Dean Okimoto could be considered the godfather of farmers markets in Hawaii for his role in starting the immensely popular Kapiolani Community College Farmers Market, thereby boosting the "eat local" movement that brings locally grown foods to local tables and provides opportunities for many of the state’s 800 or so farms that produce food.
Okimoto started the KCC market in 2003 along with retired Honolulu Advertiser food writer Joan Namkoong on behalf of the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation, the farm lobbying group for which Okimoto served as president for eight years.
The incredible success of the KCC venture led to the creation of other farmers markets in Hawaii, not only by the Farm Bureau but other organizations as well.
Currently Okimoto is chairman of the Hawaii Agricultural Foundation, which, he said, he founded three years ago to help "figure out a way to self-fund agriculture … without having all the political side of it interfere." Its projects include setting up an agriculture park in Kunia, teaching farmers about food safety, encouraging kids to go into agriculture and developing a computer app that can help consumers find outlets that sell locally produced food. It also is producing the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival in Waikiki Sept. 29-Oct. 1, in conjunction with local chefs and restaurateurs Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong.
Okimoto himself is a food producer — he runs Nalo Farms, the 16-acre, $2 million-a-year, 24-employee enterprise in Waimanalo started by his father in 1953 that supplies fresh greens to markets and restaurants throughout Hawaii, and through an affiliate wholesales for other farms in Hawaii as well.
Age 56, Okimoto is a graduate of ‘Iolani School, plus the University of Redlands in California, where he majored in political science. He has a daughter and lives in the Kaheka area.
QUESTION: We keep hearing the terms "food security" and "sustainable agriculture," to the point where it sounds like the goal is total independence from outside sources. Is that achievable?
ANSWER: You don’t want to do it 100 percent, because if you don’t bring in anything from the mainland, think about when you have a disaster and you have to depend on bringing it in. Those guys are going to go, "You don’t buy from us." Right? So that’s the reasoning, to me, for not being a hundred percent. But I do think we should be 60 to 70 percent. And it’s achievable if people start looking at how we help ag.
Q: Where do we rank on the sustainability scale right now?
A: It’s probably about 15 percent.
Q: In order of crop importance, what’s the ranking?
A: Well, seed corn — there’s nobody even close to second to that. If you look at it, Monsanto’s seed crop business is now a $200 million (a year) business for Hawaii. They employ almost 4,000 people. They’re huge. Other than that, I think it’s, like, coffee and mac nuts.
Q: Studies have shown that you can grow just about anything somewhere in Hawaii.
A: Yeah. All you need, really, to produce all the food for a million people in the islands is probably 50,000 to 70,000 acres. The problem is, do we want to do that?
Q: When our local economy was dominated by sugar cane and pineapple, would you have considered that sustainable agriculture?
A: No, but when we did have plantation agriculture, they actually helped the small farmers survive, by taking care of, for example, the irrigation systems. The small farmers were also able to buy fertilizers and tack it on to these big companies bringing in large loads, so that the prices were lower. So, you know, some people want to chase these big guys out of town, but they do serve a purpose.
Q: What will small farmers do in Hawaii when there are no more large agricultural operations? Although it looks like Monsanto will be around …
A: Well, A&B is probably one of the last remaining of the plantation agriculture companies still left in Hawaii. They put 40,000 acres on Maui into the "important ag lands" designation, which means those lands will stay in agriculture forever, as long as they get water.
Q: There’s not much growing on that land right now, right?
A: Yeah. Sugar is going down. But they’re looking at doing biofuel crops …
Q: Do you think biofuel crops are a wise use of land and water?
A: I know for national security reasons, probably, they need to produce some here. But from what I hear, it would take almost all our ag land to be able to do it.
Q: And a lot of water.
A: Yes, and a lot water. So, do you do that at the expense of food production? I think at some point you gotta have the discussion of what do we do with our agricultural lands. Where do we put livestock? Where do we put vegetable crop? At some point we have to come together and say what areas are designated for these things, because, you know, if I go up for a parcel of land against a landscaper, I get blown away. I mean, there’s no way I’m going to get that land.
Q: Why is that?
A: Well, to do livestock, a farmer can pay maybe $30 per month per acre for land, and maybe they can make it. A veg crop producer, maybe they can go $100-$150 per acre per month. Landscapers, who grow ferns and palms and all that kind of thing, they can pay $600, $700 per acre per month.
Q: We’ve had some vandalism of papayas in Hawaii. A suspicion is that it’s eco-terrorism related to genetically modified papaya. Who do you think is doing it?
A: I really do not want to think it’s people who are against something like that (GMOs), because they affected people (the farmers) who are just hanging by a thread as it is. I mean, c’mon. You still can choose whether you want to eat that product or not, but to put somebody out of business, or their kids can’t go to school because of it, I think it’s absolutely deplorable.
Q: What do you think about the GMO issue?
A: You cannot not have technology. It’s a tool farmers need to be viable, to really grow food crops. They’re testing stuff now where we can grow stuff in brackish water, pretty much salt water. And why? Because there’s not enough water, right? Going forward, I think some of this stuff is absolutely necessary to feed Third World countries, places where they haven’t developed water systems …
Even in Hawaii, we constantly fight as agriculture for water. It’s in the public trust that water has first priority for domestic, environmental and cultural uses. Ag isn’t in there. So if we go up against these three things, ag loses. We don’t get the water.
Q: So the farmers in Waiahole-Waikane are getting water because it’s cultural, for their taro, not because they’re ag?
A: Correct.
Q: You say farmers are disregarded in major policy questions, like water, for example, but aren’t they a bit coddled, in a sense? I mean, they get tax breaks for the land, shipping breaks for their produce, government crop insurance and low-interest loans, and indirect benefits like the results of research at the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.
A: Well, we even asked, by the way, for a discounted rate for electricity. We were asking for that at the Legislature.
Q: Then perhaps it’s not fair to say that agriculture is being picked on.
A: Well, think of it this way. If all of these things were that great, then why are we struggling to find farmers? I think that’s what you have to look at, at how hard it is to farm, that you have to have these things in place.
Q: So these reflect a public policy favoring agriculture.
A: Yeah, to a large degree. I think there are other things that have to happen with public policy that our government has to understand.
To lease ag land, or example, they use a policy of "highest and best use" to value the land. When you do that, you bring development into it. And it’s crazy, right?
That’s why we went after this important ag lands legislation (which went into effect in 2008). Basically, the idea is if you are able to identify all your best ag lands … and put it into this designation, then going forward it tells you where people should develop. It’s a planning tool.
It’s really not a land use bill, by the way. It’s more of an ag-viability bill, because attached to it were incentives. We said the state has to give incentives for farmers to farm, like tax breaks for putting up infrastructure.
For example: processing facilities. I’ve gone to the state several times and told them about the value of value-added facilities (whereby tomato farmers, for example, can make ketchup with their second-grade tomatoes, instead of throwing them away).
Q: So you’re suggesting the government should build some facilities?
A: Well, we’ve asked that at some point, yeah, the government help do a public-private partnership with somebody to do a facility. And we have some guys that are interested in doing it.
Q: How do you work it out in terms of farm workers? The Sou brothers got in all that trouble, before the case against them was dropped, for bringing in workers from Thailand. Is it hard to get people to work the farms?
A: Yes. And the Sou brothers’ case should be a siren to the state that’s saying we can’t get ag workers. People need to realize that if we pay the scales that they do in construction, for example, your food prices are going to skyrocket.
Q: So it should be easier to bring in more workers?
A: Yes, I do think that we have to make it a bit easier.
Q: You’re on record as supporting the Ho‘opili project in Kapolei, partly because you’re optimistic that its farming-within-the-housing-project concept would work. But what about the land generally out there? Is the food security argument being used to block housing there?
A: It’s good ag land, no doubt. But this has been planned for 30 years. You already have the Kroc Center out there — a community center with a full-size gym, an Olympic-size pool … It’s right in the middle of the ag land already. And right across the street they’re starting construction on University of Hawaii at West Oahu. To stop the building of it now (Ho‘opili) would impact those things, too.
Q: What about the Koa Ridge project (the housing development proposed for near Mililani)?
A: That, too, you know? I mean, it’s been in community planning, same thing as Ho‘opili, for 30 years. I think there’s a lot of good things that could be built in that project.
What bothers me about these things is, yeah, they (the critics of the project, including the Sierra Club) temporarily stopped it, but … what essentially happened is you just drove the cost of that development by delaying it another year. And you get applauded for that? As an environmental organization? …
I was at a neighborhood board meeting once — it was actually for Koa Ridge — and they were beating the drum about we need to save this land for farmers and we need to help the farmers become viable, all this stuff, right? Well, I stood up — I’d been president of the Farm Bureau for eight years at that time — and I said, "You name me one piece of legislation that supported agriculture that you guys backed in the last eight years." Because I knew on every single thing, including the important ag lands bill, they went against us.
And they stood up there, and they conferred, and then they came back and said, "Well, you know what? We support more local food in our school system." I said, "Oh you guys are a big help. Do you see more local food in there?" You know? I mean, they irritate me.
Q: Do you have a quick list of what would be the priorities for agriculture in Hawaii?
A: One is invasive species. There is a bill in the Legislature for money to build a biosecurity building for checking everything that’s brought in. Then there’s the water issue. Also we need tech. And we need to have these landowners put more land into this important ag land designation so that the price of that land (for farmers) comes down.
