Ep 41. Voices From the Field: Agroeconomics and Strategic Planning with Alex Wong

Founder and CEO of Kauai Farm Planning, Alex Wong shares from his expertise and experience rich perspectives on the challenges and solutions of attaining a 100% local agriculture economy.

Brought to you by University of Hawaii College of Tropical Ag. and Human Resources (CTAHR), and the Seeds of Well-being (SOW) Project. This podcast is supported by the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

Resources:
- Kauai Farm Planning Facebook Page

Find out more about us:

• Seeds Of Wellbeing website
• Seeds of Wellbeing Resource Hub
• All the SOW links

Transcript

Thao: 0:00

The views information or opinions expressed during the seeds of wellbeing series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, our funders, and any affiliated organizations involved in this project. Welcome to a seeds of well being voices from the field podcast, featuring voices of Hawaii agricultural producers for Hawaii agriculture producers. These podcasts are made possible by a grant from the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, also known as CTAHR. And the seeds of well being are so project and is supported by a grant from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

Alexis Kerver: 1:00

Aloha and welcome back to the Seeds of Wellbeing Podcast. Joining us today on Voices From the Field is Alex Wong. Aloha Alex, welcome. Thanks so much for being here today. So great to see you. How are you doing?

Alex Wong: 1:17

Aloha. I'm doing good. I'm in the middle of moving right now. Moving residences, and my whole life, my business Kaua'i Farm Planning. Luckily, I'm able to stay on Kaua'i but, moving is such a hassle, especially when you grow plants, and you farm and you have to relocate your entire nursery. It's takes a lot of thinking and execution. And anyway, I'm in the middle of a lot right now.

Alexis Kerver: 1:55

Lot's of planning, too I could imagine.

Alex Wong: 1:57

Yeah, yeah.

Alexis: 1:59

Are you switching climate zones?

Alex Wong: 2:02

I am, I am going from the south side to the east side. Little bit higher elevation. I'm not sure about the rainfall yet. And the humidity. But in the line of what I do, those things make a big difference with my type of crop. But yeah, um, thanks for inviting me. This has come full circle now, hasn't it?

Alexis: 2:31

Yeah, this is full circle. Thanks for being here. It's nice to have you back in this capacity. You've served on the seeds of well being project for over a year, almost two years, I believe. So it's really nice to have you back here. And we're excited to hear some of your perspectives. Kaua'i Farm Planning, you mentioned that tell us a little bit more about your business.

Alex Wong: 2:56

Okay, so Kaua'i Farm Planning. It's the amalgamation of everything that I've studied as a student, and everything that I've studied as a resident in the great state of Hawaii. Living in that matrix also, as a human being, and a local resident living in the kingdom of Hawaii. That's a different thing altogether. And so it's a combination of my anthropology background, my political economics background, my GIS and geospatial analysis, geography background. My background as somebody who did archaeology, and someone who studied Hawaiian archaeology, a little bit at UH West Oahu in Kapolei and Hawaiian Studies at UH West Oahu Kapolei under Kumu Leilani Basham and Cordy, Ross Cordy, archaeologists and anthropologists. Also, this is like the inclusion of my experience in agriculture. You know, growing up as a kid in agriculture and around agriculture, and also in agriculture as a professional here in Hawaii. I've worked for the seeds, the soil water conservation districts here on kawaii and after that, I went to the county and I worked for the planning department. So I worked on the other side of the counter for all those people, property owners, developers, architects, engineers, like when you got to get permits, you know, and go through the county process. I was on the zoning side As opposed to the building, and public worksite. So taking all that knowledge and also my passion for culture and social equity, kind of bring that all together. And we create quiet farm planning. So quiet farm planning my my goal is to help every property owner including the state and the county to utilize and maximize the full potential. With an agricultural lens doesn't matter if it's on ag zone property or not. You can we can do it in urban zone property and residential areas and commercial areas as well. But instead of just landscaping, grass, and your usual suspects to grow crops, and consumable plants and food, consumers consumable and also potentially scalable and sellable in order to pay for your own rent, or mortgage, that's the that's the main goal. smaller, smaller goals that I try and hit before that it's just paper, miscellany, miscellaneous utilities and expense, monthly expenses by agriculture, just no matter how small or how big, every property has monthly expenses, right. And so if we could just start off with farming by covering those costs, the anticipated regular costs will go from there. Right? Just breaking even, we'll go from there. And then we can talk about profit after that. But every farmers first financial goal needs to be just meeting your bottom line covering all your costs and breaking even because that enough, and farming is hard.

Alexis: 6:54

Do you find that that's not already a farmers startup goal? To break even? No, no,

Alex Wong: 7:02

that that's that's the farmers cold. But the problem is, is the farmer starts in the whole the matrix, the system is rigged against farmers, and I don't care who who has Oh, but we have grant money, we have this and that the system itself is rigged against local farmers. This is the only farmers who the system is set up for is the corporate the corporation's corporate level farming that's subsidized by the government, small scale farming family farming that subsidized and to the extent of pretty much just grant money. That's it, the farmer has to carry the financial burden of essentially everything else. And then with the retailer, you know, once they get it, they, they upcharge it, and their profit is just simply by having a retail, you know, final destination. But, you know, the retailer doesn't do hardly any of the work. They don't even have to go pick it up for the most part, it gets delivered. In most cases. Yeah. So farming, you have to be super precise, and super efficient in your whole organization and your whole execution. And if you fall out of that line, like there's no buffer for you. It's a very small room for error, especially in Hawaii, when there's so many unpredictable factors. You know, the weather the high cost of living, right, the, the the fluctuations and costs like, like for gasoline oil, right, right. Any sort of machinery equipment, like that stuff fluctuates, lumber, costs, a lumber fluctuates, we have to build anything, like farming is expensive. And so my role now has become let's take all those factors that affect us, not just the factors that affect the cultivation of plants or animals, but the factors that affect our entire supply chain. And the culture and the place that we live. Those things matter to for your small business, especially farming,

Alexis: 9:22

like everyday things interconnected, all relevant.

Alex Wong: 9:26

Exactly. And those things get overlooked. Right. When we talk about helping farmers, we don't talk about housing. We just talk about oh, what what do you need for the farm? We don't we don't look at the rest of their life, that it completely revolves around cultivation, like keeping plants and animals alive. And that's a very hard thing to do. Because we live in a society now where nobody knows how to farm. It's reversed it used to be, civilization was built on the backs of farmers. Okay, and now, we've somehow flipped everything on its head. And farmers don't get no respect no more. Just like teachers, right? It's the same thing. It's, it's it's a profession, and an occupation. And it's a labor of love and passion. People don't get into the farming business. I mean, they don't get into farming, you know, on a personal level to make exorbitant amounts of profit. That's not. That's not how it's done. I mean, corporations try. They try to get in agriculture because they think that they can make more money because they're a corporation, and they can automate things and have the economies of scale. But the fact is, is that farming is it's unless it's done locally, right, unless the carbon footprint remains in a single geographic area, right, as long as you're not exporting ridiculous things like trying to send fish to Las Vegas, Nevada, right? Or anything grown in California to the Midwest, right? Where the East Coast like, farming is not sustainable right now. No, unless it's done. The Earth is not flat, like Milton Friedman had wrote.

Alexis: 11:31

So let's talk a little bit more about the economic structure. I'm curious to hear your perspective on this, you have so much insight, so I'm excited to tap in. So you know, our current economic structure seems to maximize globalization. And, you know, there are some benefits to being able to export your crops to meet demands where, you know, where there wouldn't otherwise be a strong demand. But can you tell us a little bit more about some pros and cons between globalization and localization of food crops, just so we have a better understanding? Of what you mean, you know, like, focus on local what is that?

Alex Wong: 12:13

Yeah, so the idea is like, keeping the money in the family, keeping the money in the family. That's, that's like the heart of

Alexis: 12:23

creating generational wealth

Alex Wong: 12:25

generational on not just that, but like, what I consider my family as my community, right when I talk about economics, so as long as you know, Killer Mike, the rapper has this really stupid show on Netflix called Trigger Warning with Killer Mike. And in one episode, he tries to live black for like, five days, meaning he can only purchase things from black owned businesses. And he couldn't do it. He couldn't do it, right. And that idea like every time he says black, or African American, in that episode, you just substitute the word local. Trying to buy local. Can you do it in Hawaii? Can you can every transaction that you have every day of the week? Right? Are you supporting a local business or a local producer that produced that item? The answer for the most part, especially on Oahu, is no. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying about keeping the money in the family. How long can we keep $1 bill in the local community on Kauai, like for example, on this island before that dollar gets up and leaves Kauai? That's the grassroots economy. And the same thing needs to happen with food we shouldn't be growing things and sending them to California or we shouldn't be growing things and sending them you know around the world until we can feed our self first. And so, you know, when I got into farming professionally, you know, me farming on Kauai, my father, he quickly quickly like questioned that. He said"Why are you on Kauai? Why are you finding on Kauai? The market is so small." Like we got less than you know on any given day right around 80-75, 80,000 people on quiet right not including the tourists I'm talking about residents. Seems like that you have a such a small market like you're not going to make any money. And I told him well, first of all, Kauai has not achieved feeding itself yet. All the restaurants, all the houses, like they'll consume food grown somewhere else in the mainland, or like international like South America, Central America. New Zealand, Australia, China, right. The foods flying in or being shipped in on a on a boat. And so when we purchase that food, that's our money getting up and leaving Hawaii. That's our, our, our local residents watering and feeding someone else's economy is what that is. That on top of the carbon emissions for transporting that food. It's ridiculous. And so, um, yeah, the first goal here on Kauai is to, for all of us local Kauai farmers, everyone farming on Kauai, like I try and tell everybody I preach, don't look at each other as competition when you see another farmer in the state of Hawaii or the another farmer on your island, they are not competition. They're not competition until the entire island is pretty much 100% local grown in terms of going to the restaurants and going to the store for buy food. Like until it's 100% local source, you're not competition with each other. Even at the even at the local farmers market, you might you may look like you're competing for the same population, the same market, the same people, right, who are cruising the farmers market who come every week and buy from the farmers market. But the fact is that thatʻs just a little bubble of the economy. Once you cover that demographic, you need to step outside of the farmers market and realize there's a the rest of the island you got to feed that's not showing up to the farmers market. So

Alexis: 16:31

So is there is there communication between farmers and what who's growing what and what demands they're producing? I used to work in a produce department at a at a health food store. And there were times that we would have an influx of a certain of a particular crop, for instance, in herbs, let's say they brought in a bunch of everybody's growing Basil and Rosemary. And we'd have to turn away farmers because we'd have a surplus, often of particular crops. So how do we prevent that? Because those are issues if we're looking for, you know, to produce 100% Local, how do we make sure that we're producing the crops that we need to meet the demands for and not producing too much of one particular crop?

Alex Wong: 17:19

So, um, it's about the supply chain, right? And having contingency plans, you have plan A, right if if these out, if this outlet is already at capacity, then I have my second outlet, I have plan B plan C. You know, in in business, you teach the you got to have at least three outlets, at least three, right? In order to have a sustainable business. You know, as a farmer, you have to have three steady clients that you service weekly or bi weekly, every day

Alexis: 17:58

and thereʻs enough retailers out there that you can have, you know, those contingency plans,

Alex Wong: 18:06

what I recommend for farmers and for me, like, you know, the farmers market is great. The farmers market is great, because that's where the community is seen interacting with the farmers. That's where you, you know, you basically farm gate, almost, you're giving the money directly to the farmer, there's no middleman to take their cut. Yeah, the farmers farmers market. Also Farmers Market is good because if you want a lot of something, like for me, if I don't if I run out of Bananas in my backyard, right, Because I eat a lot of bananas. Choke bananas, like, because I eat smoothie almost every day. So I get bananas in my freezer, right. And so when I go farmers market, if I'm out of Bananas, and I don't have a rack ready on the tree, I'll take 30 40 bucks to the farmers market and I'll hand it to a farmer and be like, give me as many bananas as I can get for 30 bucks or 40 bucks. And I tell him I'm going to make smoothies I'm going to freeze them. So they give me like everything that's ripe everything with the black spots starting like they give me all of that because they know it's going to be bad by tomorrow morning. So like I do love the farmers market but in terms of being a business as a farm, I highly recommend restaurants and food trucks first as your main clients. And then like you were saying sometimes you get jammed up because a restaurant or a food truck, they'll they'll come into some produce, right? Whether it's from like Waihataʻs or Sakis or, you know, Cisco Foods. They're gonna get their cheap stuff that's imported from the mainland that you can't compete with because it's $1.50 a pound. And you're gonna be you're gonna be stuck with like 10, 20, 30 pounds of something this week. What is taught at GoFarm is that you always need to have a practice that will extend the shelf life of your produce.

Alexis: 20:13

value added product

Alex Wong: 20:14

Whatever it is. Value added. Yeah, if you can jar it if you can pickle it, if you can assault it if you can dry it for me, like we got to grow the staple crops. So, kalo number one. So poi is a great way to extend shelf life. Just the corm itself of Kalo last for a long time if you keep it in a cool dry place. But besides poi, and besides you know, just steaming it real quick, and you know, poke it and you know, just pretty much or do some sort of paʻi ai, I like I like to flash steam in the Insta Pot and then cut into fry shape. And throw that in the freezer as fries.

Alexis: 21:00

It can also be grounded into a powder right, for flour?

Alex Wong: 21:04

Yeah, you can Yeah, yeah. Dried, dried and re-hydrated with water. But yeah, like we need to just focus on stuff that is versatile, flexible, and has high, high like protein calorie and nutrition content. And kalo is that thing that you know what the Hawaiians eat. As long as thereʻs a demand, yeah, as a farmer grow it, but you also have to balance like, what is worth your time growing. And for me, I'm not gonna get out of bed to grow anything for $1.50 a pound. That's not happening. Right? So for me, I got to do high value crops. And thatʻs salad. Everybody needs salad greens. Like, there shouldn't be any

Alexis: 21:49

reason to buy a Costco bag from anywhere

Alex Wong: 21:53

Yeah, yeah, sure it's$5 a box or $5 a bag. But you got to consider that it's been sitting on a boat for almost a week. So by the time it hits your refrigerator, your icebox at home, it's, it's starting to go bad. Yeah. Whereas if you buy locally grown salad greens, like it'll last a month, as long as you keep it in the icebox, itʻll last a month, just hit it with some ice water. You know, just dunk it real quick, hit it with ice water, shake it off, let it dry for a little bit and then stuff it back into a plastic bag into the icebox and you're good for like a month with local grown lettuce. Basil, like who buys imported Basil?

Alexis: 22:36

Pesto for that matter, I mean, you go to a grocery store and you spend $13 on a jar of pesto.

Alex Wong: 22:44

Basil is the easiest thing to grow. Like, first of all, everyone should be grown in their backyard. But yeah, local grown basil. Should not be buying imported basil, any sort of like leafy green, green onions, like none of that should be imported at all.

Alexis: 23:03

So in addition to extending shelf life through value added products, another challenge we have here is the way we eat, you know, its for many communities. And, you know, our local community, having the crops that are relevant to our, our body or Kino, that feed or Kino, are important. And that's how we can change you know, the dynamic of becoming a local 100% Local, agriculture produced community. But when we have an influx of people that are not from here that eat a different way, the demand for foods are different. And so that changes what's what's available in our store. So how do we change that dynamic?

Alex Wong: 24:02

Well, okay, like, we've, as a society, we've gravitated towards convenience, right. And overindulgence, okay, I'm gonna, I'm not Filipino, but I'm gonna pick on them right now. Like, when we think of Filipino food, we think of what you get at a Filipino restaurant. Right? The leichon, the Tinono, the pork adobo. Right? The blood meat the Inaguan. All that stuff is like, You can't eat that in excess. If you eat all that stuff, you're gonna get gout. And so we've seen a lot of gout with local people, especially Filipinos and Polynesians. a lot of gout, because of the shellfish and the pork. Yep, and the red meat. And what we need to realize especially with cuisine like Hawaiian and Philip You know, cuisine is like, when you live a normal life, you don't eat Lechon every weekend or every other day. That's the celebration food, you eat that for special events and holidays, like, maybe two, three times a year, maybe. You cannot be eating lechon every week or like Kalbi, like, you know, talking about local, Chinese, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans like, you cannot be eating. Yeah, these things in excess that you only eat on special occasions, usually, right? If you're a normal person. Traditionally. Yeah, nowadays we work, you know, the day job, matrix job, and then we go buy our food in a transaction. And if we're gonna go eat out, right, it's the plate lunch, it's the meat gravy two scoop rice mac salad. And that is not, you know, first of all, it's not healthy. Right, that that kind of diet causes obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and, you know, my own family included, right? Theyʻre townies and they eat like that. And you know, like that's, that's why like, we have cancer and we have all these health problems is because we don't eat vegetables like how our grandparents ate vegetables. So we talk about a local diet. I'm not talking about plate lunch. I'm talking about what our grandparents ate in the plantation Yeah. Or before plantation, the Hawaiians ate, but yeah, we cooked a lot of vegetables. My grandmother, cooked with a lot of vegetables. Cabbage, locals eat cabbage all day, cabbage. In kimchi. right, shredded cabbage under the fish under the Ahi, right under the fried fish. Not just under Poke and under sashimi but cabbage under everything. Cabbage in soup, right, cabbage and saimin, cabbage and ramen. Cabbage. We should all be growing cabbage. Like we should not be buying imported cabbage. That's *** cabbage. Oh sorry. you can bleep that out. But that's cabbage. That's some quite pigeon for you right there cabbage thatʻs total cab. It's stupid. Like, no for real, like locals eat cabbage. But locals gotta be gotta be open minded too, right? Salad is good for you. Eat a salad, you know, once a day, just eat a salad that will change your life. Smoothies, right? locals love local grown food, fruit. We should all be growing fruit in our backyard. Right? We shouldn't be buying no imported bananas from Ecuador. Panama or South America Central America, Mexico. Like stop importing bananas. Stop importing avocados. locals eat avocados. Right? There shouldn't be a single Mexican restaurant or food truck in the state of Hawaii. Buying imported avocados. Hawaii grows better avocados than California, our avocados are bigger, butterier and just hands down better than mainland avocados from Mexico or California. So

Alexis: 28:08

But avacadoʻs don't produce all year round. Right. And so part of the convenience aspect has been the convenience of being able to eat whatever whenever. The convenience of a grocery store you go in and you can get whatever you want, what are you in the mood for? And you purchase it. But part of the, you know, achieving 100% locally grown agriculture comes with a perspective shift of what do you have readily available? what's in season? What you know, not having avocados all year round. So what do you do when avocados arenʻt in season? What do you do when mangoes aren't in season? And you know, there are ways like you know greenhouses can produce cabbage all year round right there. There are ways that we can meet demands with certain crops all year round, but it requires... there's so many layers to agri, you know, 100% attaining a local 100% local agriculture economy. Where do we start? Where are we starting? I mean, this has been a push for a while. So you know, we've we've made...

Alex Wong: 29:16

we need to start with like getting the younger generation into farming. Right? Here's the thing we talked about this life of convenience that we've built for ourselves in the matrix. This life of convenience is convenient, but it makes us soft. It makes our bodies soften and makes a soft and up here. Less resilient. Yes, it becomes less resilient. And you know, it takes a sort of devotion and dedication to water and feed your plants. Right like it's kind of funny, but most people you can drop off your your dog or your cat, when you go on vacation, you can leave your dog or your cat with your friend. Or you can like ask your friend, hey, come over check on my dog check on my cat. And like, nine times out of 10, you get home from vacation and your dog and your cat still alive. But if you're a farmer or a grower, and you ask your friend, hey, can you watch my plants while I'm gone on vacation, nine times out of 10, you come back and it's dead. There's something about growing plants, that's a little bit trickier for people because people don't bother to take the time to practice growing plants.

Alexis: 30:35

They also communicate differently, we've become accustomed to the way the dogs and cats communicate to us and with their needs, but plants have their own language in the way that they communicate their needs. And a lot of people don't know that. And so that's part of the getting younger generation education.

Alex Wong: 30:52

they don't try, they were never taught, they don't try. But what it comes down to is the convenience. And we as a society today are spoiled rotten, where we just expect everything instantaneously, it's instant gratification, instant gratification, has killed the individual spirit. It's killed individual discipline and resiliency, like, we need more self discipline. You know, we don't see kids, with these days with enough self discipline to maintain focus to have a conversation, physically, face to face with an adult, you know, I teach high school. So I'm not just saying this, like, I work with teenagers, and they on their phones all the time, like their attention span is nothing. And when that's when that's the case with not just our children, our keiki. But our adults, like how do we expect anybody to have the attention span and the self discipline and self control to show up every day to keep their plants alive? Yep.

Alexis: 32:01

And so when we, we talked about layers, you know, part of the layering of this related back to local agriculture's before a lot of these families, they lived on their plantations, they lived on their farms, it was a family operation, there was a lifestyle. And now we have our families that have to work the nine to five jobs, so they got to put their kids in school. So the kids no longer have that strong foundation that's rooted in that lifestyle. And so yeah, of course, how are you going to get a high schooler whose foundation is on electronics and distraction and instant gratification? How, you know, this, there's, how do we do it, Alex? Whatʻs the solution?

Alex Wong: 32:43

There's only one way to do it, there's only one way to do it. And it's to teach by example. The baby boomers gotta step it up. Before they're done, like, the baby boomers are retiring now. So they got to step it up their, their, their grandparents now, the baby boomers right now are for are going are now what my grandparents generation was to me, you know, they're, they're the kupuna. They're the elders. And they need to step it up, because they're the ones who basically bought into this matrix. And they've enabled it with their dollars, they voted with their dollars. And they fed and enabled this matrix, this machine of convenience, that we now have to turn the ship around, and paddle upstream against. And so the baby boomers gotta, they gotta change their lifestyle. Now, they're going there, they got a little bit of the kālā, they got, you know, their retirement, they've made it out of the game, with their Social Security intact. They might be the last generation to have that. But they have that little nut that they've saved. Right, a lot of the baby boomers, they were able to invest in purchase property, right. So they got it, they got the property, they need to set up the next generation, the millennials and the Gen Zʻers now for sustainable, you know, culture centric success, right? Family oriented success, community oriented success, rather than continue to just cruise and live the rest of their life, then their last 10-20 years, just living the American dream because American Dream is dead. And you know, if we expect the rest of us, the millennials, the Gen Zʻers and everybody after that to have any chance at success and resiliency, that baby boomers got to support us being farmers, and they got to support our lifestyle. You know, we got to make that we as individual as individuals and as a community need to make the conscious life, the conscious decision that we're going to live and change our lifestyle, and not just suckle from the teeth of the matrix. right and just just take what, what crumbs are willing to give us, right, but actually create our own wealth, right? create our own businesses. And so yeah, that's what needs to happen. We need to cultivate more farmers. So that's what Kauai Farm Planning does, is I'm out here trying to farm farmers, I'm out here trying to Mālama farmers, right, in addition to the plants that I grow, right, and the the produce that I that I support to my, my community to my restaurants and my food trucks, right and my and myself really, right, because you can't be helping nobody, they tell you, you got to put the mask on yourself before you put on your neighbor. Right. So I'm trying to I'm trying to grow my own food first, everybody should be growing their own food, first, put the mask on yourself. Every family should have the designated farmer in the family in the household, there's got to be at least one person in every local household that knows how to grow plants. Right, who's working actively on the family farm, growing that thing so that everyone else in the family who chooses to can jump out of their matrix job that they're running like a hamster on the wheel, jump out of the hamster wheel into the family business, Right. So that's the other thing Kauai Farm Planning does is I'm a consultant for not just your farm, but for your family business. Because I believe that that is the foundation of a grassroots economy is that every family farm also has a tangential family business. That's the only way to make it rather than having two matrix jobs. You should have your farming job and your family business that you contribute to as a family member. Right. And if we're all running our own family businesses that service other local people, other residents and also the tourists, then thatʻs how you empower communities. Yeah, we don't need the matrix anymore. We're feeding ourselves. We are creating our own wealth with whatever service or whatever good we are producing as a family or as a household. Right? Every household should be a cottage business in Hawaii, every family's home, their property should produce a product or a service a good or a service. It shouldn't no property in the state of Hawaii for owned by a local family should simply be where you sleep and bathe and eat.

Alexis: 37:23

Is that realistic for every single family to operate a business operation?

Alex Wong: 37:30

I think it's realistic if we can fix our public education system in Hawaii,

Alexis: 37:35

Just public education or would it also include things like health insurance and housing. And you know

Alex Wong: 37:41

so Okay, so we're talking about a transition now. And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna double down I'm gonna say, you know, the State of Hawaii does not care about farmers, as it is, they don't care. We have politicians who think they care. But the fact is, is they themselves have zero experience farming, with the exception of Tim Richards on Big Island. I don't think there's anybody else right now, who is a representative or a senator at the state capitol that has any professional experience farming. I think there might be a couple politicians right now who, whose parents were in agriculture in Hawaii, or maybe agriculture somewhere else in the mainland, but they themselves have zero experience farming.

Alexis: 38:28

Tim Richards, he was a veterinarian, he's he works with ranchers. Is he a farmer himself?

Alex Wong: 38:35

Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, okay, so livestock. Yeah, that's agriculture. Yeah, that's agriculture. But my point is, is like, we have we have we have advocates in our in the politics right now in Hawaii, who say they support farming, but because they have zero experience themselves farming, they don't know how to help produce the solutions to get family get farming out of the dumpster right now to get out of the red. And so when Hawaii says that they care about agriculture, that's That's ***. Our state budget alone reflects that. Right? What is it less than 1% of the state budget goes directly to farming? Yeah, to agriculture in Hawaii. That's***. Right? Yeah. So that that's a lie. That's a straight up lie. Hawaii, our government, the State of Hawaii does not care about agriculture. They do not care. And we need to change that. We need to change that because if we aren't growing our own food, that's a that's a resiliency problem. That's the sustainability problem. That's a climate change problem. And if the state of Hawaii and the counties are going to use any of those words, they need to address the food security issue first. Right? Because they like to use those words.

Alexis: 39:57

Sorry, they developed the

Alex Wong: 39:58

to push their agenda And to develop and to sell out. That's what the state and the counties are doing right now. The so whole sustainability, topic and discussion has been hijacked around permitting and development, and not around actual community resiliency and food security. So we need to get that straight. And, you know, if the state of Hawaii really cares about farmers, then they will subsidize health care and housing for farmers. There are zero incentives to being a farmer in Hawaii today. So the state of Hawaii, if they if they care, if they, if they care at all, if our politicians care at all, they need to put their money where their mouth is, and subsidize healthcare for farming, because nobody wants to farm. And that's the fact that it's it's a labor of love. It's a thankless job. And even if even if you were to give your praises, and your thanks and all your gratitude to the farmers that doesn't pay my rent, or my mortgage, I'm sorry. But like, it might feel nice when you say thank you, and mahalo. But the fact is, is that's not paying my bills. It's not paying my mortgage or my rent. And, yeah, the state of Hawaii needs to do that. We subsidize tourism in Hawaii, we subsidize military, we need to subsidize food security. And in order to get more people farming, like I guarantee you how many Hawaiians and local people will leave their day job, their matrix job, if they were given, if they and their dependents were given health care, and housing, they would start farming full time, I guarantee it, Hawaiians would rather be outside on the land than doing construction, or working in the hotels and resorts. I guarantee it. Don't Don't even try and argue with that one. Like we talked, we want to talk about culture, and where people belong. It's outside, all of us belong outside growing plants in nature, that's where we all belong. I mean, if you if you don't want to do that, then yeah, you could you can work the matrix job, the matrix can keep going, you know, because thanks to you, but and the fact is, is we got to do this ourselves. So we don't need them. We don't need like, politicians right now, garbage. So unless we, we teach our youth the right way, with ethics, with morals, with principles with integrity, and replace our current politicians with them. Like we just got to work around them, we got to work around them, because they're not part of the solution. Our politicians today are not part of the solution. And the solution comes from us from the community, from the individual from the family, that's where the solutions are going to come from. And the fact is, is that, like I said, for you to be truly independent, for you to be sovereign, you need to be able to grow your own food, right? Because if you depend on somebody else to feed you, well, you're pretty much giving the power to somebody else to starve you. Right. And the fact is, is that the only true sovereignty, we could talk about Hawaiian sovereignty and the kingdom, all we want, with the only true sovereignty is economic sovereignty, economic sovereignty,

Alexis: 43:11

Right. And so then when, when growing your own food, it's not just a matter of, you know, someone being able to produce their own food, it's all the imports, it's we have degraded soil conditions. So if you don't have soil, you can't grow your own food, if you don't have the infrastructure to have a hydroponics or an aquaponics. Or greenhouse, you know, you're you're limited, folks are limited in what they can produce. So I agree that it's ideal that we're all growing our own food, you know, but there's so many other factors that are in play with this for us to reach this goal. And, you know, like you said, it starts with education in the public school systems, it starts with grassroots efforts to have community based solutions. Yeah, there's, there's so many layers to this.

Alex Wong: 44:00

So, I know. I know you gotta go, Alexis. But the last thing I just want to say, to kind of wrap up the economics of farming in Hawaii, is, Are you familiar with MLMs,

Alexis: 44:14

of course, multi level marketing.

Alex Wong: 44:18

So I believe that a true grassroots economy in Hawaii, especially in the farming community, especially with our food, is an MLM. Every property, every household, every family needs to think of themselves as an MLM, as its own entity, its own micro corporation that produces food. And you know, from your family business, another good or service and whenever the food like that's your inventory, right? The goal is to have enough inventory to feed the family or the residents on that property first, and then anything extra now that's commercial sales. Right? So now you're selling to the restaurant, the food truck, farmer's market, you know, CSA, you know, bags or whatever boxes. And that's your inventory and MLM style is, you know, you actually don't have carry inventory, right? The inventory is like, you get through subscription through your market partner, and the inventory is mailed to you or whatever. Well, in a similar fashion, like you were saying, if somebody's got too much of something this week, well guarantee somebody else somewhere, somebody else somewhere else on the island is going to have not enough this week. So if we can just, you know, create this local community, local economy,

Alexis: 45:45

isn't that isn't that a similar structure to co-opʻs? Isn't that how a co-op operates? Because a local multilevel marketing still has a goal to maximize profits. And, you know, my concern, or what I would see with that structure is anytime that we're out to maximize profits, there's always an end result of greed. There's always we just want more, more, more, more more. And so is that beneficial for the community if everybody's money hungry to maximize profits?

Alex Wong: 46:20

Well, okay. Here's the thing. Um... okay

Alexis: 46:25

Sorry, that might have opened a can of worms into a whole other conversation.

Alex Wong: 46:28

Okay, if we want to talk about political economies we can. I am not a socialist, I am not, I'm not a capitalist. I'm like, I'm the high happy medium, right? So capitalism, it's in itself is inherently not evil. Profit is not evil. Profit, by definition by Marx, Karl Marx and Engels is profit. Okay, I'm gonna say this one time. Profit is the unpaid wages of the working class. Profit. In other words, profit is the unpaid wages of the employees, if your company or your business is making profit, and your employees are not getting their fair share of that profit, that is greed, that is evil capitalism. But capitalism in itself is not evil, as long as there's profit sharing. And that goes for a farm that goes for everything, in the capitalist, you know, philosophy and the capitalist market. businesses and corporations need to function in that fact that profit needs to be shared with all of the stakeholders, all of the employees need to get their fair share of that profit.

Alexis: 47:46

What is the... What's the name of the structure of a business where it's like employee and community owned? Hawaiian, Ola, the brewery, the fastest growing brewery in the state, in Kona on Hawaii Island, they are a great example of this, you know, they're looking to build this large production center to support local farmers and have a value added product. But they are 100% community and employee owned, is that is that a dynamic is that you know, a realistic dynamic for an approach? Thatʻs how it should be.

Alex Wong: 48:24

I mean, you want to avoid too many chiefs, not enough Indians kind of situation, right? You definitely have to have certain chain of command so that there's a hierarchy of accountability, right and responsibility. But as long as the the employees have a stake, right, that's the other thing is I'm the type of guy that first of all, I can't work for somebody that is dumber than me, that's not going to happen. I'll respect that person as an individual. But I cannot take commands and orders from a person who's not making the best decision, right? So for me, I can't work for somebody who's dumber than me. That's why I left the government. Kidding, kinda. But the other thing too, is like, if I work for a business, like, I'm not gonna bust my ass for that business, if I'm only getting paid an hourly wage, because me working harder does not increase how much money I'm earning, even if the business is doing better and better and better, because I'm working harder and smarter and better. Like, if I'm still getting paid $15 An hour or $20 an hour or whatever. $60 an hour. Like, I'm only going to do what I'm going to do and you can't count on and I would consider myself a good employee. Right. I work hard. I have strong work ethic, strong discipline, you know, I'm Asian. Yeah, my parents taught me A+ no A-, right? B, your disowned. So, like, unless unless our employees are trained that way and taught that way and raised that way, like you're not going to count on them. So the only way to incentivize good employee morale loyalty work ethic is to give them a share of the company, right? The success of the company is now you know, at stake, you know of their effort, and their input and their passion. And if they know that they're gonna make a lot more money, if they work harder, and they do better, then they might show up, you know, and and do their best. So yeah, that's a big thing. I'm big on the Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz, like, I'm big on that, like, if we all honor that, I think it kind of greases the wheels and helps the communication channels to be open. And you know, the egos to be, you know, leashed. If we all honor the Four Agreements. So now we're kind of past the time.

Alexis: 50:40

Thank you so much, Alex, for being here today, it was such an honor to hear your knowledge and your perspectives and sharing so much insight for our community. I'm hopeful. I feel mobilized after this conversation, how do you feel?

Alex Wong: 50:55

You know, if I didn't have any hope I wouldn't be doing this, I would completely follow the path of least resistance and sell my soul and sell out like all these other politicians, and work a six figure job in the matrix. But no, I have, I have a lot of hope in this. And I have faith in my community, that, you know, we were going to get our priorities right. And we're going to follow leaders in the community who embody Aloha, and they embody integrity, and they embody values, you know, that our culture in our community was built on. And we're not just going to give the reins and the control over to these people with degrees, or these people who represent, you know, certain brand names, or corporations or even the university, or the government to, you know, dictate this lifestyle that we are trying to live out here in Hawaii, you know, keeping country country keeping the culture, and, you know, keeping it local, grown and local made. And the only way to do that is for us to support our, our own families and support each other, you know, in the community. And like I said before, we don't need, we don't need them. We don't, you know, it starts out at home. It starts with, with the individual. And, yeah, it starts with our choices that we make each day. You know, how we spend our money, how we vote with our dollars, and who we support.

Alexis: 52:26

It all starts within?

Alex Wong: 52:27

Iʻm here for that!

Alexis: 52:29

You make me want to be here for that. You help. You are very inspiring. It's, I certainly feel honored to know you. And thank you so much for being a catalyst and a pillar in this movement. Your, Our communities are lucky to have people like you, so

Alex Wong: 52:49

Mahalo Alexis. I appreciate you.

Alexis: 52:51

Mahalo. I appreciate you. Well, let's talk story soon again. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Do you have a long day ahead of you in the farm?

Alex Wong: 53:00

I do. I do. I do have a partner now. And you know, moving has really not been that stressful. And you know, I'm I have a lot of good friends out here who offered to help me move to so. Yeah, that's, that's a great part about, you know, farming and being a part of the community that the community shows up for you when you show up for them. And I'm grateful and it is humbling to to be embraced, you know. So Mahalo, Alexis. We'll talk soon. Yeah.

Alexis: 53:32

Mahalo, Alex. Talk soon. A huihou!

Alex Wong: 53:36

Aloha!

Thao: 53:38

We want to thank our guests for their generosity and Manalo. We also want to thank all our ag producers throughout the islands, and especially those we have heard on the podcast for discussing ways they address the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of Hawaii ag production. Each story each voice contributes to a broader understanding of what it takes to survive and thrive as we feed our communities, wherever you may find yourself within our island agricultural economies. If you would like to share your story, and our podcast, please contact us. Thank you for listening to the seeds of well being voices from the field podcast featuring their perspectives of ag producers throughout the Hubei islands. If you have found it helpful, please follow like and share this episode with others. And if you have any ideas about how we can make it better, please let us know in the comments or use the link on our website. Mahalo for tuning in.