Yesterday, I happened to check down on my phone and received a text from my mom that one of our farm employees had collapsed and needed to be transported to the hospital.  He had been picking papayas and suddenly collapsed.  Luckily, he regained consciousness while in the ambulance.

I was really shaken up by this because Dean is family to us.  He has been with our farm for several years now and a dedicated, hardworking, and humble person who has helped to get papayas out to thousands of people all over our island.  The general public tends to forget that behind that papaya they eat every morning is a person’s sweat equity.  Dean’s collapse was just a huge reminder to all of us that farming is a tough and dangerous job.

My brother, Mike, has been supported by Dean’s dedication to the family farm.  Without Dean, Mike would be putting in a lot more hours and probably much more tired.  Every person on our farm is important to us and we consider them family.  One year, Dean had broken his glasses accidentally and had to be without it, which made it really hard to function.  My kind hearted brother decided to do something for him and went to our family optometrist, Dr. Taylor Tom, who helped to get another pair of glasses for Dean. As a small token of appreciation, Mike presented Dean with a replacement pair of his prescription Oakley glasses at Christmas.  Dean was so grateful as was my brother for all of his hard work over the years.

Although farming has become demonized over the last several years, I know for a fact that farmers are some of the most kindest and generous people around.  Not only do they put in long hours, risk their finances at times, and dedicate their lives to feeding people, they truly care about their communities.  They aren’t getting any richer from all of this work but what they do get is a lot of thanks from those who appreciate what they get from farms.

People have spread rumors that my dad is so rich that farming is just his hobby.  Actually, if he was wealthy, you can bet he’d by buying that custom made tractor implement or a brand new, high tech sprayer, and other modern conveniences instead of trying to engineer something himself.  Farming is a love for him and he’s trying to set up the farm to be passed down to another generation.  He is the example to our family that you’ve got to put in a lot of hard work to get what you want out of life and that develops a sense of appreciation once you’ve got there.  Things just don’t fall in your laps and you’ve got to work for it.  That’s farm life and something too few can appreciate in this day and age.

Kindness, humility, and honestly is something we farm families know and we strive to take care of each other in our communities.  We will stand by the truth and support our and ask that others learn about our work before they form an opinion without even stepping foot on a farm.  No one is getting wealthy from the farm but the experiences learned on the fields is something that no money can buy and lives in us everyday.  Farming means family to me and don’t think that anyone can try to disparage family without knowing us as people first.

When you look down at that food you’re about to eat, think about how it got to you and all the people involved in growing it.  It was the agricultural communities around our country that helped to fill your stomachs and nourish you to do greater things.  We’ve got to support ways to help make their jobs easier, not harder.  They already have so much at risk with weather, unexpected events, and now the age of misinformation on the internet. We should not be blocking technology while having no clue on what it takes to farm.  That’s simply not pono.

Support your farmers, each and every one of them.  If you’re leader isn’t planning on supporting them, they are attacking our ohana.  Farming means family and in Hawaii, agriculture is one big family.

Dear “Progressives,”

Normally, I work Monday through Friday from 8 to around 4:30.  It’s nice having a regular scheduled day that’s always pretty consistent.  However, this week was different because I knew that my family needed my help.  Instead of working my usual schedule, I worked on Sunday so I could take off on Tuesday to help them on the farm.  I’m lucky that I have a flexible schedule to be able to do that.

Well, my dad, brother, cousin, and their employee, Jacob, started around 7 am this morning to pick the fields.  Yesterday, my brother’s main help, Dean, collapsed from heat stress and had to be rushed to the emergency room.  He had to remain at the hospital overnight just to be sure that it wasn’t any cardiac issues.  On top of the loss of help, the roadway that led up to their farm had washed away due to a water main break that left a 20 feet long by 12 feet wide and 8 feet deep sinkhole in the main roadway.  They couldn’t pick that field yesterday.  Yet another complication was that the recent tropical storm, Darby, had drenched the fields leaving it super muddy on Monday and limited their ability to pick it quickly.  With one person down, the acres of fields still have to be harvested.

Tuesday was the day that the food safety inspector was also supposed to show up on top of a heavy load of work ahead.  They conduct regular audits to ensure that we are in compliance with the law to grow safe food.  The sinkhole kept the audit from happening because they couldn’t access our fields.  I had planned to be at the farm after attending the fishermen’s rally at the Capitol since children aren’t allowed to be there during the processing of the fruit.  It was just a crazy day for everyone.

I finally made it down to my folk’s farm just before noon.  My mom and nephew were busy processing the 5 bins of papayas picked from the Laie field.  My two daughters and I quickly jumped in to start grading papayas, washing, packing, stickering them, and stacking the 25 lb and 50 lb boxes.  My parents worked straight through to about 6 pm but I had to leave around 4:15 to pick up my baby from the sitter on time.  I decided that it would be best for me to pick up dinner for the crew since I was out and about, just to make it easy for them.  My folks and the kids stopped to eat just for about 15 minutes and then headed right back to work.

We worked straight from noon time to nearly 8:45 to process some 2700 lbs of papayas between the 5 of us.  My brother asked his partner, Frank, to come by after his day job to help pack papayas too.  From 6 to 8:45, 6 of us were working like crazy to get all of the papayas ready for delivery tomorrow.  We didn’t finish because it just became too dark to get everything done.

My hands are achy and I’m drenched in sweat but I feel happy that I could help out at the farm today.  It does mean working six days a week, but if they need the help and I have the ability to help, I’ll do it.  The processing and harvesting is only part of the farm.  Wednesdays are delivery days and getting the papayas shuttled to customers.  Lots of boxes have to be hand trucked around and lifted in and out of the truck.  My 74 year old dad is still at it spending all day driving around town and parking a huge truck in tight spaces to get those fruit out.  My brother does the same too.  Many times, they face angry customers who want their papaya at a certain time and aren’t very forgiving if there’s traffic or a delay despite knowing Honolulu having the worst traffic.

The other days are spent tending to the fields and scouting for pests and diseases if any.  There’s a lot of busy work and there’s never enough time to do it all many times.  There’s even the occasional off the grid hippie walking into our fields asking why the water spigot doesn’t work.  They love to mooch off of our water because they won’t pay for their own and don’t care to walk down to the beach where there’s public water at the bathrooms.  Combined with the other issue of thefts, the heat and bad weather makes the job even more complicated.

It’s interesting that I received this card stuck on my fence from a “progressive.”  I simply posted on comment on his Facebook campaign page hoping that he’d support all farmers since he was printing his t-shirts on GMO cotton.  Instead of replying back to me, he actually found my address and tried to talk to me, which is weird to me.  It’s like you kind of stalked me down.

Now why would I want to “call you to talk about farming” Patrick?  I don’t see anything in your resume or page that indicates to me that you know anything about farming.  You aren’t spending days in the hot sun and heat tending to fields that give your livelihood.  Nor are you in an occupation where you’re growing food for people to eat year after year, week after week, decade after decade.  I somehow doubt that you know anything about the bugs and disease we face as farmers and have no clue last to what GMOs really are.  Have you ever lost your hours of hard work because of a plant disease that was beyond your control? I doubt it.  But hey, you apparently want to talk farming.

I’ve seen that you replied to me later acknowledging that you “fully support Gary Hooser.”  Do you seriously think that the anti-GMO politician is even more knowledgeable about farming?  He talks the talk about organic farming with Dr. Valenzuela like it is such an easy thing to do.  He’s never grown food for several decades but hey, he knows farming.  I’ve never ever seen a photo of him breaking a sweat, covered in dirt, or scouting for pests, but hey, you progressives know farming so you say.  I really LOVE how you talk about GMOs and pesticides along with Ashley Lukens who has never farmed either and have no indication that you’re willing to learn about it.

So, progressives of Hawaii, the kind of progress you want is to increase our imports to 100% with the stances you take.  By being fully dependent upon imports, that’s a really GREAT thing for sustainability.  Those lofty dreams of yours of taking down the “multinational corporations” leave us small farmers with higher costs for agricultural supplies and other inputs, including affordable ag land.

The rejection of science in agriculture will leave us with extinct ohia trees and other crops, like bananas, which is at risk for total decimation by disease.  We can all get to enjoy Williams bananas that taste nothing like our home grown apple ones.  There won’t be anyone wanting pesticides near their homes too because you’ve decided to fear monger around it instead of educating.  Local residents get to experience invasive species right in their homes because you’re promoting refusal of treatment to kill these creatures. By blocking modern tools like GMO mosquitos, Hawaii folks may get to feel the pain and suffering of dengue and Zika too.

Lots of these same progressives are stating that we have to close of our exclusive economic zones in the oceans too in the name of conservation but then stand with signs criticizing the fishermen, despite telling folks that fishermen wouldn’t be affected.  One local food source with become a thing of the past with the loss of ocean access.

Progress to me is adopting new technologies and ways to do things.  Those who feed people are working so hard and yet progressives want to turn back the hands of time to make their jobs even harder by denying this technology.  I stand for making people’s lives better by using technology and innovation.  We, as modern day citizens, have benefitted so much from technology and yet there’s a faction of people who want to take it away.

So Patrick and other progressives, if you want to talk farming, I have a better idea over talking.  How about you come down to the farm and not take a tour.  No, a tour doesn’t give you any idea of what it takes to grow Hawaii.  You come down at 6 am and start preparing to harvest those papayas.  See if you can drive the tractors and forklifts without knocking over trees and safely keeping your workers on the platform.  See if you can load a 60 lb bin onto the platform and then remove a full one and place it in a high cube truck.  Stack 6 of those bins in that truck too without having them fall onto each other during the ride back to the shed.  Better yet, drive that high cube without scraping the side view mirror in narrow spaces.  Then once you’ve spent hours picking those papayas, please come down and wash and pack it all out.  Make sure you get all the orders right and know where they need to go and how many.  Hand grade every single fruit picked.  After you’ve picked it, pack it all up so that your fruit is ready to go.  Lift some 200 plus cases of 25 lbs and don’t forget to carry the off grade ones too in those 50 lb boxes.  After you’ve done that, the next day you can deliver them all over the island and sit in traffic too to get them to the stores.

You simply can’t “talk farming.”  That just doesn’t cut it.  Until you come down and do this for several months or even years, you don’t know farming.  And to the public who gets their farm information from Google, you don’t know diddly squat from what you read.

My body aches and I’m tired.  I’m reminded about how grateful I am to those that do farm. To those people who think they know farming but have never been on one, get on the farm or shut up before you criticize.  Yeah, I mean it.  I hope that the public who listens to “progressives” view of farming realizes that they listen to people who only talk with no real action showing their willing to learn about it, let alone work on it.  If you ain’t feeding people or on the field, you don’t know nothing about farming.

Live it before you talk about it.  So, when are you planning to work on our farm progressives? We have plenty of work available for you!

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Hawaii is the hotbed of environmental activism, more aptly called the environmental industry.  Yes, it’s a business that runs with a completely different model but with the kind of money involved, it’s a business and not “advocacy.”

Instead of having a corporation to operate from, environmentalists have created a new model of using a non-profit status.  It’s tax exempt and also their donors get tax write offs for their donations when you have a “good” mission to advocate from.  The other great part about this model is that there is no disclosure required of the non-profit to show who their donors are.  It’s not a taxpayers’ right to know who is funding these business ventures and non-transparent even though they demand transparency of others.

While corporations are being criticized for being the doer of all evils and held to increasing regulation, the non-profits have free range to unleash any tactics available to get their way.  There is no regulation on these non-profits and they aren’t held accountable for facts and do as they please essentially.  There’s no repercussions for their actions and these groups have taken an extremist position.  Like any extremist position, there is no ability to find common ground.

People who take this position can only see one way.  The Hawaii environmentalists are shouting “Aloha Aina” and “Malama Aina,” and see the need to fight to protect the land.  Their belief lies in the assumption that man must be removed from nature to protect it.  Man is a part of the land and we derive our life from the land.  If we are removed from the land, how are we to survive?  We are indeed a part of the ecosystem and can’t be ignored or removed from it.

Like any extreme position, the ends justifies the means and that is what is unfolding here in Hawaii.  That’s why the relevance of facts is useless in these debates, whether it be GMOs, TMT, or the Superferry for that matter.  You can toss out any fact and there’s no accepting of it and it causes these activists to dig deeper into their positions.  As long as you get your way, that is all that is important.

When I learned about the plight of the fishermen, it made me realize that the tactics and messaging used is universal.  The activists need a bad guy and will create that narrative.

GMOs: “It’s poisoning the aina!” “It’s making people sick!” “It’s taking over our food supply!”

TMT: “It’s poisoning the aina!” “It’s desecrating the mountain!” “It’s going to be used a military weapon!”

Fishermen: “They are killing sea turtles and birds.” “They are overfishing!” “They are destroying the oceans.”

If you look closely, the repetitive arguments are pretty similar across the board between the issues and take the common thread that there must be a stop of this evil.  Immediately, you’ll get a pop-up box stating that you should pay them money to help solve the problem.  Give money now and they will save the world. No one ever bothers to crosscheck those facts and just simply believe because that is human nature.  We like to simplify the issue in to soundbites and not look things up.

Like the GMO issue, the environmental industry is attempting to use the aina to put people out of work and harm the families of those who work in the industry.

When environmentalism is used to put people out of work, there’s a problem there.  The attempt to remove the human factor from the ecology is problematic at multiple levels and unrealistic.  Simply stating that if there is a loss of work to people shows the cold, callousness of these activists and the lack of empathy.

Not only do these activists desire to take incomes away from people, they willingly show how they aren’t able to walk in the shoes of others.  Like extremists, they don’t care about the harm that they create with their stances.  It’s completely ignore regardless of how correct it is.   Where in a democratic society is it okay to deny others the basic right to work?  Denying that right only spells demise.

The huge push for the closure of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands under the guise of the Papahanaumokuakea Monument isn’t any different than the ag issue.  These folks love to play on people’s emotion and unsubstantiated “facts”to garner support.  I caught this post on the Expand PMNM Facebook page touting a lot of “facts” supporting it.

If you look closely at it, you can see there is no source to back up these claims.  On top of that, they also play a video of a nice turtle swimming around in the ocean.

It’s a great play on emotions and gets people wanting to take action.  Who wouldn’t want to after reading the passage and then watching the video?

Like the anti-GMO movement playing videos of “documentaries” and using a  lot of fear imagery, the expansion of the monument sounds really good after being the delivered “facts.”  Let’s stop and think about this more.  Are those numbers touted really true and where’s the actual data set to back it up?  Do you simply watch these videos and just believe or do you question the information presented?

The facts do not support the need for the expansion of the monument.  So then the support is garnered for the native rights issue where the land and oceans have to be protected for only Hawaiians.  I have to think that the Federal expansion is occurring under a democracy.  If that is the case, shouldn’t all the people of Hawaii have a say in this issue as it will affect them?  Isn’t that a democratic thing to do?

After that’s all been said and done, the last argument being made in support of this expansion is in the name of science ironically.

“The expanse of Papahānaumokuākea is the manifestation of Hawaiian cultural values and the wonder of scientific knowledge and discovery. It is a sanctuary for our Ocean Heritage.”

If closing off the oceans is going to help preserve cultural values and advance science, why are some Hawaiians protesting the Thirty Meter Telescope of Mauna Kea? Isn’t the telescope going to help preserve the heritage and culture of studying stars and help to advance knowledge?  If the oceans are being used in that way, shouldn’t the mountains also be used to celebrate the wonder of science and knowledge?

With the Office of Hawaiian Affairs supporting the expansion of the monument under these same arguments, why does it change with Mauna Kea?  The cultural practitioners have access to the summit with the telescopes thanks to the roads and no longer have to walk up there as in the ancient days, which was mentioned by Keahi Warfield in his video supporting the TMT.  They have access to the many parts of the sacred mountain thanks to those roads that also built the telescopes.

Hawaii is dealing with extremists that can’t work to collaborate with others.  It’s their way or no way.  That is creating dysfunctional communities and pitting friends against each other.  We have our own political discord in our islands where the native rights are being fueled by outsiders who have no ties to the Hawaii communities because they don’t live here.  Instead of encouraging community discussions and learning from each other to work on a plan based in common ground, it’s their way or no way.  The native rights would sound more authentic if it wasn’t funded by outside interests.

Thomas Linzey of CELDF

Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety

Paul Achitoff of Earthjustice

Paul Towers of the Pesticide Action Network

These are just a few of the outsiders who are using the environment to take away our local ways of living and they will do anything in their power to do it as we are seeing.  They have spread misinformation on everything from GMOs, the Superferry, TMT, and now the ocean monument.  They have lots of money that they don’t need the ferry like the local folks do.  They don’t enjoy the fresh fish we get from our local fishermen.  Neither has any link to Hawaii’s agricultural heritage either.  They call themselves progressive but putting people out of work and romanticizing the ancient days is anything but progress.  They use native Hawaiians as their vehicle to do this while tearing communities apart is anything democratic.

Democracy means including all people in the conversations.  Being rude to a high school student testifying in favor of the TMT isn’t democratic, it’s attempting to silence her stance and isn’t different from threats of crop destruction and burning of tractors.  Attacking a facility up on Mauna Kea and damaging property and harming people in the name of protecting a mountain isn’t something acceptable in a democracy.  Placing rocks on the road heading up to the summit in hopes of someone hitting it and getting into an accident isn’t an acceptable behavior in a law abiding society.  Telling others who aren’t Hawaiian but have a stake in the access to oceans that they have no say not democratic either.  Bernie Sanders, the presidential wanna be, touts communist values and yet his followers acts as dominators of the issue instead of treating their fellow man as an equal.

The saving of the earth can’t be used as way to rob people of a way of living.  That isn’t what makes a democracy.