind it! Is it no wonder that I married a fish farmer and grow tomatoes of my own?

2 lbs. of tilapia cut into large pieces
2 medium, ripe tomatoes cut into wedges
1 in. ginger root, peeled & sliced thin
½ teaspoon salt
½ medium onion sliced

Mash tomato wedges to release the juices and mix with ginger and salt. Spread onion slices in bottom of a large pan. Next, layer fish pieces. Add enough water to barely cover the fish. Pour tomato mixture evenly over the fish. Simmer, covered, for approximately 20 minutes. Add more salt (or pepper) to taste. Serves 3-5 people.

Categories
Meet Farmers

Lita Weidenbach, Navigating a Future for Sustainable Fish



When Estrellita was just a girl with a name full of starlight, she would explore the wilderness surrounding their family’s anthurium farm in Mountain View on Hawaii Island and come back with baby fish that she would raise in tubs and buckets in the backyard. She cared for them so well that they would end up on the dinner table months later. That was just the beginning.

Now Lita Weidenbach, with her husband Ron, runs the largest Tilapia aquaculture farm in the state of Hawaii.

The second thing Lita tells me is that it was love at first sight: college days, Ron was standing in the kitchen at a friend’s party, cooking. Fish soup. This led to dates of driving around the North Shore looking for land to dream about raising fish on, deep decades longs research and experimentation that has led to the cultivation of a unique branch of Hawaii’s food growing past and potential: land-based aquaculture.

Over the nearly 20 years of building their farm, Lita and Ron have also built a new reputation for tilapia in Hawaii and it hasn’t been easy. Tilapia here picked up a reputation for being prolific and cheap, whose quality was determined by it’s environment: historically ditches and canals. The quality of any fish is determined by where it lives and what it eats. Tilapia is no different.

We’re standing a few feet away from the edge of a cliff that drops down into the shimmering green expanse. She calls it a pond but it’s eight acres large and 100 plus feet deep. What makes it so rare and keeps it alive is the fact it’s being fed by cool natural springs. Tilapia can grow anywhere, but there could not be a more perfect place for raising a new kind of tilapia: the tastiest kind. Lita and Ron have been working together for thirty years, painstakingly breeding and carefully cultivating toward a fish fit for white tablecloth and the finest of palates. Especially one belonging to a very stylish and knowledgeable First Lady, who has in fact dined on a tilapia raised right here on this farm and has declared that tilapia is her favorite fish.

Tasty is right. It takes one to two years depending on the desired finish weight. The result is big, meaty with a delicate and light flavor.

Lita’s domain at the farm is the hatchery and nursery, the raising of the baby fry as well as the algae the baby fish feed on. Keen attention to detail, and nuanced reading of behavior key Lita into the well-being of the young fish. It is fascinating to me, how Lita’s girlhood fascination with growing fish had blossomed into a very specialized livelihood.  I want to learn more about how far back and how deeply this connection to fish is to her life and she sends me this illuminating email: “You know, I think when you are a child it is so easy to be captivated by the wonder of animals, plants, and other creatures of this world — a child can be acutely aware of and appreciate such minute details as the translucent tint of a fish scale or the particular flowing curve of a fin.  I remember knowing each of my tilapia as specific individuals — I had a name for each of them!  I was so totally charmed by these underwater inhabitants that I spent long hours just observing them and learning their habits.  So yes, I believe that on some level, the care of my fishes came naturally to me, although my mother assisted in helping me to provide their basic care (an old bathtub and leftover rice from dinner!).”

Is it possible to have a sense of fish?  We think so.  So many people who have dedicated their lives to working with nature have developed a certain sense. It could even be looked at as a kind of communication between humans and animals, perhaps honed by tens of thousands of hours of living together and of caring for.   There is also another kind of sense that Lita hinted to in our interview as we talked about how more women are needed in aquaculture.  Why women?  In aquaculture the kind of attention to detail and acute observational skills that women have had to develop as care givers would be of great benefit in raising fragile young creatures that can only exist in very specific living conditions.  In Lita’s case maternal instincts must have been doing double duty with raising her small fry alongside her three human children on the farm.

With their involvement in the growth of the aquaculture industry in Hawaii and the nation, Ron was sometimes away on conferences and this often left Lita in charge of running the farm and caring for her young children. We’re standing at the rocky shore as Lita introduces me to a farm-built skiff that she and the kids would steer out onto the water to feed the fish. It’s about the size of a surfboard. It must not have been easy at all, as isolated as the farm is, but I can tell by her laugh and the glimmer in her eyes that they took it as an adventure.

Lita mentions often that it was a dream of theirs, to raise their children on a farm and the dream has come true.

Her children were outstanding students at Waialua High School.  Joe is now 25 and an environmental engineer.  Mariah is 22 and has a degree in sociology.  The youngest, Mikia, is 18 and attending Princeton and is focusing on issues of sustainability and renewable energy. They still come back to help on the farm and have a hand in planning for its future– the second generation of Weidenbachs. It will be exciting to see what they can do all together now.

We hope nothing gets in the way of their plans.

A few days ago, Dan and I got word that the Weidenbach’s farm is in danger. Please lend your help by emailing a brief testimony of support for the renewal of their lease so that they may continue to operate their farm. They not only strengthen our local food system by being our largest land-based aquaculture operation, but they are also leaders in this community. Here’s a link to the Acting Up Call to Action.

It’s highly unlikely that anyone else will ever be able to use that particular patch of land in the optimal and sustainable way that Lita and Ron are. They have been selectively breeding fish, maintaining a pristine eight acre pond, and cultivating an industry that already feeds us and may even save us one day: sustainable land-based aquaculture. This means the ability to raise seafood in safe, controlled and healthy environments, not the ocean.

With all that’s been happening to our oceans, how relevant is this particular endeavor at this moment in time?

Recipe: Grandma Fely’s Tilapia Soup

Categories
Build Projects

Write-in for the Weidenbachs

UPDATE: Mahalo for Helping the Weidenbachs!  They Got Their Lease!

It was do-or-die for Lita Weidenbach’s family farm when their lease application went before the State Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) on Thursday, July 8. The Weidenbachs pulled out all the stops. Twenty years of developing this pristine farm was at stake.

They had asked She grows food for testimony support and we put out a call for others to do the same. “We read the letters and we were touched by the outpouring of community support for you and your farm”, said the BLNR spokesperson, “You are exemplary members to your community”. The board members voted unanimously to approve their lease application.

A BLNR land agent said that testimonies just kept coming in. We want to thank those of you who answered the call on the Weidenbach’s behalf. Your action not only helped this one farm, it also demonstrates that each of us can be part of the solution. And if we can do it for one farm, we can do it for others.

A few days ago I got the call from Dan. Lita and Ron Weidenbach’s farm was in danger.

A few weeks ago we interviewed Lita and planned to feature her story and video in mid-July for the official launch of She Grows Food. But after learning that their lease renewal was in jeopardy and might be denied, we decided to forego sleep to get her story up as soon as possible.

When you hear about healthy farms closing, it nearly always comes down to a crisis of land or water.

After thirty years of building a pristine aquaculture farm and raising a family, the Weidenbach’s may be facing their toughest challenge next week and there’s something we all can do to help.

Dan has put together a call for testimony support with highly interesting data on this situation and what it might mean for the state of Hawaii. This is an action alert. Please do what you can to help.

WHY:
The Weidenbach family have been farming fish at this location for nearly twenty years without any threat to public safety or the environment. But because the farm is in close vicinity to the Dillingham Airport, the current director of the Department of Transportation has raised safety concerns as well he should.

Public Safety: The concern is that the farm will attract birds that may pose a safety hazard for the airport. Both the State Department of Forestry and Wildlife (backed by the FAA) and the USDA Wildlife Services have documented that the farm poses no risk to public safety. Again, no incidents in twenty years.

Environment: The farm is compliant with both the State Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Increasing Hawaii’s and the World’s Food Security:
Do you remember the cost of food when oil spiked to $147 per barrel in 2008? In a recent Lloyd’s of London white paper -Sustained Energy Security, a researcher predicted that the cost of oil could spike to $200 per barrel by 2013. We need to accelerate our move toward Hawaii’s food independence and provide a higher degree of food security. The denial of the lease will be a set-back for Hawaii.

Do you eat fish? One out of five people in the world depend on fish as their primary source of protein. According to the Monterey Aquarium’s Seafood Watch 70% of the world’s fisheries are now exploited, over exploited or have collapsed. The world consumed 110 tons of fish in 2006. Researchers estimate that by 2030 the world would need an additional 37 million tons of farmed fish per year to maintain the current levels of consumption.

The Seafood Watch recommends U.S. farmed Tilapia as a “Best Choice” for sustainable seafood.

Please act now in support of this valuable and viable farm.

HOW:
Please email or post a letter that will act as testimony support on behalf of the Weidenbach family and their Hawaii Fish Company aqua farm. Their lease application goes before the Board of Land and Natural Resources on July 8, 2010.

Your email or letter can be short or long, and simply state your support for the renewal of the Weidenbach’s lease for the land their farm currently occupies.

Please write the following in subject header of your email or to start your letter: Re: Hawaii Fish Company aquaculture lease of the former Dillingham quarry site, Mokuleia, O’ahu, Hawaii.

Address your testimony to:
Laura H. Thielen, Chairperson and Board Members
Board of Land and Natural Resources
P.O. Box 621
Honolulu, Hawaii 96809

or Email to:
Barry Cheung
O’ahu Land Agent
[email protected]

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Build Projects

Kuahiwi Rocks KCC Farmers Market

The Kuahiwi Market Slam with Chef Alan Wong and his dedicated crew brought in a record crowd to KCC Farmers Market on May 29th. Michelle and her father Al sold over 500 pounds of “frozen beef” and 300 hamburgers and loco mocos in just a few hours.

The line began to form before the market started. Word had got out thanks to a wonderful article by Erika Engle in the Start-Bulletin and an awesome post to his Baker’s Hour site by Hawaii culinary blogger Ed Morita.

Chef Alan volunteered his own Saturday morning to help the Galimbas, and when the rest of his staff found out, they decided to join in too. Pineapple Room Chef Lance Kosaka arrived with his truck full of equipment and supplies, as many faces from Alan Wong Restaurant and Pineapple Room appeared to join the cooking. Chef Ed Kenney, a market regular came by smiling and commenting that the Alan Wong crew never does anything “small.” And it’s true, they brought the Kuahiwi Ranch Oahu Farmers Market debut to another level altogether.

A line long with both locals and visitors stretched past the booth, lasting till the last packet of ground beef was sold and the last burger was topped with onions and handed off.

One thing was clear at the moment the end of market horn blew: There is without a doubt, a huge demand for Kuahiwi beef on Oahu.

Mahalo to everyone who supported this effort.

What’s next?

Stay tuned. It’s going to be good.

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Eat Well

Michelle’s La’uya recipe

La’uya (Beef Shank Soup)
from Michelle Galimba

This is Filipino soul food. My grandfather made a stupendous la’uya, and my father also. It is very simple and very tasty, especially if you’ve spent a cold, wet day in the mountains.

Continue reading “Michelle’s La’uya recipe”