Over the years, there have been a plethora of outstanding exotic fruit books, starting with the Julia Morton classic Fruits of Warm Climates, Bill Whitman's Five Decades of Tropical Fruits, Harry Lorenzi's Brazilian Fruits and Cultivated Exotics and Bryan Brunner and Juan Rivero's Exotic Fruit Trees of Puerto Rico. Now we may have a new member to add to this group of "must have" books, Specialty Crops for Pacific Islands. Although it does not exclusively cover tropical fruits, the chapters for mangosteen, lychee, breadfruit and bananas offer some of the most comprehensive information you will find anywhere.

Big Island Farm Fresh Foods (BIFFF) is a new concept in Consumer Supported Agriculture (CSA). Brittany and Bodhi Anderson, while looking for safe food sources for themselves, had the idea of purchasing the healthiest variety of island grown produce and other food products they could find from small, individual farmers and producers and in turn offer them to subscribers through weekly deliveries.

The link below takes you to our survey about the formation of the Hawai'i Cacao & Chocolate Association. Please forward this link to Hawaii cacao farmers or chocolatiers who might not be on my list. Your participation
is important to launch our new  association. Skip Bittenbender, HC Bittenbender" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
>http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HVRSD3V

Aloha Kona Residents,

If you own, lease, or manage agricultural lands in Kona please participate in this survey! You will....

• help a local student earn his PhD
• contribute to an international research project
• define the Kona agricultural community
• promote community values

To participate follow this link and complete the 15-20 minute survey. Mahalo nui, Noa Kekuewa Lincoln, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Mysore raspberry hails from Coorg in Karnataka, India. Dismissed as a thorny wild weed, no one would ever dream of cultivating it there. You would be laughed at if you had the temerity to make such a suggestion. But in picturesque Hawai‘i, the Mysore raspberry earns an income for small farmers and has a loyal fan following.

“It was the number one choice of 54 chefs here,” says Ken Love, president of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers (HTFG) and the moving force behind the 12 Trees Project, an agricultural programme launched in 2005 which has boosted the income of small farmers.

Farmers in Hawai‘i’s Kona region grow one of the most expensive coffees in the world called Kona. It is their main crop but they hardly make any money out of it. Many farmers were abandoning their coffee farms, migrating to cities and selling their fields to developers. The 12 Trees Project sought to reverse this trend. It helped farmers diversify by growing unusual fruits which would find favour with buyers, chefs and consumers.

Bamboo has a range of benefits that make it excellent for developing small-scale productive enterprises. It is widely used throughout the Pacific for temporary building structures, rafts, harvesting poles, fishing rods, food and water containers, food tongs, and handicrafts. Bamboo species are most often harvested from the wild, such as secondary forests in Melanesia. In Hawai‘i, wild bamboo stands are commonly harvested for fishing poles, edible shoots, and some construction applications, as well as for some craft work and kadomatsu. It is little used for food except to small extent by Southeast Asian immigrants.