Ken Love was a Chicago-based photographer stringing for The Associated Press on assignments in Asia when he stopped on Hawaii island on the way — and became so intrigued by the exotic agriculture that he bought some Kona coffee farmland in 1983.

He traveled from Chicago several months a year to look after the farm then moved to the island in 1995, dividing his time farming and taking photos for West Hawaii Today.

"It wasn’t profitable," he recalls. "I wanted to find a way to pay the bills and keep farming."

After just breaking even growing coffee and taking photos, he said he turned full-time in 2001 to growing exotic tropical crops and found he could "make money while I could feed my other habits of putting fruit trees in the ground and getting them to produce."

Just as important, he has worked with other Hawaii island farmers to promote their fruit crops.

Love, 60, was president and is now executive director of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers Association, promoting local exotic fruits. He is also president of the Kona Kohala Chefs chapter of the American Culinary Federation, committed to culinary development locally and abroad.

"If we don’t make agriculture profitable," he said, "nobody’s going to do it."

In November, the One Island Sustainable Living Center, a nonprofit organization that promotes local agriculture and health, presented Love with its Same Canoe Lifetime Achievement Award for his promotion of products in Hawaii.

QUESTION: How has the percentage of local produce versus imported produce being sold in grocery stores here changed over the decades?

ANSWER: It’s gotten a lot better. … I think the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) statistics say that in the ’60s, about 90 percent of the produce consumed in Hawaii was grown in Hawaii. Since then it has turned around to about 10 percent local and 90 percent imported. I think now we’re back up to 25 percent to 30 percent of the produce being locally grown. People don’t farm anymore. The average farmer age is over 60, and with the cheap, low cost to import, there’s just not enough priority put on agriculture, even local.

Q: What can be done to promote fruit grown in Hawaii to be purchased by consumers in Hawaii?

A: We did a project with the Hawaii Department of Ag(riculture) last year where we took the unusual fruit, worked with chefs, gave out taste tests in 14 grocery stores. … Basically, we got these fruit bilimbi being used as a vinegar substitute, people using jack fruit as a meat substitute, people trying surinam cherry for the first time. A lot of the big grocery stores really don’t offer this fruit, and so this was an excuse to get them to see how the consumers would react to it, and it was very successful, especially with stores like Whole Foods, and Whole Foods has really changed the way agriculture is in Hawaii. For instance, 50 percent of the produce sold at Whole Foods comes from Hawaii, as opposed to the other locally owned stores bragging about their 12 to 15 percent. They’re very forthcoming with their statistics.

Q: You told in 2010 about the need for an inspection fee on all imported produce. What is the situation now?

A: It’s surely needed. We need to inspect what’s coming in, but in reality that’s just a way to level the playing field. Here’s a 2008 USDA statistic — and that’s the last one there was because they don’t fund that anymore, gathering the import statistics, so all we have is 2008: 10 cents a pound on the imported produce figures as something like $41 million, which would more than hire a few inspectors.

The other thing is that we have these problems in the last five or six years; the USDA has allowed more competitive fruit into the mainland U.S. than in the previous 20 years. It makes it a lot harder for our fruit that can be sold on the mainland to be sold, the radiated stuff that they’re doing in Hilo and now on Oahu. The problem is it also turns out in Chinatown in Oahu.

It’s technically illegal to sell this imported, irradiated lychee from Thailand, but there’s nothing to stop it once it gets into California to be put on a boat. There’s no inspection, so it can be put on the boat, back to Hawaii. It’s landed in Honolulu at a cost of about a dollar a pound. It costs us almost $2 a pound to produce it at a cost of production and the stores can buy it for a dollar a pound.

So there’s a real disconnect between what’s allowable and what’s against the law but there’s no enforcement of the law …

When I talked to the USDA about it here, they said just tell us, you know, tell us if you have proof. Well, after talking to the inspectors who work for the Hawaii Department of Ag, the nondisclosure agreement that they signed carry more weight than the federal whistleblower laws. … They’re worried about their jobs, and the federal laws evidently don’t protect state employees. I did talk to the governor about this and he said he would look into it, about six to eight months ago.

What I was told by one of the Department of Ag inspectors was that they would lose their jobs if they blew the whistle on the things that they’ve seen or been told not to overlook, in terms of inspection — illegal fruit coming in from Vietnam via California. It can’t land here if it’s fruit from these places; it has to go to California first and then come back here, and they’ve been told just to overlook it … It doesn’t matter after they pass through California, people in California can send them anywhere, and this is the problem. …

Q: You’ve mentioned studies around the world at Hawaii’s approximate latitude, for possible establishing similar crops here. How has that proceeded?

A: We’ve tried a lot of the things that are similar in Karnataka (southwest) India, worked with some of the people in Puerto Rico, and found those types of things. Especially jack fruit and some of the garcinial and mango-steen type fruits, have worked really well in Hawaii, given the water situation …

Q: How are Hawaii farms affected by the GMO (genetically modified organism food) issue?

A: It’s obviously a touchy issue for everybody. I was rather ambivalent about it until I got sick seven years ago with celiac disease and started researching some of the causes for all these food allergies.

Q: How do you view it now?

A: I’d just as soon do without it. I don’t think it’s been proved to be safe at all. … Some of my good friends were involved in developing the papaya, for example, and these guys are really good buddies. Would I eat it? Nah, not if I knew what it was, just because I can’t take the chance.

First of all, it depends on how you define GMO. You take the pollen from one flower and affix it to another flower, that’s modifying genetics if it’s hand pollinated. So that could be GMO.

And this is where people get lost in the whole topic. Splicing a gene from a tomato into a trout is a different story. So, it’s got to be well-defined where the line is drawn when talking about GMO.