June 21, 2023 • 58 mins
It is likely that anyone interested in, or involved in, growing fruit in Hawaii has heard the name of Ken Love from the Big Island of Hawaii. In this episode we speak with Ken about how he became the local pundit on tropical fruit, some thoughts on the most profitable fruits to grow and why, the importance of connecting with local chefs, Hawaii Master Food Preservers, and other musings from this local icon.
Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resources (CTAHR), and the Seeds of Well-being (SOW) Project. This podcast is supported by the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hawaii Department of Agriculture.
Resources:
- Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers
- HTFG Facebook Page
- Palamanui Chefʻs Program
- Hilo County Farm Bureau Presentation
- Hawaii Master Food Preservers
Find out more about us:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim (00:00):
The views, information or opinions expressed in this
episode are solely those ofindividuals involved and do not
necessarily represent those ofthe University of Hawaii College
of Tropical Agriculture andHuman Resources, our funders, or
any of the organizationsaffiliated with this project
(00:23):
Welcome to a Seeds of Wellbeing"Experts in the Field" podcast
featuring people working intheir fields of expertise to
provide support for agricultureproducers in Hawaii, in the
United States and in some casesaround the world. These podcasts
were made possible by a grantfrom the University of Hawaii
College of Tropical Agricultureand Human Resources, also known
as CTAHR, And the Seeds ofWellbeing or SOW project, and is
(00:47):
supported by a grant from the USDepartment of Agriculture,
National Institute of Food andAgriculture, and the Hawaii
Department of Agriculture.
Aloha! We're here with, on Seedsof Wellbeing podcast and talking
to Ken Love, who's the ExecutiveDirector of Hawaii Tropical
Fruit Growers, and Hawaii MasterFood Preservers. Tropical Fruit
(01:09):
Growers has a membership ofabout 2000 or more people and a
Facebook group which was startedin 2009 that now has 22.6K
members and all over the world.
And I think Ken's also beeninvolved in 33 years of annual
conferences related to tropicalfruit that have been held in
Hawaii, and is the owner of LoveFamily Farms in Captain Cook,
(01:32):
which is near Kona on the BigIsland of Hawaii. So welcome
Ken, thanks for coming on theshow.
Ken Love (01:40):
Oh no, no problem.
Jim (01:43):
It is likely that anyone interested in or involved in
growing fruit in Hawaii hasheard the name of Ken Love from
the Big Island of Hawaii. Inthis episode, we speak with Ken
about how he became the localpundit on tropical fruit, some
thoughts on the most profitablefruits to grow and why, the
importance of connecting withlocal chefs, the Hawaii Master
Fruit Preservers program, andother musings from this local
(02:06):
icon.
Ken Love (02:08):
I keep hearing that about being the owner of Love
Family Farms, but I think it'smuch more. It's grown out of
being a personal farm. Were, Ikind of view us as the mother
repository where Hawaii tropicalfruit growers has two acres on
every island, including Lanai,and we feed germ plasm into
(02:28):
those locations, in order forour membership to be able to get
plant material and you know anddevelop economically beneficial
crops. And the people ask me allthe time, "Well what's your
job?" and I geez, I gottascratch my beard and go I'm not
(02:50):
100% sure. I try to help farmersmake money, you know, I mean,
and, and become moresustainable. And that's usually
through germplasm and or choicesor market development. I mean,
when we were talking before youhad mentioned about you know,
where we where we go from hereand it's, new farmers have
(03:12):
choices, you know. There's a lotof new farmer grant money and
keep pushing people to do this,that and the other thing. Why UH
picks the most labor intensivecrops to promote is just
absolutely beyond me andabsolutely absurd. If you look
at the USDA AgriculturalStatistics Service, I mean, I'm
(03:32):
not going to grow coffee or macnuts or cacao anymore. I mean,
it's,you go through all theprocesses of fermentation and,
and picking things by hand, youknow, other than oranges. We
import 22 million pounds oforanges. It's not, I just picked
the orange off the tree, putthem in the box and send the box
(03:54):
to the wholesaler. It's a wholelot easier than having to pick
stuff, ferment it, wash it, dryit, you know, process it, husk
it, peel it, you know. Just pickthe oranges and send them out.
Jim (10:32):
could sell well just on the islands in Hawaii or?
Ken Love (10:51):
Yeah, absolutely. We started with Chef Paul at our
culinary school, which is nowPalmanui, but it just used to be
what you know, West HawaiiCommunity College. Chef Paul
Heerlein had the studentsutilize, we had a 12 Trees
project in ʻ05 I think it was.
And to make a long story short,the students were required to
(11:15):
utilize a locally grown tropicalfruit in each public luncheon
two days, three days a week.
Those students who are now chefsin various restaurants and
hotels around the State rememberthat and now they're buying more
(11:36):
of those locally grown tropicalfruit. So we've seen that
progression of that firsteducation from you know, almost
almost, what 20 years ago, Ithink ʻ05 to ʻ10, yeah so almost
20 years ago, where it's reallymade quite a difference and its
(11:57):
growers have been able toincrease the marketable crop.
I've done the same thing byproviding material to grocery
stores like Choice Mart inCaptain Cook. I like to use
things that are close to mebecause I don't like to drive
that much. So we used ChoiceMart in Captain Cook and they
were test marketing a lot of thefruit I mean that we did. Even
(12:19):
in terms of finding you know,price point. I mean we can base
something on an accurate cost ofproduction which, if I had one
pet peeve, itʻs that UH neverreplaced Dr. Kent Fleming for
teaching costs of production tofarmers. And there's, the
positions aren't here or theydon't hold and so there has to
(12:43):
be somebody to teach growerscost of production. When I go,
it's no fun for me to go tofarmers markets when I see 10
tangerines for $1, you know? SixMeyer lemons for $1? It costs
you 27 cents to produce one ofthem. It's not real sustainable
when you grow six, sell them atsix for $1.
Jim (13:07):
Well if it helps I know GoFarm is actually pushing cost
of production in there AgXcelquite a bit and it's, it's a lot
of work but it it opens, it'seye opening, right?
Ken Love (13:17):
Yep. No, exactly goFarms, Farmlink and Mao are
all, all get it, you know. Imean, these are great groups
that just get it and get what ittakes to to be able to help
small farmers becomesustainable.
Jim (13:34):
Yep. Well tell me about.
Tell us about how HawaiiTropical Fruit Growers started
and maybe the more recentdevelopment and creation of
Hawaii Master Food Preservers.
Just give us some of the historyis, like how did you get to
Hawaii and why the Big Islandand what give us a little bit of
your journey and the founding ofthose outfits.
Ken Love (13:56):
Yeah, I got sent here in, this was ʻ81 or something or
ʻ82. I was with Associated Pressand I got sent here to
photograph a number of things ondifferent islands and that was
the morning the volcano blew offand it was always kind of a
(14:18):
dream. In fact, if you looked atthe recent eruption from about
three months ago the New YorkTimes couldn't get the picture
in time of the eruption fromthree, four, what was it a month
ago or so? I can't I can'tremember exactly. But they used
(14:42):
my picture from 1983 and saidwhat it was. I'd been there. My
name was in The New York Timesyou know under the photo ref you
know, photo by Ken loveAssociated Press, and it was
from 1983. But I, people didn'tsee the date so I was getting
(15:02):
all these phone calls and it wasit was it was pretty funny
anyway. So I got here to do thatkind of stuff and went over to
Kona and just sort of got hookedon that. Came back in that
November to photograph the KonaCoffee Festival and really got
(15:25):
hooked on it and said that I'mgoing to stay here. And it was
number of years before we gothere, but I bought a farm long
before we moved.
Jim (15:38):
Was that a coffee farm?
Ken Love (15:40):
Yeah, coffee, but actually we started with 26
acres with my partner, Mr.
Takashiva, and then went downto, he sold off his 16 and then
I had my 10, which I eventuallysold off, and now I'm down to
two. The older I get, thesmaller the farm gets so I'll be
(16:00):
in a little condo in a year ortwo. Now I've got two
acres with 300 species on itnow. And this provides that germ
plasm again, so that we have allthese unusual cultivars and
varieties of tropical fruit inorder to clone it and send it to
(16:21):
fruit growers. For example, wehave 250 types of figs right
now. About 10 types of oranges.
I can't wait maybe six, eighttypes of durian. There really
hasn't been a lot of research ofwhat elevation, what
(16:43):
microclimates, what type ofsoils are required for specific
things. So all we can do iscontinue to work to, to get that
information. And to be able toprovide different things to
growers. We'll try these threetypes of oranges see what works
best for you.
Jim (17:04):
And is that is that data mostly available? Are they
mostly available through yourFacebook or through that being a
member? Or what's the best wayto access that data?
Ken Love (17:13):
Being involved with with the Fruit Growers, and we
have chapters and chapterpresidents on each island. All
that information is on htfg.org.
So Hawaii tropical fruit growersorg
Jim (17:31):
And what's what caused you to launch that formerly, HTFG?
Ken Love (17:35):
Well, I didn't I wasn't involved. That was done
Jim (17:38):
Nice, and membership is open to anyone, or any certain
in 1989. And it was I don't knowhow many 14-15 members at that
at that time. And I got involvedI think in 1995-96. And said,
well, it could be a lot morethan this. And I I kind of had a
problem with the way things weredone in Hilo where the
(18:01):
organization was run out ofbecause they would get federal
money to promote the crops inHawaii, which was usually lychee
and rambutan and things wedidn't really grow that much of
in Kona. Like why aren't youpromoting the mangoes and
(18:22):
avocados, things that we growhere? Well wasn't they didn't
grow them so they didn't promotethem. So I got involved in the
organization and things changedafter that and all of a sudden
we have 2000 members on on everyisland. And we try to be
(18:44):
equitable and we try to helpsmall backyard growers as well
as larger commercial growers. Imean it's it's said is a
Japanese expression that you ifyou try to serve everyone, you
can't stand your own ground.
Well, sometimes it gets kind ofwobbly but so far we've been
(19:05):
trying to balance things so thatwe make things available to
everyone. Try to be equitable.
requirements to be a member?
Ken Love (19:22):
Nope. Just our mission is to promote any and all
aspects of tropical fruit, ofgrowing and marketing tropical
fruit in the State of Hawaii. Wedon't really care if you're
growing one or two trees or or5000 trees. You had asked me to
(19:42):
mention the Hawaii Master FoodPreservers too, which grew out
of Hawaii Tropical FruitGrowers, at least in Hawaii.
Every other State the MasterFood Preservers are a function
of university extension. Andwhen I trained in California and
brought the program back UHwasn't interested unless I got
(20:04):
ʻum a big grant and I didn'twant to lose that 30% and so we
wrote the grant for the FruitGrowers and started it. And now
we, weʻre always looking forfunding to do more classes but
we have kitchens, usablekitchens, in Kona, Maui, Hawaii,
(20:28):
Molokai and Lanai. So we've donelots of classes on every island
except Oahu, because they'restill working on their rail.
Where we teach it in Hilo, whichstarts next Thursday actually,
the parking is against theMatson yard. And so you can see
(20:52):
all the trucks coming in andbeing loaded into containers and
the boat is 50 feet from where Ipark. And in that 50 foot area,
we see the trucks with theproduce sitting in the sun for
three hours before they getloaded into a container. And you
(21:13):
know, no wonder by the time theyget there they're pretty bad.
The people have no concept of ofwhat they're doing. They have no
concept of postharvest. BobPaull is probably the best
postharvest guy in the world andnobody listens to him. I mean,
he saved Bulgaria you know interms of assisting their
(21:39):
companies learn aboutpostharvest. And it's the same
thing with value added. So whenI talk about value added I'm not
just talking about jams andjellies. Talking about value
added begins in the field. Whenyou harvest jaboticaba or
surinam cherry or most of thesmall fruit that we are
(22:01):
developing markets for, or havebeen developing markets just in
the last 10 years. Even guava,you know, which is a lot longer.
If you take those and you putthem in a box, put the box in
the truck and then you go to adifferent tree, load up another
box, put that in the truck, thatthose guava are gonna last two
(22:24):
days, three days. When weharvest, we take it we load it
into a cooler, pre chilledcooler at the base of the tree
and then put the cooler in theshade until we're ready to drive
back to Hilo. The ideal way toharvest jaboticaba and surinam
(22:44):
cherry is to load it in aclamshell, put that clamshell in
the cooler, and then take thatcooler back to the the shed. You
get a week instead of threedays. So as a chef, or as a
produce manager, I want to buystuff from you that has the
longest shelf life possible. Anduntil farmers get that post
(23:10):
harvest aspect of helping yourcustomers provide a better
product to their customers youknow, we're not really going to
move forward. And so that'sthat's really essential. I mean,
the things that that, these arethe things that UH needs to
(23:31):
teach, you know. UH also needsto teach things like with,
theyʻre doing a pretty good jobof explaining avocado lace bug
and what it takes to combatavocado layce bug. The problem
is that how many orchards,avocado orchards are nice, neat
(23:55):
orchards with trees pruned toeight feet or 10 feet, maybe one
or two. Our trees are 40 or 50feet and these people have been
harvesting them for 60 years andhowever harvest however they
harvest them, it doesn't matter.
That's what they've been doingand these are the avocados in
the marketplace, and now they'renot getting them because the
(24:15):
lace bugs defoliated the tree.
Everythingʻs sunburned and comesdown with big blotches when they
harvest it, so it's useless. Soteach people how to prune their
trees properly. You've got ifit's one tree. If you want to
learn how to harvest avocadoscome to my farm. I'm the only
(24:37):
one you're going to hear bitchabout having to bend over to
harvest avocados. The trees arethat low and we get 150 of them
on on 10 by 15 foot trees everyyear. "Well take you could get a
lot more if your trees werehigher." Yeah, but how much
time? I mean we have to think interms of cost of of labor. So I
(25:01):
can walk around and pick thattree in 15 minutes. And when
you're using a stick to have toget one avocado, and then clip
the stem off that avocado,you've quadrupled the time it
takes to harvest that. But howmuch is labor worth?
Jim (25:19):
Yeah, going back to your cost of production reminders.
That's kind of key to knowing ifit makes sense, right? Is how
does that net out for your cost.
Iʻve heard you talk about someprops that you think are maybe
up and coming so I'm thinking ofpeople that are either doing
permaculture or looking to growsome tropical fruit on the
(25:40):
islands. Any thoughts orsuggestions on...
Ken Love (25:44):
I mean I think first you have to decide whether you
want to fit in to something likewe were talking about grow the
oranges, fit into an existingmarket, you know, and try to
focus on import substitution, ordo you want to create a new
(26:06):
market? Some of our mostsuccessful farmers on this side
like Terry Weaver with hisdragon fruit, and and what he
does with mangoes over here,kind of Yees on Maui with
mangoes. Our president of thefruit growers Mark Suiso with
Jim (26:24):
So from hearing you speak, I've heard you a few times and
Makaha Mangoes, he's a growerand aggregator both. They've
been pretty successful fittinginto either fitting into
existing markets or creating newones. I think the next step is
to take a fruit like maparng andnot just have one or two trees
(26:50):
but have 500 trees. And maprangis also known as mango plum. And
it it looks like, see if I getin there close, it's ʻbout a
little bigger than an egg but ittastes like mango plum mix. It
is fantastic. Delicious fruitthat you can get all over
(27:13):
Southeast Asia, all over theMiddle East where it's shipped
in from Thailand or Israel. Andit's just a great thing. We have
500 of them in our greenhouseright now, growing growing out,
you know that we'll have fromseed or we'll graft a bunch of
(27:36):
them too. There are someproducing trees and in Hilo.
Oscar at Fruit Growers has abunch and some of the other
growers over there. The, it'sjust that kind, there's another
one called tampoi. baccaureamacrocarpa, or like Frankie's
(27:57):
Nursery has some baccaurea rambiin Waimanalo
actually just now saying orindicating that there are a
number of fruits out there thatare really great and may perhaps
be a lot better than the onesthat you hear more commonly
about, like mountain apple ormangosteen, right. And but there
(28:19):
are all these other fruits thatperhaps we should be looking at
and making markets or helpingfound or stir up markets to get
interested in because, you know,that sounds like there, you see
them as easier to grow. tastebetter. Is that Is that a fair
statement?
Ken Love (28:35):
Yeah, I mean that well, it's it's not only that
it's learning about more ofthem. So let me take mountain
apple since you mentioned it.
Mountain appleʻs a great fruit.
I love to eat mountain apple,but you got two days of shelf
life. Mountain apples issyzygium malaccense is the
botanic name. Take syzygiumsamargenses which is called wax
(28:57):
apple or wax jambu or justjambu, tastes almost the same,
usually a little bit sweeterthan mountain apple, and it
lasts a week, 10 days. So againthinking in terms of and it
produces and grows very quickly,even more than mountain apple,
and it's easier to maintain andkeep pruned than then mountain
(29:19):
apple. So and then you havejambu air or water apple,
syzygium aqueum, which isanother one. So you have these
three cousins that that are fordifferent markets. syzygium
(29:40):
aqueum given to women afterchildbirth in Malaysia because
of the electrolytes. So you havea bottle of Gatorade or a
handful of water apples and getthe same litterallhy benefits in
terms of electrolytes. So whenwe look at nutritional value of
all the fruits, that's a wholeother topic to get into someday,
(30:03):
maybe the next one of these wedo. But length, the longevity of
shelf life is important. Youtalked about transporting these
things to different islands andthat you can't do that if you
only got two days of shelf lifebefore the thing starts to get
mushy. So a wax jambu is gonnalast a lot longer than that. And
Jim (30:29):
Yeah, and to interrupt, because here's the struggle I
have as a producer, right, andtrying to decide what the grow
is if there's no market, right,to me, it feels like the whole
effort that would be required inorder to grow a market and to
share awareness about somethingfeels like is this massive
hurdle. I mean, I think itprobably helps to have a chef in
(30:50):
the family or a number of chefsin a network that could help get
the word out and change pallets.
But tell me, am I wrong, thatit's not that big, a big a
hurdle? Or is it? You know,what's the best way to make that
happen?
Ken Love (31:02):
I mean, you have to you have to work it. I mean,
Jim (31:04):
How does that work? They're approachable? Like, I feel like
when we were doing that, andtaking these fruits, we went to
a lot of the chefs in Honolulu.
I mean, I used to bug the hellout of Alan Wong you know, that
to try this, to try that.
Sending boxes of stuff to Roy,you know, and Peter Merriman and
(31:24):
I go back along those all thoseguys and Sam Choy and I were
born about a week apart fromeach other. So we, we've I've
known Sam for over 35-40 yearsalready. So the educational
part, maybe it's just me, but Idon't think that's difficult for
people to do because chefs arevery open to that. There we have
(31:48):
chefs meeting every month on, onthe Big Island so people are
always welcome. You havesomething you want to talk
about, come on in and do it.
Contact me. You can contact ChefPaul Herrlein at Hawaii
Community College, at Palmanuiin Kona. You can try to find
some of the chefs on Oahu, thebig name chefs. I mean, if you
(32:10):
go to Ed Kenny and Alan Wong,they they want to know what
you're growing. They want toknow what doesn't mean, they're
going to buy it, but they wantto know. And give them some
vegetables. Don't be afraid to,you know, "Here, try some of my
mountain apples or wax jambu orwater apples" or whatever it is.
(32:34):
And they're approachable. Imean, you can bottles, you're
taking care of it. Yeah.
I would be nervous or wouldn'teven know how to approach Alan
Wong. But
Ken Love (32:51):
You walk up to, Alan's a great guy. Lee Anne Wong on
Maui, I mean Peter Merriman's onMaui most of the time. So
there's chefs on every islandthat are used to that. And even
if those name chefs aren't inthe, in the restaurant, the
famous guys, there's somebodydoing the work in those
(33:12):
restaurants. So you go into therestaurant in the morning and
say, I'd like to leave this forthe chef and my cards in the
box. I Peter Merriman alwaystold stories, how this lady kept
go, was showing up at the backdoor of his restaurant in Waimea
every day and, and he pretendedhe wasn't him. And "I don't know
(33:35):
when he's coming in" and finallysaid, "Well, I just want to give
him some some, some basil." Andhe said, "Well, I know we don't
need basil, we need tomatoes."So she went home and started
growing tomatoes. Andfortunately in Waimea, that's
pretty easy to do. Gettingtomatoes in Kona is another
(33:57):
story. But it's it's knowing notonly knowing the markets that
are there, but finding a market.
So it could be if you're workingwith wholesalers, like our
wholesaler Adaptations, findingout what they do want, you know,
I mean, Well, I've got I've gottwo acres I mean, what should I
grow? I usually, when I when Iget asked that which is like
(34:21):
weekly, say "Well, what do youlike to eat?" "Well what do you
mean, what do I like to eat?""Well, you got two acres, you
got to grow something what doyou want to eat?" "I don't
know." Well, I can't decide foryou. You have to decide for
yourself, what you're going togrow, what you're going to
market, what you're going tocook with or make value added
(34:42):
products from. You know, you'vegot lots of choices. I mean, we
have 1500 species, you knowaround here to work with so
you've got you've got a lot ofchoices in you know, talking.
(35:02):
The more people you talk to interms of chefs, wholesalers, you
can go right to Foodland, youcan go right to Suisan, you can
go right to D. Otani or strongarm, I, Armstrong Produce. Oops,
it's like my favorite slipthere. You have to do the work.
(35:25):
Nobody's gonna sit and tell yousomething and make it easy. And
then said, Oh, I'm going toneed, we're going to need, let's
say, mountain apples or lettuce.
You know, we need lots ofromaine lettuce. Well, by the
time you're you go back thereand have all this romaine
(35:46):
lettuce when we got that threeyears ago, you know? I mean,
what do you got? Now we need we,you know, we need tree tomatoes.
Oh, I don't have any of those.
Well, it's back to the stuff. Soyou have to diversify. I mean, I
like to diversify by month, notjust two or three crops, but
(36:07):
basically 12 crops. Because if Ilike to blow one off and go to
Japan for a month, I don't wantto have to worry about it. But I
want to fruit in the month club.
You know, that way, there'salways going to be some overlap,
there's always going to be someincome. You know, rather than
(36:29):
then having everything fall bythe wayside. The people who only
have Kona coffee are hurtingwith all the coffee leave rust
and the coffee berry borer
Jim (36:39):
Fruit of the Month Club strikes me as a great idea for a
couple of reasons. Right? It's,if that's a real thing, right,
you could introduce some ofthese fruits that you're talkinʻ
about through you're Fruit ofthe Month Club to get people to
know about them and interested.
Yeah, yeah. Is that actuallysomething you do is fruit of the
month club?
Ken Love (36:55):
No, no, not at all. I mean, Well, I just grow things.
So that every month there'ssomething different. And people
know to stop by our Saturdayfruit stand and see what my wife
has that's new this week. Idon't even keep up with what she
harvests sometimes. I'm too busylooking at the new stuff, or
(37:19):
more, more seeds. So ourgreenhouse has, at any one time,
you know, 10 crops in it thathave some kind of potential for
the future.
Jim (37:34):
That's I think one of the tougher things for some
producers is fruit trees andtrees in general, right is you
have to have to be more patient.
You don't, you have to wait afew years, right, so before we
even know what you have, somaybe it's good.
Ken Love (37:50):
That's exactly right.
Now, there are some things andwell, bananas are quick, figs
are very quick. You know, youhave a papaya is very quick. So
you have things like that whereyou only have to wait one or two
years. And then you havemangosteen and jaboticaba, it's
like Rip Van Winkle. You mightas well just go to sleep for 20
years. It takes time to makesure those things are going to
(38:19):
develop. But you know, Mr.
Takashibu, my teacher wasplanting mangosteen seeds in at
98. You know, and these aregoing to be 20 years to produce?
You plant for generations. Likein Japan and the UK there's
(38:41):
forests where they plant treesto fix the churches in the
temples every four or 500 years.
So we we have to think in termsof the generations. If it's not
for us, I mean, people gottaeat. If we thought about 50
years ago, all of this wouldn'tbe such an issue now, the
(39:07):
sustainability or selfsustainability for the State.
Jim (39:12):
I think there's a saying there. I'm trying to remember
the quote, so maybe I'll look itup after this. And maybe, maybe,
Ken Love (39:20):
You know, the best time to plant a tree, you know,
yesterday. So it's all of those.
Yeah, there's there's a few likethat and it's worth taking them
all to heart. I think. That theidea is to do something and
whether or not it's right orwrong, it's it's something you
(39:41):
know. And in terms of agplanting, something is better
than nothing. So a lot of timespeople will spend three years
deciding what to plant. Well, inthat three years they could have
got been halfway there. Soplant, plant different things
now. You can always take ʻem outand replant ʻem. Or you can
(40:05):
always work to find markets forʻem. Some things like FarmLink
and some, some of the otherproducers I know on this island
or the Big Island, they justwant something to make pickles
with, you know, they want topickle. Not just mango, but
they'll pickle anything. Youknow, other people want to make
(40:29):
jelly from anything. We take afruit like bilimbi, which is a
extremely sour starfruitrelative, and you juice that.
It's 86% moisture so you get alot of liquid. And then you have
it's about 6% acid. So you canmake hot and sour soup, you can
(40:51):
make salad dressing, we makemango chutney with it. It's
endless what you can do with it.
So utilizing these fruit forsomething outside of the in room
amenity basket, and the buffetline are, is what's important. I
mean, it's got to start movingforward at a faster rate. You
(41:18):
know, we've got to make things alittle bit easier for the next
generation. And the generationcaught in the middle. It's not
like this generation and thatgeneration, there's all kinds of
middle folks. And they're kindof like they're pulled in both
(41:38):
directions.
Jim (41:40):
And the Seeds of Wellbeing project right, is funded to look
at some of the stressors ofthose ag producers. And what we
found is the younger ones,especially, are are more
stressed. So any suggestions oradvice you'd want to share with
those younger farmers?
Ken Love (41:56):
Stressed because, why are they stressed?
Jim (41:59):
Financially funding markets funding labor, just the name a
few. Pests, pests and diseasepressures.
Ken Love (42:07):
We solved a lot of that by communications, you
know, and and stressing the needfor better communications
between farmers, chefs,wholesalers, ranchers,
fishermen. We need more of thosetypes of conferences. And, the
(42:28):
same guy Kent Fleming I talkedabout who did the cost to
production studies and taught AgEcon put together a lot of these
conferences and that I helpedhim do in the in the 90s and
early 2000s. And when heretired, that was it. So we need
(42:50):
to do a lot of those becausethose taught certain
communication skills betweenfarmers and ranchers. Those also
made introduction because PeterMerriman talked up there, Sam
Choy talked up there, and hungaround so that those growers and
(43:12):
chefs had a chance to interactwith them. You know, Alan Wong
and Lee Anne Wong would come toa conference, you know, and talk
to people so that they could see"What do you what do you have,
you know, I mean, what we growthis are you interested" and no
but we would be interested inthis or Lee Anne would be
interested in that. Thecommunications was there and so
(43:37):
I think having that is isreally, really important. And
getting UH to sponsor thoseconferences, getting the money
to hold those conferences. Imean, we this is our gonna be
our 33rd year, it'll be on aOahu sometime in October perhaps
(44:01):
at at University of Hawaii, WestOahu, I think is where the
confer, I'm not 100% surebecause they're still trying to
work out the details but wewon't have the chef's there.
This is just fruit growingconference and a little bit on
(44:23):
nutrition and wellbeing andhealth this year.
Jim (44:29):
More communication and more communication with chefs and and
Ken Love (44:34):
wholesalers food
Jim (44:39):
distributors got it.
Ken Love (44:40):
I like to talk about food, huh?
Jim (44:44):
and grow and make sure you're growing something that
you love, right? makes all thedifference.
Ken Love (44:49):
Obviously you and I like to eat, so.
Jim (44:51):
No, no problem
there. So one last thing I
noticed that you referencedJapan a few times. And so just
wondering what the connectionfor you there is and how that
evolved and how that's evolving.
Ken Love (45:07):
I got, I got sent there by AP about the same, it
might have been the same year Ifirst came to Hawaii in the very
early 80s, maybe 1980 or 81. AndI got hooked on that too. And
(45:27):
I've been back every, I've spenttwo or three months there a year
from that 1981 to 2019 when thepandemic stopped everything. And
so now I'm a little I'm so busyteaching the food preservation
(45:49):
systems or something to do withag that as soon as I get two
free weeks I'm out of here man.
I'm in Tokyo I gotta goshopping. You know, people think
it's so expensive there. No,it's way cheaper than Hawaii,
especially for agriculturerelated tools. So cut and hold
pickers are 180 bucks in Konaand 27 at the home centers in
(46:12):
Japan, you know, outside ofTokyo. So, my, my, my really
good pruners are like eightbucks there and theyʻre 70 some
dollars here. It's thedifference is is is pretty
unbelievable. So yeah, I gottago. Iʻm running out everything.
Even my 100% soba noodles, youknow,
Jim (46:39):
Bring bring an extra empty suitcase with you right, to
fill.
Ken Love (46:42):
Um, I just buy another one there because those are so
cheap, but they the wheelshappen to stay on when you buy a
suitcase in Japan instead offall off. Even, you know, one
trip on Hawaiian Airlines, yournew suitcase for Macy's or Ross
or something is in pieces, butnot the ones from Japan. So I
(47:04):
you know, what can I say?
Jim (47:07):
But if there's anything else you'd like to share with
our audience,
Ken Love (47:10):
I mean, I do a lot of things that UH says not to do,
you know, in terms of pruningpractices, in terms of
irrigation, in terms offertilizing. So that's those
(47:30):
three main things. I mean,everybody says water at the tree
line, I never water at the treeline. You know, for the first
three, four years, if I plantthis small seedling tree, or
grafted tree, you know, that'smaybe two, three feet tall. I
water right close to the trunk.
Oh, you will rot everything out.
(47:54):
No, I don't rot everything out.
I just give it a little bit ofwater every day rain or shine.
But it may be three minutes ofwater, but they like the
regularity. What we found, thatafter five years of doing that,
that getting that water rightthere, yeah, the roots don't go
out but that much, but you have15 times the root mass. So then
(48:17):
you move the water out overoverhead past the tree line, and
you have 15 times the roots, or8 to 15 times depending on the
species of roots moving out. Sothat was a big difference we
found I mean. My new farm iseight years old and people can't
(48:42):
believe the size of the treeshere because we've done it that
way. Water is life. People don'tirrigate here, even in wet,
wetter areas, they don'tirrigate. And the trees are very
stressed when they had that. Youwater for production as well as
to keep trees alive. So if youwant to have good water, you
(49:02):
want to have good production,then you got to have, you got to
have water. Yeah, no, I spendabout I don't know, not quite
$500 a month for water, butpretty close.
Jim (49:20):
Yeah. And are these techniques that you learn from a
teacher that you had or justexperience?
Ken Love (49:25):
This just experience mostly. Well, I won't, I
shouldn't say that. I meanpruning techniques all came from
studying in Japan and, andIndia. I lecture at the two
universities in India and threein Japan. So a lot of that's
been been reinforced over thelast 30 years to 40 years
(49:50):
already. Man it goes by quick,don't blink. That's what I
advise everybody. Don't blinkman, itʻs just like, real quick.
Jim (49:59):
I think in Hawaii we are lucky enough to have you as a
resource on the Big Island onSaturdays it sounds like, at
Love, Love Family Farms and alsoon the Facebook group anywhere.
I see you as one of the thefrequent responders and sharers
of knowledge there.
Ken Love (50:17):
Yeah, I try. The other thing it was a pruning too is
that Mr. Takashibu was, healways said "It takes guts to
prune." And which it does,you've been watching this tree
grow for 10 years and then youwhacked the top of it off. I
(50:38):
mean, it just scares the hellout of people. Richard Campbell,
from Florida who has many mangopruning videos out. I mean he's
really well known working heʻsworked with mangoes, and
previously the curator atFairchild Tropical Garden or he,
(51:04):
it takes guts to prune as hewhacks this beautiful mango tree
down to next to nothing. Andthen, you know, a couple minutes
later, you see how the treesfilled out next year with 8
million mangoes on a tree thatyou can touch the top both. And
so there's, there's these sortsof tricks that need to be
(51:25):
learned. And not everything thatwe in Hawaii applies elsewhere.
And not everything fromelsewhere applies to Hawaii. Not
but not everything that I do onthe Big Island applies to Kauai.
I mean we have everymicroclimate imaginable in this
state and they all needsomething different. So you have
(51:52):
to do the work, you have to knowyour farm, you have to know your
trees. The same orange tree thatI worked with in Kona will not
perform the same way where youare. As an example, so at our,
we have these two acrerepositories. Now I took a
kampong mauve sugar apple fromKauai which produces nice you
(52:16):
know, purple fruit on likecheromoya relative. And we
planted on Molokai and they weretwice the size. Grafted from the
same source tree. Beautifulfruit. You know, and in Kona,
nothing. Little dried up hardpebbles of nothing. Never had a
(52:40):
fruit here in eight years, wherewe get all these beautiful fruit
on on Kauai and Molokai and allfrom the same source. So what
explains that? Well, you know,microclimate.
Jim (52:57):
Ss does it really, does it really just have to come down to
trial and error, and you justyou won't know until you try?
Ken Love (53:03):
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you, we keep telling
people just go see what yourneighbor has. "Well, I don't
know my neighbor." Well lookover the damn fence. You know, I
mean, you you got to do somework. I cannot tell you what
it's and it's the same thinghere in Kona, I mean, I plant
(53:24):
things that the top part of myfarm and the bottom of my farm,
and they respond differently.
Jim (53:31):
We hope you've enjoyed this talk story with Ken love and we
thank him for the time andinformation he shared about
growing tropical fruit inHawaii. For even more
information about growing foodin Hawaii please check the show
notes for links to his 90 minuteHilo County Farm Bureau
presentation. Mahalo.
Ken Love (53:46):
The other thing we used to do is with bananas, and
I can leave you with this, it'skind of funny, is that the
bananas are you know, you cutyour bananas up and you take
them to your customer neat inthe box. And I can remember
taking them to one of my cheffriends on the whole, you know,
rack of bananas that you know,four foot long five foot long
(54:10):
rack of bananas. And I have ittied up on a teepee in the back
of my truck and "Bill come onand look at this." So it was
chef Trask and he comes outthere. "What the hell am I gonna
do with that?" "You're gonna putit on the buffet line." "Are you
nuts?" "Yeah, let's just put itout there and see what happens.
(54:31):
I won't even charge you for it.
You can just have this rack ofbananas." He just shakes his
head, helps me carry it in. We
put it, this is about 5 (54:40):
30 in the morning before the buffet
line opens, and we put it in themiddle of the table and then
they start putting all thedishes around it. People
couldn't get to eat breakfastthat morning because everybody
was in front of it getting theirpicture taken with the rack of
(55:00):
bananas. So you these kinds ofchanges. Now when you walk
through to your room at FourSeasons, they have all these
wooden teepees with racks ofbananas on them just hanging
there. And people are welcome tojust take a banana off and eat
it if it's ripe, or the kidspush him and play with them. And
(55:21):
they come in different colors,it can see blue bananas and red
Jim (55:24):
That's, that's a good story. I mean, it's another
bananas, and of course, yellowand slightly orange bananas.
That makes a difference. So itbecomes what we do with the
fruit becomes part of the wholevisitor industry as well. I
mean, there's everything isconnected to everything else.
And so you have to look at thatas as as well. And bananas are a
(55:46):
good example of that.
example of a theme that I'mhearing from you, which is be,
be fearless, right? And trysomething and, and see what
happens and
Ken Love (55:58):
Give stuff away. I mean, it's worth it to get to
get a movement started, youknow, I mean. You know, to get
to give that was the best bunchof bananas. And you know, I
mean, I wasn't exactly well todo then, well, I'm still not,
but back then it was even harderto ask, "Do I really want to
(56:21):
give these bananas away toBill?" It was the best thing I
ever made because it cut mylabor time in half. I didn't
have to buy boxes, you know, orgo get used boxes. And he just
just bring the rack in, youknow, bring me three racks and
then you want it to come for twoweeks and it was great. It just
(56:44):
made it made a change. Nice, youknow, was he was he was at the
first farmers chef conferencehere in ʻ92 when we had a farmer
chef conference. All of thesethings we need to revitalize now
because it's it's a newgeneration of growers really,
(57:07):
because the old timers like me,don't do it anymore, or can't
physically do it. And you've gota new generation that is more
interested, they want to getout. They want to do things
where we kind of just sort offell into it.
Jim (57:26):
The intention of this podcast series is to create a
safe space for respectful andinclusive dialogue. With people
from across a broad and diversespectrum involved in growing and
making accessible the food weshare together. A diversity of
voices, perspectives andexperiences can serve to deepen
mutual understanding, to sparkcreative problem solving and
(57:47):
provide insight into thecomplexities of our agricultural
system. If you our listenershave experiences with Hawaii
agricultural ecosystems, fromsmall holder farms to large even
including multinationalagricultural industrial
companies, or anywhere inbetween and you would like to
share your story, please contactus. We welcome your voices and
(58:08):
perspectives
The views, information or opinions expressed in this
episode are solely those ofindividuals involved and do not
necessarily represent those ofthe University of Hawaii College
of Tropical Agriculture andHuman Resources, our funders, or
any of the organizationsaffiliated with this project
(00:23):
Welcome to a Seeds of Wellbeing"Experts in the Field" podcast
featuring people working intheir fields of expertise to
provide support for agricultureproducers in Hawaii, in the
United States and in some casesaround the world. These podcasts
were made possible by a grantfrom the University of Hawaii
College of Tropical Agricultureand Human Resources, also known
as CTAHR, And the Seeds ofWellbeing or SOW project, and is
(00:47):
supported by a grant from the USDepartment of Agriculture,
National Institute of Food andAgriculture, and the Hawaii
Department of Agriculture.
Aloha! We're here with, on Seedsof Wellbeing podcast and talking
to Ken Love, who's the ExecutiveDirector of Hawaii Tropical
Fruit Growers, and Hawaii MasterFood Preservers. Tropical Fruit
(01:09):
Growers has a membership ofabout 2000 or more people and a
Facebook group which was startedin 2009 that now has 22.6K
members and all over the world.
And I think Ken's also beeninvolved in 33 years of annual
conferences related to tropicalfruit that have been held in
Hawaii, and is the owner of LoveFamily Farms in Captain Cook,
(01:32):
which is near Kona on the BigIsland of Hawaii. So welcome
Ken, thanks for coming on theshow.
Ken Love (01:40):
Oh no, no problem.
Jim (01:43):
It is likely that anyone interested in or involved in
growing fruit in Hawaii hasheard the name of Ken Love from
the Big Island of Hawaii. Inthis episode, we speak with Ken
about how he became the localpundit on tropical fruit, some
thoughts on the most profitablefruits to grow and why, the
importance of connecting withlocal chefs, the Hawaii Master
Fruit Preservers program, andother musings from this local
(02:06):
icon.
Ken Love (02:08):
I keep hearing that about being the owner of Love
Family Farms, but I think it'smuch more. It's grown out of
being a personal farm. Were, Ikind of view us as the mother
repository where Hawaii tropicalfruit growers has two acres on
every island, including Lanai,and we feed germ plasm into
(02:28):
those locations, in order forour membership to be able to get
plant material and you know anddevelop economically beneficial
crops. And the people ask me allthe time, "Well what's your
job?" and I geez, I gottascratch my beard and go I'm not
(02:50):
100% sure. I try to help farmersmake money, you know, I mean,
and, and become moresustainable. And that's usually
through germplasm and or choicesor market development. I mean,
when we were talking before youhad mentioned about you know,
where we where we go from hereand it's, new farmers have
(03:12):
choices, you know. There's a lotof new farmer grant money and
keep pushing people to do this,that and the other thing. Why UH
picks the most labor intensivecrops to promote is just
absolutely beyond me andabsolutely absurd. If you look
at the USDA AgriculturalStatistics Service, I mean, I'm
(03:32):
not going to grow coffee or macnuts or cacao anymore. I mean,
it's,you go through all theprocesses of fermentation and,
and picking things by hand, youknow, other than oranges. We
import 22 million pounds oforanges. It's not, I just picked
the orange off the tree, putthem in the box and send the box
(03:54):
to the wholesaler. It's a wholelot easier than having to pick
stuff, ferment it, wash it, dryit, you know, process it, husk
it, peel it, you know. Just pickthe oranges and send them out.
Jim (10:32):
could sell well just on the islands in Hawaii or?
Ken Love (10:51):
Yeah, absolutely. We started with Chef Paul at our
culinary school, which is nowPalmanui, but it just used to be
what you know, West HawaiiCommunity College. Chef Paul
Heerlein had the studentsutilize, we had a 12 Trees
project in ʻ05 I think it was.
And to make a long story short,the students were required to
(11:15):
utilize a locally grown tropicalfruit in each public luncheon
two days, three days a week.
Those students who are now chefsin various restaurants and
hotels around the State rememberthat and now they're buying more
(11:36):
of those locally grown tropicalfruit. So we've seen that
progression of that firsteducation from you know, almost
almost, what 20 years ago, Ithink ʻ05 to ʻ10, yeah so almost
20 years ago, where it's reallymade quite a difference and its
(11:57):
growers have been able toincrease the marketable crop.
I've done the same thing byproviding material to grocery
stores like Choice Mart inCaptain Cook. I like to use
things that are close to mebecause I don't like to drive
that much. So we used ChoiceMart in Captain Cook and they
were test marketing a lot of thefruit I mean that we did. Even
(12:19):
in terms of finding you know,price point. I mean we can base
something on an accurate cost ofproduction which, if I had one
pet peeve, itʻs that UH neverreplaced Dr. Kent Fleming for
teaching costs of production tofarmers. And there's, the
positions aren't here or theydon't hold and so there has to
(12:43):
be somebody to teach growerscost of production. When I go,
it's no fun for me to go tofarmers markets when I see 10
tangerines for $1, you know? SixMeyer lemons for $1? It costs
you 27 cents to produce one ofthem. It's not real sustainable
when you grow six, sell them atsix for $1.
Jim (13:07):
Well if it helps I know GoFarm is actually pushing cost
of production in there AgXcelquite a bit and it's, it's a lot
of work but it it opens, it'seye opening, right?
Ken Love (13:17):
Yep. No, exactly goFarms, Farmlink and Mao are
all, all get it, you know. Imean, these are great groups
that just get it and get what ittakes to to be able to help
small farmers becomesustainable.
Jim (13:34):
Yep. Well tell me about.
Tell us about how HawaiiTropical Fruit Growers started
and maybe the more recentdevelopment and creation of
Hawaii Master Food Preservers.
Just give us some of the historyis, like how did you get to
Hawaii and why the Big Islandand what give us a little bit of
your journey and the founding ofthose outfits.
Ken Love (13:56):
Yeah, I got sent here in, this was ʻ81 or something or
ʻ82. I was with Associated Pressand I got sent here to
photograph a number of things ondifferent islands and that was
the morning the volcano blew offand it was always kind of a
(14:18):
dream. In fact, if you looked atthe recent eruption from about
three months ago the New YorkTimes couldn't get the picture
in time of the eruption fromthree, four, what was it a month
ago or so? I can't I can'tremember exactly. But they used
(14:42):
my picture from 1983 and saidwhat it was. I'd been there. My
name was in The New York Timesyou know under the photo ref you
know, photo by Ken loveAssociated Press, and it was
from 1983. But I, people didn'tsee the date so I was getting
(15:02):
all these phone calls and it wasit was it was pretty funny
anyway. So I got here to do thatkind of stuff and went over to
Kona and just sort of got hookedon that. Came back in that
November to photograph the KonaCoffee Festival and really got
(15:25):
hooked on it and said that I'mgoing to stay here. And it was
number of years before we gothere, but I bought a farm long
before we moved.
Jim (15:38):
Was that a coffee farm?
Ken Love (15:40):
Yeah, coffee, but actually we started with 26
acres with my partner, Mr.
Takashiva, and then went downto, he sold off his 16 and then
I had my 10, which I eventuallysold off, and now I'm down to
two. The older I get, thesmaller the farm gets so I'll be
(16:00):
in a little condo in a year ortwo
acres with 300 species on itnow. And this provides that germ
plasm again, so that we have allthese unusual cultivars and
varieties of tropical fruit inorder to clone it and send it to
(16:21):
fruit growers. For example, wehave 250 types of figs right
now. About 10 types of oranges.
I can't wait maybe six, eighttypes of durian. There really
hasn't been a lot of research ofwhat elevation, what
(16:43):
microclimates, what type ofsoils are required for specific
things. So all we can do iscontinue to work to, to get that
information. And to be able toprovide different things to
growers. We'll try these threetypes of oranges see what works
best for you.
Jim (17:04):
And is that is that data mostly available? Are they
mostly available through yourFacebook or through that being a
member? Or what's the best wayto access that data?
Ken Love (17:13):
Being involved with with the Fruit Growers, and we
have chapters and chapterpresidents on each island. All
that information is on htfg.org.
So Hawaii tropical fruit growersorg
Jim (17:31):
And what's what caused you to launch that formerly, HTFG?
Ken Love (17:35):
Well, I didn't I wasn't involved. That was done
Jim (17:38):
Nice, and membership is open to anyone, or any certain
in 1989. And it was I don't knowhow many 14-15 members at that
at that time. And I got involvedI think in 1995-96. And said,
well, it could be a lot morethan this. And I I kind of had a
problem with the way things weredone in Hilo where the
(18:01):
organization was run out ofbecause they would get federal
money to promote the crops inHawaii, which was usually lychee
and rambutan and things wedidn't really grow that much of
in Kona. Like why aren't youpromoting the mangoes and
(18:22):
avocados, things that we growhere? Well wasn't they didn't
grow them so they didn't promotethem. So I got involved in the
organization and things changedafter that and all of a sudden
we have 2000 members on on everyisland. And we try to be
(18:44):
equitable and we try to helpsmall backyard growers as well
as larger commercial growers. Imean it's it's said is a
Japanese expression that you ifyou try to serve everyone, you
can't stand your own ground.
Well, sometimes it gets kind ofwobbly but so far we've been
(19:05):
trying to balance things so thatwe make things available to
everyone. Try to be equitable.
requirements to be a member?
Ken Love (19:22):
Nope. Just our mission is to promote any and all
aspects of tropical fruit, ofgrowing and marketing tropical
fruit in the State of Hawaii. Wedon't really care if you're
growing one or two trees or or5000 trees. You had asked me to
(19:42):
mention the Hawaii Master FoodPreservers too, which grew out
of Hawaii Tropical FruitGrowers, at least in Hawaii.
Every other State the MasterFood Preservers are a function
of university extension. Andwhen I trained in California and
brought the program back UHwasn't interested unless I got
(20:04):
ʻum a big grant and I didn'twant to lose that 30% and so we
wrote the grant for the FruitGrowers and started it. And now
we, weʻre always looking forfunding to do more classes but
we have kitchens, usablekitchens, in Kona, Maui, Hawaii,
(20:28):
Molokai and Lanai. So we've donelots of classes on every island
except Oahu, because they'restill working on their rail.
Where we teach it in Hilo, whichstarts next Thursday actually,
the parking is against theMatson yard. And so you can see
(20:52):
all the trucks coming in andbeing loaded into containers and
the boat is 50 feet from where Ipark. And in that 50 foot area,
we see the trucks with theproduce sitting in the sun for
three hours before they getloaded into a container. And you
(21:13):
know, no wonder by the time theyget there they're pretty bad.
The people have no concept of ofwhat they're doing. They have no
concept of postharvest. BobPaull is probably the best
postharvest guy in the world andnobody listens to him. I mean,
he saved Bulgaria you know interms of assisting their
(21:39):
companies learn aboutpostharvest. And it's the same
thing with value added. So whenI talk about value added I'm not
just talking about jams andjellies. Talking about value
added begins in the field. Whenyou harvest jaboticaba or
surinam cherry or most of thesmall fruit that we are
(22:01):
developing markets for, or havebeen developing markets just in
the last 10 years. Even guava,you know, which is a lot longer.
If you take those and you putthem in a box, put the box in
the truck and then you go to adifferent tree, load up another
box, put that in the truck, thatthose guava are gonna last two
(22:24):
days, three days. When weharvest, we take it we load it
into a cooler, pre chilledcooler at the base of the tree
and then put the cooler in theshade until we're ready to drive
back to Hilo. The ideal way toharvest jaboticaba and surinam
(22:44):
cherry is to load it in aclamshell, put that clamshell in
the cooler, and then take thatcooler back to the the shed. You
get a week instead of threedays. So as a chef, or as a
produce manager, I want to buystuff from you that has the
longest shelf life possible. Anduntil farmers get that post
(23:10):
harvest aspect of helping yourcustomers provide a better
product to their customers youknow, we're not really going to
move forward. And so that'sthat's really essential. I mean,
the things that that, these arethe things that UH needs to
(23:31):
teach, you know. UH also needsto teach things like with,
theyʻre doing a pretty good jobof explaining avocado lace bug
and what it takes to combatavocado layce bug. The problem
is that how many orchards,avocado orchards are nice, neat
(23:55):
orchards with trees pruned toeight feet or 10 feet, maybe one
or two. Our trees are 40 or 50feet and these people have been
harvesting them for 60 years andhowever harvest however they
harvest them, it doesn't matter.
That's what they've been doingand these are the avocados in
the marketplace, and now they'renot getting them because the
(24:15):
lace bugs defoliated the tree.
Everythingʻs sunburned and comesdown with big blotches when they
harvest it, so it's useless. Soteach people how to prune their
trees properly. You've got ifit's one tree. If you want to
learn how to harvest avocadoscome to my farm. I'm the only
(24:37):
one you're going to hear bitchabout having to bend over to
harvest avocados. The trees arethat low and we get 150 of them
on on 10 by 15 foot trees everyyear. "Well take you could get a
lot more if your trees werehigher." Yeah, but how much
time? I mean we have to think interms of cost of of labor. So I
(25:01):
can walk around and pick thattree in 15 minutes. And when
you're using a stick to have toget one avocado, and then clip
the stem off that avocado,you've quadrupled the time it
takes to harvest that. But howmuch is labor worth?
Jim (25:19):
Yeah, going back to your cost of production reminders.
That's kind of key to knowing ifit makes sense, right? Is how
does that net out for your cost.
Iʻve heard you talk about someprops that you think are maybe
up and coming so I'm thinking ofpeople that are either doing
permaculture or looking to growsome tropical fruit on the
(25:40):
islands. Any thoughts orsuggestions on...
Ken Love (25:44):
I mean I think first you have to decide whether you
want to fit in to something likewe were talking about grow the
oranges, fit into an existingmarket, you know, and try to
focus on import substitution, ordo you want to create a new
(26:06):
market? Some of our mostsuccessful farmers on this side
like Terry Weaver with hisdragon fruit, and and what he
does with mangoes over here,kind of Yees on Maui with
mangoes. Our president of thefruit growers Mark Suiso with
Jim (26:24):
So from hearing you speak, I've heard you a few times and
Makaha Mangoes, he's a growerand aggregator both. They've
been pretty successful fittinginto either fitting into
existing markets or creating newones. I think the next step is
to take a fruit like maparng andnot just have one or two trees
(26:50):
but have 500 trees. And maprangis also known as mango plum. And
it it looks like, see if I getin there close, it's ʻbout a
little bigger than an egg but ittastes like mango plum mix. It
is fantastic. Delicious fruitthat you can get all over
(27:13):
Southeast Asia, all over theMiddle East where it's shipped
in from Thailand or Israel. Andit's just a great thing. We have
500 of them in our greenhouseright now, growing growing out,
you know that we'll have fromseed or we'll graft a bunch of
(27:36):
them too. There are someproducing trees and in Hilo.
Oscar at Fruit Growers has abunch and some of the other
growers over there. The, it'sjust that kind, there's another
one called tampoi. baccaureamacrocarpa, or like Frankie's
(27:57):
Nursery has some baccaurea rambiin Waimanalo
actually just now saying orindicating that there are a
number of fruits out there thatare really great and may perhaps
be a lot better than the onesthat you hear more commonly
about, like mountain apple ormangosteen, right. And but there
(28:19):
are all these other fruits thatperhaps we should be looking at
and making markets or helpingfound or stir up markets to get
interested in because, you know,that sounds like there, you see
them as easier to grow. tastebetter. Is that Is that a fair
statement?
Ken Love (28:35):
Yeah, I mean that well, it's it's not only that
it's learning about more ofthem. So let me take mountain
apple since you mentioned it.
Mountain appleʻs a great fruit.
I love to eat mountain apple,but you got two days of shelf
life. Mountain apples issyzygium malaccense is the
botanic name. Take syzygiumsamargenses which is called wax
(28:57):
apple or wax jambu or justjambu, tastes almost the same,
usually a little bit sweeterthan mountain apple, and it
lasts a week, 10 days. So againthinking in terms of and it
produces and grows very quickly,even more than mountain apple,
and it's easier to maintain andkeep pruned than then mountain
(29:19):
apple. So and then you havejambu air or water apple,
syzygium aqueum, which isanother one. So you have these
three cousins that that are fordifferent markets. syzygium
(29:40):
aqueum given to women afterchildbirth in Malaysia because
of the electrolytes. So you havea bottle of Gatorade or a
handful of water apples and getthe same litterallhy benefits in
terms of electrolytes. So whenwe look at nutritional value of
all the fruits, that's a wholeother topic to get into someday,
(30:03):
maybe the next one of these wedo. But length, the longevity of
shelf life is important. Youtalked about transporting these
things to different islands andthat you can't do that if you
only got two days of shelf lifebefore the thing starts to get
mushy. So a wax jambu is gonnalast a lot longer than that. And
Jim (30:29):
Yeah, and to interrupt, because here's the struggle I
have as a producer, right, andtrying to decide what the grow
is if there's no market, right,to me, it feels like the whole
effort that would be required inorder to grow a market and to
share awareness about somethingfeels like is this massive
hurdle. I mean, I think itprobably helps to have a chef in
(30:50):
the family or a number of chefsin a network that could help get
the word out and change pallets.
But tell me, am I wrong, thatit's not that big, a big a
hurdle? Or is it? You know,what's the best way to make that
happen?
Ken Love (31:02):
I mean, you have to you have to work it. I mean,
Jim (31:04):
How does that work? They're approachable? Like, I feel like
when we were doing that, andtaking these fruits, we went to
a lot of the chefs in Honolulu.
I mean, I used to bug the hellout of Alan Wong you know, that
to try this, to try that.
Sending boxes of stuff to Roy,you know, and Peter Merriman and
(31:24):
I go back along those all thoseguys and Sam Choy and I were
born about a week apart fromeach other. So we, we've I've
known Sam for over 35-40 yearsalready. So the educational
part, maybe it's just me, but Idon't think that's difficult for
people to do because chefs arevery open to that. There we have
(31:48):
chefs meeting every month on, onthe Big Island so people are
always welcome. You havesomething you want to talk
about, come on in and do it.
Contact me. You can contact ChefPaul Herrlein at Hawaii
Community College, at Palmanuiin Kona. You can try to find
some of the chefs on Oahu, thebig name chefs. I mean, if you
(32:10):
go to Ed Kenny and Alan Wong,they they want to know what
you're growing. They want toknow what doesn't mean, they're
going to buy it, but they wantto know. And give them some
vegetables. Don't be afraid to,you know, "Here, try some of my
mountain apples or wax jambu orwater apples" or whatever it is.
(32:34):
And they're approachable. Imean, you can bottles, you're
taking care of it. Yeah.
I would be nervous or wouldn'teven know how to approach Alan
Wong. But
Ken Love (32:51):
You walk up to, Alan's a great guy. Lee Anne Wong on
Maui, I mean Peter Merriman's onMaui most of the time. So
there's chefs on every islandthat are used to that. And even
if those name chefs aren't inthe, in the restaurant, the
famous guys, there's somebodydoing the work in those
(33:12):
restaurants. So you go into therestaurant in the morning and
say, I'd like to leave this forthe chef and my cards in the
box. I Peter Merriman alwaystold stories, how this lady kept
go, was showing up at the backdoor of his restaurant in Waimea
every day and, and he pretendedhe wasn't him. And "I don't know
(33:35):
when he's coming in" and finallysaid, "Well, I just want to give
him some some, some basil." Andhe said, "Well, I know we don't
need basil, we need tomatoes."So she went home and started
growing tomatoes. Andfortunately in Waimea, that's
pretty easy to do. Gettingtomatoes in Kona is another
(33:57):
story. But it's it's knowing notonly knowing the markets that
are there, but finding a market.
So it could be if you're workingwith wholesalers, like our
wholesaler Adaptations, findingout what they do want, you know,
I mean, Well, I've got I've gottwo acres I mean, what should I
grow? I usually, when I when Iget asked that which is like
(34:21):
weekly, say "Well, what do youlike to eat?" "Well what do you
mean, what do I like to eat?""Well, you got two acres, you
got to grow something what doyou want to eat?" "I don't
know." Well, I can't decide foryou. You have to decide for
yourself, what you're going togrow, what you're going to
market, what you're going tocook with or make value added
(34:42):
products from. You know, you'vegot lots of choices. I mean, we
have 1500 species, you knowaround here to work with so
you've got you've got a lot ofchoices in you know, talking.
(35:02):
The more people you talk to interms of chefs, wholesalers, you
can go right to Foodland, youcan go right to Suisan, you can
go right to D. Otani or strongarm, I, Armstrong Produce. Oops,
it's like my favorite slipthere. You have to do the work.
(35:25):
Nobody's gonna sit and tell yousomething and make it easy. And
then said, Oh, I'm going toneed, we're going to need, let's
say, mountain apples or lettuce.
You know, we need lots ofromaine lettuce. Well, by the
time you're you go back thereand have all this romaine
(35:46):
lettuce when we got that threeyears ago, you know? I mean,
what do you got? Now we need we,you know, we need tree tomatoes.
Oh, I don't have any of those.
Well, it's back to the stuff. Soyou have to diversify. I mean, I
like to diversify by month, notjust two or three crops, but
(36:07):
basically 12 crops. Because if Ilike to blow one off and go to
Japan for a month, I don't wantto have to worry about it. But I
want to fruit in the month club.
You know, that way, there'salways going to be some overlap,
there's always going to be someincome. You know, rather than
(36:29):
then having everything fall bythe wayside. The people who only
have Kona coffee are hurtingwith all the coffee leave rust
and the coffee berry borer
Jim (36:39):
Fruit of the Month Club strikes me as a great idea for a
couple of reasons. Right? It's,if that's a real thing, right,
you could introduce some ofthese fruits that you're talkinʻ
about through you're Fruit ofthe Month Club to get people to
know about them and interested.
Yeah, yeah. Is that actuallysomething you do is fruit of the
month club?
Ken Love (36:55):
No, no, not at all. I mean, Well, I just grow things.
So that every month there'ssomething different. And people
know to stop by our Saturdayfruit stand and see what my wife
has that's new this week. Idon't even keep up with what she
harvests sometimes. I'm too busylooking at the new stuff, or
(37:19):
more, more seeds. So ourgreenhouse has, at any one time,
you know, 10 crops in it thathave some kind of potential for
the future.
Jim (37:34):
That's I think one of the tougher things for some
producers is fruit trees andtrees in general, right is you
have to have to be more patient.
You don't, you have to wait afew years, right, so before we
even know what you have, somaybe it's good.
Ken Love (37:50):
That's exactly right.
Now, there are some things andwell, bananas are quick, figs
are very quick. You know, youhave a papaya is very quick. So
you have things like that whereyou only have to wait one or two
years. And then you havemangosteen and jaboticaba, it's
like Rip Van Winkle. You mightas well just go to sleep for 20
years. It takes time to makesure those things are going to
(38:19):
develop. But you know, Mr.
Takashibu, my teacher wasplanting mangosteen seeds in at
98. You know, and these aregoing to be 20 years to produce?
You plant for generations. Likein Japan and the UK there's
(38:41):
forests where they plant treesto fix the churches in the
temples every four or 500 years.
So we we have to think in termsof the generations. If it's not
for us, I mean, people gottaeat. If we thought about 50
years ago, all of this wouldn'tbe such an issue now, the
(39:07):
sustainability or selfsustainability for the State.
Jim (39:12):
I think there's a saying there. I'm trying to remember
the quote, so maybe I'll look itup after this. And maybe, maybe,
Ken Love (39:20):
You know, the best time to plant a tree, you know,
yesterday. So it's all of those.
Yeah, there's there's a few likethat and it's worth taking them
all to heart. I think. That theidea is to do something and
whether or not it's right orwrong, it's it's something you
(39:41):
know. And in terms of agplanting, something is better
than nothing. So a lot of timespeople will spend three years
deciding what to plant. Well, inthat three years they could have
got been halfway there. Soplant, plant different things
now. You can always take ʻem outand replant ʻem. Or you can
(40:05):
always work to find markets forʻem. Some things like FarmLink
and some, some of the otherproducers I know on this island
or the Big Island, they justwant something to make pickles
with, you know, they want topickle. Not just mango, but
they'll pickle anything. Youknow, other people want to make
(40:29):
jelly from anything. We take afruit like bilimbi, which is a
extremely sour starfruitrelative, and you juice that.
It's 86% moisture so you get alot of liquid. And then you have
it's about 6% acid. So you canmake hot and sour soup, you can
(40:51):
make salad dressing, we makemango chutney with it. It's
endless what you can do with it.
So utilizing these fruit forsomething outside of the in room
amenity basket, and the buffetline are, is what's important. I
mean, it's got to start movingforward at a faster rate. You
(41:18):
know, we've got to make things alittle bit easier for the next
generation. And the generationcaught in the middle. It's not
like this generation and thatgeneration, there's all kinds of
middle folks. And they're kindof like they're pulled in both
(41:38):
directions.
Jim (41:40):
And the Seeds of Wellbeing project right, is funded to look
at some of the stressors ofthose ag producers. And what we
found is the younger ones,especially, are are more
stressed. So any suggestions oradvice you'd want to share with
those younger farmers?
Ken Love (41:56):
Stressed because, why are they stressed?
Jim (41:59):
Financially funding markets funding labor, just the name a
few. Pests, pests and diseasepressures.
Ken Love (42:07):
We solved a lot of that by communications, you
know, and and stressing the needfor better communications
between farmers, chefs,wholesalers, ranchers,
fishermen. We need more of thosetypes of conferences. And, the
(42:28):
same guy Kent Fleming I talkedabout who did the cost to
production studies and taught AgEcon put together a lot of these
conferences and that I helpedhim do in the in the 90s and
early 2000s. And when heretired, that was it. So we need
(42:50):
to do a lot of those becausethose taught certain
communication skills betweenfarmers and ranchers. Those also
made introduction because PeterMerriman talked up there, Sam
Choy talked up there, and hungaround so that those growers and
(43:12):
chefs had a chance to interactwith them. You know, Alan Wong
and Lee Anne Wong would come toa conference, you know, and talk
to people so that they could see"What do you what do you have,
you know, I mean, what we growthis are you interested" and no
but we would be interested inthis or Lee Anne would be
interested in that. Thecommunications was there and so
(43:37):
I think having that is isreally, really important. And
getting UH to sponsor thoseconferences, getting the money
to hold those conferences. Imean, we this is our gonna be
our 33rd year, it'll be on aOahu sometime in October perhaps
(44:01):
at at University of Hawaii, WestOahu, I think is where the
confer, I'm not 100% surebecause they're still trying to
work out the details but wewon't have the chef's there.
This is just fruit growingconference and a little bit on
(44:23):
nutrition and wellbeing andhealth this year.
Jim (44:29):
More communication and more communication with chefs and and
Ken Love (44:34):
wholesalers food
Jim (44:39):
distributors got it.
Ken Love (44:40):
I like to talk about food, huh?
Jim (44:44):
and grow and make sure you're growing something that
you love, right? makes all thedifference.
Ken Love (44:49):
Obviously you and I like to eat, so.
Jim (44:51):
noticed that you referencedJapan a few times. And so just
wondering what the connectionfor you there is and how that
evolved and how that's evolving.
Ken Love (45:07):
I got, I got sent there by AP about the same, it
might have been the same year Ifirst came to Hawaii in the very
early 80s, maybe 1980 or 81. AndI got hooked on that too. And
(45:27):
I've been back every, I've spenttwo or three months there a year
from that 1981 to 2019 when thepandemic stopped everything. And
so now I'm a little I'm so busyteaching the food preservation
(45:49):
systems or something to do withag that as soon as I get two
free weeks I'm out of here man.
I'm in Tokyo I gotta goshopping. You know, people think
it's so expensive there. No,it's way cheaper than Hawaii,
especially for agriculturerelated tools. So cut and hold
pickers are 180 bucks in Konaand 27 at the home centers in
(46:12):
Japan, you know, outside ofTokyo. So, my, my, my really
good pruners are like eightbucks there and theyʻre 70 some
dollars here. It's thedifference is is is pretty
unbelievable. So yeah, I gottago. Iʻm running out everything.
Even my 100% soba noodles, youknow,
Jim (46:39):
Bring bring an extra empty suitcase with you right, to
fill.
Ken Love (46:42):
Um, I just buy another one there because those are so
cheap, but they the wheelshappen to stay on when you buy a
suitcase in Japan instead offall off. Even, you know, one
trip on Hawaiian Airlines, yournew suitcase for Macy's or Ross
or something is in pieces, butnot the ones from Japan. So I
(47:04):
you know, what can I say?
Jim (47:07):
But if there's anything else you'd like to share with
our audience,
Ken Love (47:10):
I mean, I do a lot of things that UH says not to do,
you know, in terms of pruningpractices, in terms of
irrigation, in terms offertilizing. So that's those
(47:30):
three main things. I mean,everybody says water at the tree
line, I never water at the treeline. You know, for the first
three, four years, if I plantthis small seedling tree, or
grafted tree, you know, that'smaybe two, three feet tall. I
water right close to the trunk.
Oh, you will rot everything out.
(47:54):
No, I don't rot everything out.
I just give it a little bit ofwater every day rain or shine.
But it may be three minutes ofwater, but they like the
regularity. What we found, thatafter five years of doing that,
that getting that water rightthere, yeah, the roots don't go
out but that much, but you have15 times the root mass. So then
(48:17):
you move the water out overoverhead past the tree line, and
you have 15 times the roots, or8 to 15 times depending on the
species of roots moving out. Sothat was a big difference we
found I mean. My new farm iseight years old and people can't
(48:42):
believe the size of the treeshere because we've done it that
way. Water is life. People don'tirrigate here, even in wet,
wetter areas, they don'tirrigate. And the trees are very
stressed when they had that. Youwater for production as well as
to keep trees alive. So if youwant to have good water, you
(49:02):
want to have good production,then you got to have, you got to
have water. Yeah, no, I spendabout I don't know, not quite
$500 a month for water, butpretty close.
Jim (49:20):
Yeah. And are these techniques that you learn from a
teacher that you had or justexperience?
Ken Love (49:25):
This just experience mostly. Well, I won't, I
shouldn't say that. I meanpruning techniques all came from
studying in Japan and, andIndia. I lecture at the two
universities in India and threein Japan. So a lot of that's
been been reinforced over thelast 30 years to 40 years
(49:50):
already. Man it goes by quick,don't blink. That's what I
advise everybody. Don't blinkman, itʻs just like, real quick.
Jim (49:59):
I think in Hawaii we are lucky enough to have you as a
resource on the Big Island onSaturdays it sounds like, at
Love, Love Family Farms and alsoon the Facebook group anywhere.
I see you as one of the thefrequent responders and sharers
of knowledge there.
Ken Love (50:17):
Yeah, I try. The other thing it was a pruning too is
that Mr. Takashibu was, healways said "It takes guts to
prune." And which it does,you've been watching this tree
grow for 10 years and then youwhacked the top of it off. I
(50:38):
mean, it just scares the hellout of people. Richard Campbell,
from Florida who has many mangopruning videos out. I mean he's
really well known working heʻsworked with mangoes, and
previously the curator atFairchild Tropical Garden or he,
(51:04):
it takes guts to prune as hewhacks this beautiful mango tree
down to next to nothing. Andthen, you know, a couple minutes
later, you see how the treesfilled out next year with 8
million mangoes on a tree thatyou can touch the top both. And
so there's, there's these sortsof tricks that need to be
(51:25):
learned. And not everything thatwe in Hawaii applies elsewhere.
And not everything fromelsewhere applies to Hawaii. Not
but not everything that I do onthe Big Island applies to Kauai.
I mean we have everymicroclimate imaginable in this
state and they all needsomething different. So you have
(51:52):
to do the work, you have to knowyour farm, you have to know your
trees. The same orange tree thatI worked with in Kona will not
perform the same way where youare. As an example, so at our,
we have these two acrerepositories. Now I took a
kampong mauve sugar apple fromKauai which produces nice you
(52:16):
know, purple fruit on likecheromoya relative. And we
planted on Molokai and they weretwice the size. Grafted from the
same source tree. Beautifulfruit. You know, and in Kona,
nothing. Little dried up hardpebbles of nothing. Never had a
(52:40):
fruit here in eight years, wherewe get all these beautiful fruit
on on Kauai and Molokai and allfrom the same source. So what
explains that? Well, you know,microclimate.
Jim (52:57):
Ss does it really, does it really just have to come down to
trial and error, and you justyou won't know until you try?
Ken Love (53:03):
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you, we keep telling
people just go see what yourneighbor has. "Well, I don't
know my neighbor." Well lookover the damn fence. You know, I
mean, you you got to do somework. I cannot tell you what
it's and it's the same thinghere in Kona, I mean, I plant
(53:24):
things that the top part of myfarm and the bottom of my farm,
and they respond differently.
Jim (53:31):
We hope you've enjoyed this talk story with Ken love and we
thank him for the time andinformation he shared about
growing tropical fruit inHawaii. For even more
information about growing foodin Hawaii please check the show
notes for links to his 90 minuteHilo County Farm Bureau
presentation. Mahalo.
Ken Love (53:46):
The other thing we used to do is with bananas, and
I can leave you with this, it'skind of funny, is that the
bananas are you know, you cutyour bananas up and you take
them to your customer neat inthe box. And I can remember
taking them to one of my cheffriends on the whole, you know,
rack of bananas that you know,four foot long five foot long
(54:10):
rack of bananas. And I have ittied up on a teepee in the back
of my truck and "Bill come onand look at this." So it was
chef Trask and he comes outthere. "What the hell am I gonna
do with that?" "You're gonna putit on the buffet line." "Are you
nuts?" "Yeah, let's just put itout there and see what happens.
(54:31):
I won't even charge you for it.
You can just have this rack ofbananas." He just shakes his
head, helps me carry it in. We
put it, this is about 5 (54:40):
30 in the morning before the buffet
line opens, and we put it in themiddle of the table and then
they start putting all thedishes around it. People
couldn't get to eat breakfastthat morning because everybody
was in front of it getting theirpicture taken with the rack of
(55:00):
bananas. So you these kinds ofchanges. Now when you walk
through to your room at FourSeasons, they have all these
wooden teepees with racks ofbananas on them just hanging
there. And people are welcome tojust take a banana off and eat
it if it's ripe, or the kidspush him and play with them. And
(55:21):
they come in different colors,it can see blue bananas and red
Jim (55:24):
That's, that's a good story. I mean, it's another
bananas, and of course, yellowand slightly orange bananas.
That makes a difference. So itbecomes what we do with the
fruit becomes part of the wholevisitor industry as well. I
mean, there's everything isconnected to everything else.
And so you have to look at thatas as as well. And bananas are a
(55:46):
good example of that.
example of a theme that I'mhearing from you, which is be,
be fearless, right? And trysomething and, and see what
happens and
Ken Love (55:58):
Give stuff away. I mean, it's worth it to get to
get a movement started, youknow, I mean. You know, to get
to give that was the best bunchof bananas. And you know, I
mean, I wasn't exactly well todo then, well, I'm still not,
but back then it was even harderto ask, "Do I really want to
(56:21):
give these bananas away toBill?" It was the best thing I
ever made because it cut mylabor time in half. I didn't
have to buy boxes, you know, orgo get used boxes. And he just
just bring the rack in, youknow, bring me three racks and
then you want it to come for twoweeks and it was great. It just
(56:44):
made it made a change. Nice, youknow, was he was he was at the
first farmers chef conferencehere in ʻ92 when we had a farmer
chef conference. All of thesethings we need to revitalize now
because it's it's a newgeneration of growers really,
(57:07):
because the old timers like me,don't do it anymore, or can't
physically do it. And you've gota new generation that is more
interested, they want to getout. They want to do things
where we kind of just sort offell into it.
Jim (57:26):
The intention of this podcast series is to create a
safe space for respectful andinclusive dialogue. With people
from across a broad and diversespectrum involved in growing and
making accessible the food weshare together. A diversity of
voices, perspectives andexperiences can serve to deepen
mutual understanding, to sparkcreative problem solving and
(57:47):
provide insight into thecomplexities of our agricultural
system. If you our listenershave experiences with Hawaii
agricultural ecosystems, fromsmall holder farms to large even
including multinationalagricultural industrial
companies, or anywhere inbetween and you would like to
share your story, please contactus. We welcome your voices and
(58:08):
perspectives
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