Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, Captain Cook, South Kona

If you've never grown kalo (taro) before, or only made fledgling attempts, this workshop is for you: in 2-1/2 hours you get all the basics you need to successfully start, maintain and harvest a kalo garden, plus cook and prepare the most popular types of kalo food products.

Sponsored every year by the Bishop Museum's Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, Foreman Manuel Rego and assistant Sumao Kadooka this year took 18 avid workshop participants step by step through the preparation, propagation, maintenance, harvesting and cooking phases of family homestead kalo farming.

Can the income potential of coffee be sustained when the crop is combined with the environmental benefits of a forest?

A recent study provides some answers for Hawai'i coffee farmers. The coffee plant originated in the forests of Africa, where it evolved as an understory tree.

Holualoa, North Kona

Kona Outdoor Circle's dedication to sustainable farming took us on a fabulous tour last week. At Wai'aha Farm we learned about the many ways this farming community is caring for the 'aina in a sustainable way. To start off we toured the lower acreage and saw the wide variety of plants they have been able to grow successfully in the 5 acres that surround the living area. Not only were fruit like papayas, mangoes, lilikoi and tree tomatoes close at hand, but the area also supplied lots of food for their soil and animals including nitrogen fixing trees like pigeon pea. These trees feed the soil and provide supplemental food for the staff as well as their animals.

We Thought We had Them, Luckily We Do Not: Learning to identify them

La'akea Community, Puna

Over two years ago, when we first became aware of the presence of the little red fire ant (LFA) on this island, we began systematically testing the land at La'akea Community with peanut butter sticks. LFA are drawn to cheap peanut butter, they like the protein and the sugars. To test your farm for the presence of LFA, you can put a dab of peanut butter on popsicle sticks and leave them in various places around your land for a day, checking them every three to four hours. When we conducted such a test a few months ago, one of our members found some small reddish black ants. When she pressed them with the inside of her elbow she was bitten. She welted up pretty good and thought she had a positive id for LFA. We got scared. We thought these were fire ants and that they had come in on some dump mulch we received. We went into action – we spread Amdro (ant poison) over vast areas and set up traps anywhere we had put the mulch. People that came onto our land during that month saw the ant traps and we told them we were attempting to eradicate a fire ant infestation.

Monthly Review, July-August 2009, Vol 61, Number 3

This issue of Monthly Review (available free online) has a series of penetrating articles on the global crisis in agriculture and food. If you want to understand the international context for our current food and agro-industry problems, these articles will give you valuable insight into the big picture. Some of the article titles and authors are:

Honoka'a, Hamakua

People lined up down the block to enter Honoka’a People’s Theatre on August 27, 2009 for the screening of Food Inc.
Community networking took place before and after the film

Honoka'a People's Theatre was abuzz with activity on August 27 for the screening of Food Inc. Over 200 people attended the event, which was a benefit for more than 25 local organizations promoting sustainability and organic farming. Representatives from these groups filled the lobby and were available before and after the film for lively discussion sharing the initiatives of their organizations. Three tickets were given to each patron to put in donation jars of the organizations of their choice. This represented 40% of the total proceeds.