It’s not an easy task to get the facts on Ken Love from the man himself. It’s not that Love is shy — far from it. He just keeps veering the conversation toward exotic tropical fruit.
It’s that passionate preoccupation that keeps Love, president of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers organization, central to forwarding the cause of the isles’ exotic fruit crops. In fact, talk to farmers, researchers, chefs, business folk, bureaucrats, food writers, even a movie star — anyone with a remote connection to tropical fruit, worldwide — and it’s likely they know Love.
"Ken’s a connector of people; he helps us connect with experts globally. Plus, he’s prolific," said Mark Suiso, owner of Makaha Mangoes and treasurer of the fruit growers group.
"Prolific" sums it up. Love has integrated his knowledge and connections from past careers, in the culinary arts and photojournalism, to facilitate the growth of Hawaii’s niche-market farms.
He understands, for instance, that key to promoting exotic fruits is exposing food industry leaders, and the public, to these products. He has the ears of chefs who can utilize the products and has gotten grant funding to promote the products publicly through supermarket demonstrations.
Love also networks old friends across the globe, many of whom he met during his years as an Associated Press photographer, with newer friends from Hawaii’s agriculture sector, to promote the exotic crops.
"I view my job as president of the fruit growers group as helping growers become more sustainable and profitable, and to produce a higher quality of fruit. That means facilitating communication between farmers, chefs and consumers," he said.
"I try to find out what farmers are having a hard time selling and match the supply out there with restaurants. Chefs call me seeking out products they have a hard time finding."
Love is also interested in diversification.
"Now we’re researching grapes, warm-weather hybrids. There are 70 grapes we can try in Hawaii. We have 10 in the ground right now. I view this as another option for small-farm sustainability. These farms can … diversify by seasons."
Diversification also means exploring alternative varieties of a fruit. A crop like mango, for instance, could benefit.
"If Kona winds come, the flowers of some varieties are swept off the plant, so we could look at other varieties," he explained.
Love and the fruit growers group also have an eye toward promoting food preservation, such as drying and canning food. Love is a certified master food preserver. He and Suiso agree that teaching such skills to the community, as well as promoting value-added products (products made from the raw fruit) will help keep the islands food secure and farming in Hawaii sustainable.
"In attempting to export tropical fruit, there are concerns of transporting diseases to other places, and the concern of exporting inferior fruit that’s been picked too early and handled too much," said Suiso. "When you process it, you have a high-quality product that’s also safer. We could expand our export business globally" with preserved, canned and dried fruit.
"Whether you’re a backyard guy or a 100-acre farmer, we all face the same problem. Ken’s all over that stuff."
Love, 60, is a jack-of-all-trades. He farms an acre of his own land, is a fruit seller, a public speaker, a grant writer and a collaborator and for-hire layman for the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, commonly referred to as CTAHR, for which he currently manages nine acres of scientific test plots.
Love designs informational posters featuring tropical fruits and creates tropical fruit recipes for publication using his culinary skills. "Everything I do is ag-related," he said.
Love was a Chicago resident who first visited Hawaii when he came to photograph the Kona Coffee Festival for the AP.
"I had some friends who were fruit farmers, and people brought cherimoya and jaboticaba to the festival," he recalled. "I tasted the fruit and started reading up on them. I got hooked on it."
That led Love to purchase land on Hawaii island in 1983, and he moved there permanently in 1995.
"Ken is most effective as a voice for the underserved," said Ted Radovich, an adviser to the fruit growers organization and a sustainable and organic farming specialist at CTAHR. "He’s always an entrepreneur and independent, so he’s well aware of what the realities are outside academia. For that he serves our faculty well."
"Ken is well connected because he’s passionate and sincere, and people gravitate toward that," said Suiso. "Tropical fruit has no better friend than Ken Love."
One of Love’s latest exploits was serving as a consultant to actor Bull Pullman, who stars in "The Fruit Hunters." The film, a 2012 documentary, centers on folks who travel the world looking for fruit.
In the case of Hawaii, a lot of the work is about "getting out there 10 degrees on either side of Hawaii’s latitude and looking at plants growing in those regions," said Love.
"The idea is to bring them to Hawaii and see if we can establish them as niche-market crops. A lot of this will never get done in my lifetime, but I hope more folks will jump on the bandwagon."
