I thought there might be yelling and protesters and people unwilling to listen.
Instead, it was sunflowers and bagpipes and, well, listening.
On Tuesday morning Syngenta invited attendees from the International Union for Conservation of Nature meeting and local guests to visit its Kunia farm, look around and ask questions. About 75 people attended a morning session, and 50 came for an afternoon visit. About 16 were from the IUCN group.
Syngenta, like its competitor Monsanto, has been demonized by those who believe science should be nowhere near the food supply and that profit should not be a part of farming. But the morning session — which included a walk through a field to pick sunflowers, a bagpipe performance by Syngenta Hawaii corporate affairs head Angus Kelly and a Hawaiian chant of welcome — didn’t feel defensive. It was more like a school field trip, but with graduate-level information and people who were open to hearing it. And like a school trip, there was an abundance of information and a few things that really stuck.
One of those things was a picture of a taro farmer. It was a slide that came up during a presentation by Josh Uyehara, site manager for Syngenta’s Kauai operations.
In the photo, a graying westside Kauai taro farmer held just-harvested plants and smiled with pride in their beauty. Uyehara explained that the farmer used to grow the Kauai Lehua variety of taro, “which tastes good, but the corms are about as big as my fist.”
The type of taro the farmer was holding in the picture was Hybrid No. 7 from the University of Hawaii. The corm was about as big as his forearm. “It tastes just as good, if not better, than Kauai Lehua, but the yield is much better.”
What gave that picture impact was this: Uyehara grew up on the westside of Kauai where he worked in his family’s loi, selling taro to pay for field trips and school supplies. He graduated from Waimea High School and went to Harvard. The taro farmer in the photo is his dad.
In some of the overheated attacks on ag, it sounds as though taro farmers and Syngenta managers are natural enemies. The photo spoke to a different truth.
The tour was to talk about Syngenta’s Good Growth Plan in general and the challenging status of farming in Hawaii specifically. “Hawaii’s in a real identity crisis for ag,” Kelly said. The islands, perfect for growing tropical crops, used to export pineapple and sugar to the world. Now farms both big and small struggle against myriad obstacles, including all-out warfare from some so sure that agriculture is unnatural and nefarious.
As Uyehara told the guests, “Almost a billion people go to bed hungry right now. … In 2050 the world will have 2 billion more people than the present day. … We will have to grow and produce more food than ever in human history. The overarching theme is how do we grow more with less, using fewer resources? How do we do that with less water and make it affordable and available to average people?” … And yes, how to do that with fewer chemicals.
No one asked about the pending sale of Syngenta to a Chinese company, or the recent announcement that Syngenta was looking to contract out its operations on Kauai and Oahu. Kelly pointed out that there is a legacy of seed companies that have operated on the same lands — Pride Seed, Garst, Northrup King before Syngenta — and it is thought that the next company will do the same.
Agriculture in Hawaii is having an identity crisis, but amid that there’s Uyehara, taking lessons learned at his father’s taro farm to a position where he can help feed billions of people.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
