I saw this morning that 90% of Hawaii’s food is imported. That’s an amazing statistic for our islands. We are nearly entirely dependent on air and sea transportation and Mainland food growers and distributors for nearly everything we eat and drink.
Even some things that we think are “Hawaiian” are not. Every bag of “Hawaii style” or “Maui Onion” potato chips I see is made on the Mainland. Even a good share of beer with Hawaii logos, names, and designs is not brewed here. Clever marketing, indeed!
In this blog post, I highlight three specialty agriculture businesses that make superior products. They are all that we’d call family farms, businesses owned and operated by families on the Big Island.
Organic Kona Coffee
What do you get when you take some of the world’s best coffee and grow it organically? You have the best of the best. Hala Tree Coffee is grown organically in the heart of the Kona coffee growing area, an area known for superior growing conditions and exceptional coffee. I know these farmers, and they have worked very hard and jumped through a lot of hoops to attain the designation of an organic farm. This means that they are stewards of the land and do not use pesticides and herbicides that not only taint the land and water but as common sense would suggest, they are also likely to be present in the food on which they are sprayed. So, if you are looking for extraordinary organic coffee, check out Hala Tree.
In Shell Macadamia Nuts
Hawaii’s Best Mac Nuts has a wonderful story. The owners came to Hawaii Island from very different worlds and bought a macadamia nut farm on the island’s east side in some of the world’s best-growing areas for mac nuts. Not wanting to be a small fish in a big pond by selling their mac nuts to huge Mainland-based mac nut processors—the ones that fill the tourist shops with inexpensive chocolate-covered mac nuts—they have been developing two product lines. The first is in shell mac nuts for pets. It turns out that macaws love mac nuts, and there is a good market for supplying nuts for birds. Another market they have is providing in shell nuts to shops for human consumption. These nuts are very healthy and taste great out of the shell, which, by the way, is a tough nut to crack!
Dragon Fruit
Tai Shan Farms, located in South Kona, is one of the largest local growers of Dragon Fruit on Hawaii Island. That not to imply that they are a huge conglomerate growing hundreds of acres of Dragon Fruit! This small, organic family farm relies on WOOFERs for a lot of their crop maintenance and harvesting.
Dragon Fruit is a sweet, delectable fruit that is a treat for those who find it. It’s costly but super healthy and simply delicious. They also have a lot of bees, which pollinate the Dragon Fruit and provide a good source of gourmet honey, which they sell on their website.
While you will certainly not fulfill your caloric need by buying organic Kona coffee, mac nuts or Dragon Fruit, you can do a lot to support local agriculture by supporting our local farmers. All three farms do an exceptional job of taking care of the environment through organic and sustainable agriculture practices.