Maui Neutral Zone- Jason Schwartz with Local Farmer NILES JAMES 6 28 21 discussing farming on Maui, regenerative agriculture and local farmers
Summary & Transcript
00:00 → 06:55
- [00:00] Introduction and guest introduction: Niles James, a farmer and steward of the land on Maui, joins the show.
- [00:48] Niles defines himself as a farmer focused not just on growing crops but on soil regeneration and indigenous practices. He emphasizes that farming is about building soil and creating value-added products from what the land produces.
- [01:55] Niles has been farming for about 3-4 years, although he comes from a long lineage of farmers, with his family having historic farms in Kentucky. He also worked in the hospitality industry, which helped him build relationships with local chefs and focus on community-supported agriculture (CSA), prioritizing local customers over tourism.
- [03:35] Farming is a continuous learning process for Niles, who approaches challenges as opportunities to develop solutions, especially in the context of food security on Maui.
- [04:08] Niles works with both his own land and other farmers to improve soil health, focusing on regenerative practices to ensure sustainable food production. His goal is to protect the land for future generations.
- [05:22] Niles grew up in Hawaii but was born in Utah; he has always been connected to Hawaiian land and culture. His family historically farmed tobacco and corn in Kentucky, but he shifted focus toward sustainable living and stewardship of the land on Maui.
- [06:18] He highlights the critical issue that 80-90% of Maui’s food is imported, which threatens food sovereignty and ecosystem health. This heavy reliance on imports poses risks during global disruptions, emphasizing the importance of local self-sustainability.
06:55 → 13:39
- [06:55] Niles relates modern regenerative agriculture to indigenous Hawaiian agricultural practices, which were inherently self-sustaining, covering the entire ecosystem from mountain to sea. He prefers the term “indigenous agriculture” as it reflects thousands of years of perfected systems.
- [08:25] He identifies as a steward of the land (kuleana) responsible for maintaining and revitalizing native and canoe crops in needed areas.
- [09:01] Discusses the financial challenges of farming locally, especially competing with cheap imports like avocados from California, which undercut local farmers despite inferior quality.
- [10:14] Niles stresses the importance of marketing and creating an experience around locally grown food to build direct relationships between farmers and consumers, which helps justify higher prices and supports food sovereignty.
- [11:53] The connection between consumer and farmer transforms purchasing into an act of community support rather than just buying food. Niles’ farm brand, Homokua, leverages social media to communicate and educate customers, fostering transparency and trust.
- [13:01] Jason Schwartz shares his perspective as someone from an urban background with little early exposure to farming, highlighting how social media now provides a bridge for consumers to reconnect with food origins and the importance of soil quality.
13:39 → 18:17
- [14:11] Niles confirms that education is a vital part of his work, helping customers understand the difference in flavor and quality that comes from regenerative, organic farming versus mass production.
- [15:14] He emphasizes quality over quantity, refusing to compromise authenticity for ease or higher yields. Taste tests are a key method for educating consumers on the superior flavor profiles of local produce.
- [16:22] Niles balances time between farming and educating through workshops and social media. He finds teaching others also helps him learn and stay motivated.
- [17:20] Inspiration is essential in education—Niles uses visual and practical methods such as showcasing color variations, permaculture designs, and indigenous practices to inspire others to farm sustainably.
- [17:48] Niles wants to keep produce local—in Maui first, then possibly other Hawaiian islands—highlighting the importance of environmental matching for crop success. He acknowledges farming challenges but treats failures as opportunities to learn and adapt.
18:17 → 24:55
- [19:03] Discussion transitions to Niles’ involvement in a soil regeneration project using algae-derived biostimulants (called “super slime”) as part of a feasibility study on Maui.
- [20:16] Niles has taken soil samples from diverse microclimates across Maui (McKenna, Wailea, Haleakala, Lahaina, Haiku) to analyze soil differences and adaptability of the biostimulant product.
- [21:23] The project includes microbiology studies and plant tissue tests on crops like kalo (taro), citrus, lettuce, and others to measure soil biology improvements and plant health under different treatment dilutions.
- [22:50] The study compares treated and control plots to observe effects of the biostimulant on soil microbiology and crop growth.
- [23:53] Application involves diluting the product with water in measured quantities to find optimal plant responses without causing nutrient lockout—an important concept explained as plants being overwhelmed by excess nutrients, leading to deficiencies and stress.
- [24:55] Niles explains nutrient lockout in detail, contrasting synthetic fertilizer overuse with natural, balanced nutrient uptake in organic systems.
24:55 → 31:33
- [26:02] The conversation critiques industrial agriculture dominated by large corporations like Monsanto, which rely heavily on synthetic chemicals and marketing, overshadowing organic and regenerative alternatives.
- [27:10] Niles emphasizes the importance of transitioning soils away from chemical dependence toward regenerative practices to heal the land and produce healthier food.
- [27:46] He shares success stories of improved soil structure (“fluffiness” or “chocolate cake” layer) and increased fertility through organic matter incorporation and crop rotation, even on challenging clay soils.
- [29:12] Techniques like mowing crop residues, rotary plowing, and composting create closed-loop systems that return nutrients and organic matter to the soil, fostering microbiology and soil life.
- [30:09] Niles contrasts regenerative soil with industrial fallow fields, which lack microbiology and vitality, resulting in nutrient-poor, chemically dependent crops that harm human health.
- [31:04] Experimental trials with biostimulants and control plots reveal measurable differences in plant growth and soil health, validating regenerative approaches through science.
31:33 → 38:34
- [32:05] Niles observes growing interest among younger generations in farming, driven by concerns about sustainability, food sovereignty, and climate change.
- [32:42] He stresses the importance of mentorship and education to overcome barriers, noting that access to knowledge is improving with market garden classes and online resources.
- [34:21] The COVID-19 pandemic caused job losses in hospitality, creating an opportunity to engage people in farming, though Niles regrets missed chances to bring workers into agriculture.
- [35:28] Discussion about the potential for online courses that blend indigenous and modern regenerative agriculture to reach a global audience.
- [36:05] Niles highlights the pride in Hawaiian culture and the potential for Maui to be a model for remote land self-sufficiency and regenerative agriculture, emphasizing community and quality over mass production.
- [37:20] Jason and Niles agree that self-sustainability is a holistic, interconnected system—soil, plants, people, and community working together to regenerate the planet.
- [38:34] They stress the urgent need for dramatic changes and investment in local farmers to counter environmental damage and climate risks.
38:34 → 46:47
- [39:07] Niles discusses the challenge of making farming appealing to youth, noting that the “rockstar lifestyle” of regenerative agriculture—lush permaculture food forests and diverse crops—can attract a new generation of farmers.
- [40:51] Social media plays a critical role in outreach and education by connecting farmers with global audiences and inspiring sustainable practices worldwide.
- [42:26] Niles advocates for front-loading work in permaculture design to make farming easier and more sustainable in the long term, contrasting this with industrial agriculture’s costly shortcuts.
- [43:32] The conversation stresses the urgency of investing now in regenerative agriculture and renewable energy, as natural disasters and supply chain disruptions threaten Maui’s food security.
- [44:34] Niles sees great opportunity in increasing local agriculture production by up to 90%, generating jobs while emphasizing responsible farming practices that avoid toxic inputs.
- [45:07] Discussion of Mahi Pono, a large-scale farm on Maui, where Niles acknowledges differences in approach but hopes to influence them toward regenerative and organic methods through relationship and education.
- [46:47] Niles describes his sensitivity to chemical residues in produce, which cause migraines, reinforcing his commitment to organic growing methods and natural pest management by accepting some crop loss to insects as part of the ecosystem.
46:47 → 54:19
- [47:47] Niles explains the philosophy of accepting some crop loss to pests as natural and part of a balanced ecosystem, with losses recycled back into soil through composting.
- [48:19] Jason thanks Niles for his heroism and contribution to the local farming community, emphasizing the close-knit, collectivist culture among Maui’s small farmers.
- [49:56] Niles highlights the cooperative relationships among local farmers, sharing knowledge and learning from each other’s microclimates and practices.
- [51:17] He advocates for microfarms and diversified farming rather than large monocultures, which lack intercropping and permaculture design benefits.
- [52:25] Niles expresses hope that their regenerative projects and knowledge-sharing will influence larger farms and contribute to Maui’s food security and sovereignty.
- [53:25] Final remarks emphasize the importance of upfront investment in soil health and sustainable practices to avoid costly remediation and yield failures later, contrasting with industrial agriculture’s back-end problem-solving.
- [54:19] Closing thanks and recognition of Niles’ vital role in advancing regenerative farming on Maui.
Key Insights
- Farming is fundamentally about soil regeneration and stewardship, not just crop production.
- Indigenous agricultural practices on Maui provide a model for modern regenerative farming.
- Food sovereignty and reducing dependence on imports are critical for Maui’s sustainability.
- Building direct relationships between farmers and consumers through branding, experience, and education transforms market dynamics and supports local agriculture.
- Soil microbiology and biostimulants like algae-based products can significantly improve soil health and crop resilience.
- Regenerative farming requires a holistic, systems-level approach including crop rotation, organic matter recycling, and permaculture design.
- Young people are increasingly interested in farming, but mentorship and education are essential to sustain this trend.
- Social media is a powerful tool for outreach, education, and community building in agriculture.
- Large-scale industrial farms differ in methods but can be influenced toward more sustainable practices through collaboration and education.
- The urgency of investing in local regenerative agriculture is underscored by climate risks and supply chain vulnerabilities.
This detailed summary captures the core themes and discussions of the video, preserving the original flow and structure aligned with the timestamps for clarity.
Transcript
00:00
[Music] aloha everyone welcome to the neutral zone it’s anything but neutral today i have a special guest i have niles james niles is here on maui hi niles how are you today uh aloha jason i’m doing very well very long very bright and early oh bright and early i was going to say this is the earliest that i have ever done a show except when i was doing someone in pakistan and then now this is a whole different thing you’re here on maui you’re up early for me but late for you you’re a farmer would you
00:48
say would that be a if i was going to try to define niles james i’d say wow there’s so much i can talk about how would you define you um i guess you could say farmer or you could say stewart or the land or you could say kukia or not mauna but aina um you know we we fight for what’s right for the land for the natives and and that’s kind of what we are is we build soil we create soil and that’s what we really farm and then everything that comes out of that is a value-added product such as
01:19
vegetables and then even beyond that when you start making lilacoid butters and stuff such as that too so so you’re a farmer who i guess they say farm to table do you to most of your products do you take them all the way to the client or you basically you grow it you’re regenerating the soil absolutely and then out of it comes a product like a tomato or a whatever it is and you get it to people that use it have you been doing this a long time i know that you were brought on to our group
01:55
because you have special skills um yes you’re recognized as uh really the best person to do what we needed to do awesome thank you um what have you been doing have you been doing this a long time here you’re young to be a wise old sage in our group yes i’m definitely a an old soul um so if you go back into my family as far back on my father’s side the generations of farmers just continues to go and go and go and i actually didn’t find an end point with that on maui more importantly i have been a
02:33
lot in the restaurant or hospitality industry i worked for about 10 years in the restaurant hospitality industry gaining a lot of relationships with chefs and owners and different restaurants which allow us to be able to showcase our produce and value out of products to chefs and restaurants around but we focus primarily on csa which is community supported agriculture so we really want to cater more to the community versus toward the tourism industry a lot of the chefs we deal with are more local based restaurants
03:05
opposed to tourism-based restaurants and so that’s really what we go for in that style yet i’ve been doing this for probably about three or four years now i know farmers that have been doing this for 10 or 15 years and we we like to tell everybody we still don’t know anything farming is just basically an experimental process that we have this passion and love with the land and we share this um coexistence and then we just learn and teach ourselves and and so there’s always something new
03:35
to learn from everybody you come across with every crop that you plant whether it’s in the same section or it’s in a different section you really just enable your brain to create these solution-oriented mentality versus a problem-oriented mentality and and that’s what we do is that we don’t see problems as obstacles we see those as opportu areas of opportunity to create these solutions and to continue to move forward and that’s what we need in food security here in maui so let me see if i can understand
04:08
you get a piece of land some is your own land that you farm yourself but also you work with other farmers to help them get the best yield both in quality of product quantity of product and what’s in it but also the soil itself is your first level of focus absolutely soil is always priority number one because without soil we have nothing so you help people build their soil and create an environment for things to be optimal you’re trying to save our planet like like me but you’re trying absolutely in
04:48
40 years i may not be here but you will and so you are the planes taking off on i hope my runway i’ve been running at this this environmental thing for so long you know people forget that it’s a conscious choice we take every day we can all make a big difference so how did you get started you were doing it in family all these years were you were you here on maui or you were other places um so i was born in utah but my father always lived on oahu so i grew up primarily in kailua kaneohe um and out in ewa
05:22
and so i was always acclimated to hawaii when i was very young i remember walking on kailua beach when i was five years old and saying this is where i want to be for the rest of my life wow so when i ended up coming out here um going back my family had a 90 acre tobacco and corn farm down in kentucky at one point in time they ended up selling it a long time ago but i got into restaurants so i could kind of survive here with the hope that one day that i would be able to be a steward of the land to be able to
05:51
live more sustainably and be able to either hunt or grow anything that i need to consume and so i’m working on that i’m not anywhere perfect on that whatsoever but it’s one of my my big lifetime goals is anything that i get off the land or anything that i grow that’s that’s really what i’m going for in order for consumption because i think the importation of what we do in the sense of 90 80 to 90 of goods here into maui is very detrimental to the entire world let alone just our our
06:18
ecosystem our food sovereignty here in maui isn’t that amazing 80 to 90 of the food is imported and we still have to get the many people here to understand the importance of self-sustainable can you imagine we’ve had these situations on occasion where the shipping lanes stop or things are happening in the world like maybe a coveted virus where no matter what’s going on and we can be ready to have it all coming in we’re all ready to go and okay wait a minute we weren’t able to grow enough sorry
06:55
uh wait wait wait we need now because we’ve got troubles wait wait wait we can’t wait we are stuck in the most remote land west in the world and we should have been doing it do you find that the things that you do are in some ways similar to the native culture because i know that our native culture was all self-sustainable way back way back and i like so this day and age everybody likes to speak about regenerative agriculture and i think it’s an important conversation but i think it’s
07:28
just another phrasing for indigenous agriculture and that’s really what we’re doing is we’re going back to the most basic of systems that we’ve already been created and used for thousands of years by the indigenous cultures such as the hawaiians in their and that’s what they did is they basically farm from the top of the mountain all the way down to the bottom of the not the bottom of the ocean but towards the shore and so that’s really what i like to say and why i like to say i’m a
07:55
steward of the land because i’m i’m so much more than somebody who just farms the land i i’m i’m taking care of that land that is my kuleana my responsibility to do that so yeah i really like to use the terminology indigenous agriculture because it’s something that they mastered for the entire lifetime of their history yeah um so yeah absolutely and taking those notes and and really separating myself which was something we can talk about later to be able to revitalize that culture in the
08:25
native fauna or endemic fauna or the canoe crops that were brought over here and really just trying to reintroduce those or not reintroduce but introduce those more into areas that are of need of those crops and do you are you marketing as your farm or are you marketing as you i’m i am you know i’m not sure farming is is quite a thing not only you have to figure out how to grow it and grow it well then you have to find out where to sell it absolutely and how to get enough of it you know many of us who are consumers
09:01
always hear that the farmers only get a couple of pennies out of a dollar of stuff because everybody else is adding adding on price adding on price is it a challenge to be a farmer financially is it a lot of uh you know i don’t know what wholesale and retail are but sure when i go into a store here and they tell me oh this this avocado is 289 each and then what you go to the next store and there’s a bag of six of them they came from california and they cost three dollars wow i can buy three
09:40
dollars for all these from california how does a farmer that wants to grow locally and support figure out how to survive here it must be quite an interesting challenge so i think what you said at best and there’s a there’s a big difference between older generations and new generations um is the older generations are more about farming and when you come into the new generation we have social media we have marketing we have branding and we have experiences and so i think the most important aspect
10:14
that any farmer or farm business can take away is about creating an experience is that you don’t need to sell a product you just need to create an experience and so when you create experiences the consumer supports you and your farm so then again the disconnect between our food our farmers and our consumers is so vast that that’s why it’s so much easier to say i can save money by paying three dollars for all these avocados versus paying 275 for one avocado so what you do is or what we do
10:49
specifically is we create a brand behind our experiences through our marketability through our communication when people reach out to me on any social media platform and they ask me a question about farming we’re there to answer it so we’ve created this brand of homokua which is our farm so it’s not directly from me it’s it’s through the partnership between my significant other ashley hoge and myself is that it’s not difficult when you can bridge the gap between the consumer and the farmer when they
11:19
have that symbiotic relationship then it’s not necessarily i’m paying three dollars or i’m paying 275 for one avocado i’m paying 275 to support my farmer like my mechanic or my doctor and when you have that that relationship with that farmer you don’t you no longer look at the product as this is something that i’m consuming because i need to consume it you start looking at is this is my farmer and i want to support my farmer because i believe in food security i believe in food sovereignty i
11:53
believe in regenerative and organic methods and i want to continue this basis with my family and my children and that’s really the market that we have is that the parents that are care so deeply that their children know where their food comes from i don’t think at a certain point that pricing matters when that connection and that relationship and that experience is created through that bond of the farmer to the consumer which is why we focus really on community supported agriculture csa and
12:23
giving harvest boxes or doing add-ons and being really communicable are communicating really well over um social media platforms or any any platform that we’re given that we can put in face of our of our consumer and our clients well that’s very powerful and important then i imagine let’s make sure arden i’m here with niles james i’m jason schwartz here on kaku 88.5 niles when you talk about that about um your connection with the end user it’s such an unusual world that i’m
13:01
i’m older and so i remember where we heard there was i’m from new york city so i knew there was something called a farm but it was far away and it used to be a thing they say kids in the city never see animals i saw lots of animals but you could put me in front of i can grow rose bushes because we had the right fertilizer in my backyard and i can maybe if i’m lucky grow a row of something but it is quite it’s an experience trying to grow so we had no connection at all and now in this time of social media
13:39
what a great opportunity for people to get in touch with where their food comes from and i would bet if we sat there and looked at these two avocados you know that they all look the same but what’s in them that’s what soil regeneration is isn’t it it’s like it’s nice to know they all look the same but behind this cardboard wall in the movie there’s nothing there’s no town that was just the front of a town same in produce like you can have something and you think it looks
14:11
beautiful but it tastes like cardboard it’s one of those movie sets that really doesn’t have in it what’s good so i imagine that’s do you guys uh do that with your clients or that sort of goes along with this whole education piece you do it definitely goes along with it um and the first initial periods of people transitioning especially during the covid happenings where people became more reliant on where their food comes from and sourcing um csa it was almost it was almost a punch in the face for
14:47
the lack of a better term of how the flavor profiles were so different when somebody actually puts the passion and care into what they’re growing versus the quantity of which they’re growing quality over quantity is something that we always we we preach to is because when you start mass producing anything you start losing some of that authenticity and that’s something that we never want to do we never want to substitute our authenticity and our genuineness out for anything that’s going to make our
15:14
lives easier we’d rather our lives be harder with a better quality product than our lives be easier with a lower quality product we urge people multiple times to do taste tests because that’s the easiest way to tell well you know it’s funny that it’s funny to me and that i live all these years years ago when we talked about these things that was not important that’s not important now the whole west coast of the united states is drying up and there’s less produce and people are getting
15:44
more aware of the words local sourcing more aware of of uh of that they may not be able to do it here how can they learn a better way do you do you spend a lot of your time educating or most of the time growing i imagine farming is super intensive time-wise so um so i have a constant struggle because i spend as much time farming as i try to spend educating and so a lot of that’s either through social media platforms or through workshops and so if honestly if i didn’t have the validation
16:22
from people from time to time i probably wouldn’t spend so much time on social media trying to teach and trying to outreach to people and try to answer questions but because it is so beneficial and helpful to other people including myself it teaching other people helps me teach myself because you can only talk to yourself for so much in the field before you start feeling crazy um and so expressing it outwardly to other people that are having the same kind of questions allows you to strategically think um and so
16:49
i do both i think the most important aspect of education is inspiration is without inspiration there’s no education you can’t demean somebody and then educate them because they’re never going to retain that information so it’s just about showing aloha and and inspiring people whether it’s through color variations or varieties or the permaculture style of how we design things or just expressing how those things have designed and how they interwork with each other so i like to do both and i don’t think
17:20
i’m very passionate about farming but i’m very passionate about farming because i think it’s a huge necessity and like you said local local vore um yeah it would be great if my produce makes it around the world but that’s not the purpose of what a farmer is doing or not the purpose of what supporting local is what i want to do with whatever we produce here on maui is i want to keep it on maui and then maybe when it becomes too much then i want to send it to molokai or i want to send it to oahu or something of that
17:48
nature keeping it in hawaii and so educating people about how local is the most important aspect and what we do here may be not something that you can necessarily do in your location but as long as you’re recreating the environment of which the plant or the crop grows you can grow almost anything and so again just that educational out piece of there’s try on tribulations there’s plenty of times that failures happen in farming but failure isn’t the end goal it’s just again an area of
18:17
opportunity to be able to re-strategize and rethink and move forward well let me let me talk about that education piece because i’m involved with um and you know them michael smith and diane carter regenetech soil regeneration and uh and so much more but taking algae growing algae and creating a biofuel and using a process of pyrolysis not burning because you don’t have oxygen and then extracting things off there and supplementing back into the soil it sounds like like a cauldron like you
19:03
were trying to create the soil that that uh plant is growing in all right so you got involved in in our project because you’re someone who does that educating you’re someone who says look if we’re going to do a test to see how things grow we need to start here and we need to have different very so you’ve helped us set up a demonstration if you will that’s going to show the end of this thing and really clearly show people that you can generate an amazing product you can regenerate
19:41
and get the soil to be back where our goal of self-sustaining sustainability is going to become easier because we’re building from the local and keep building and building how are we doing on our soil here on the island did you have you checked raw soil in different places i bet you have yeah um so i’ve taken a soil sample from the the depths of mckenna or wailea up to crater road which is on haleakala at 4 000 feet i have some from lahaina i have some from haiku so yeah i’ve taken soil samples
20:16
and the difference in the textures and the content is just so amazing that no soil is is like the other and that’s because we have so many microclimates here in hawaii or maui itself so like what we’re doing the feed like we call it a feasibility study right which means how feasible it is to use this stuff here so you take raw soil as you’re doing it you’re setting up the same kind of tests in different micro climates i want to say up the the chain here for whatever the chain is um have you
20:53
i know we’re not at the end of feasibility state what what are you seeing you’re seeing interesting things happening oh absolutely so central valley um next to la caja we’re doing a study there on kalo and we’re doing a microbiology study as well as different variations of dilutions of the biostimulant that derives from that algae and we’re going to do a plant tissue test on the biostimulant to see how the plants react and to see what kind of genetic makeup they’re taking on and
21:23
to see any kind of stress that they’re taking on as well and then the microbiology was basically a starting point to see how much micrology is going on in that particular area and then we’re going to apply the super slime that we like to call it over a 10 week basis or 10 week period to see how much progression there has been or how much more activity there has been from that specifically and typically we would be cover cropping that area and then drenching that and so we have a control area and by
21:50
control what i mean is that we have an area that nothing to so we just we water it as normal and that’s basically it and so that’s a nice starting point or a comparison to look at our our other area that we’re working with our microbiology or micrology with that that super slime and to see the difference in the cover crop and how tall the actual super slime cover crop section is versus the control whether again there’s nothing done to that it’s amazing to see the results and in
22:20
the reaction of these plants such as kalo and we’re also doing some out in hana for citrus i’m doing it for lettuce and that will be starting with you this week and then i also have another makawa farm that’s doing lettuce and again a couple different variations and we wanted to do leafy greens for the plant tissue test just to get a really good idea of what again what the experiment entails versus the the plant tissue test for trees and see how it affects the trees as well because that’s what we grow right we grow
22:50
vegetables and citrus and and other things but those are pretty much the two primary categories of what our produce takes up and uh you i imagine you’re also measuring the soil before and after yeah so what we did for the the micrology or the um the by sorry the the super slime test is we did a standard soil test and then we did a plfa test which is basically again a micrology test to see how much microbiology is going on in that soil and so we have a nice starting point and then over that time we’ll come back at
23:22
the end of the 10 weeks or maybe a little after if we decide and that’s when we’ll take the other soil sample and we’ll compare them and then we’ll put that into our feasibility study and analysis to see what the difference was and how applicable it would be to have here in maui specifically well some of the early pictures i see you know progress as things are going along it’s pretty dramatic what we see i mean just physically see where you look and you realize come on you must have put something on there be
23:53
besides that that little green stuff that green slime how how just roughly how do you how do you put this stuff in everyone i guess it’s is uh available they buy it and add water how do you make a mixture like this um yeah so basically it’s it’s a certain dilution of water to the product and so in some of them it’s gonna be a quarter cup to a half cup to a full cup and to one and a half cups for the micrology so we’re doing the difference in dilutions to see what the plant’s reaction is to
24:26
those dilutions so when we start showcasing the product or marketing the product we have an exact well not exact i would say because there’s still some fluctuations but we have a fluctuation of how much dilution you should put on the plant before it becomes too much for the plant and before it starts to have nutrient lockout and things such as those that’s an interesting word nutrient lockdown what does that mean too much of something so basically so when you foi are sorry when you when
24:55
you when you fertigate or when you fertilize in a liquid basis you’re forcing the plant to take all the nutrients in one time versus a top dressing of dry nutrients the plant will take what it wants when it needs to so when you over feed a plant let’s just say too much nitrogen it starts to have nitrogen lockout and it starts to have deficiencies because it has been given too much of one nutrient or multiple nutrients that it no longer can continue to take it and it goes into shock and so the plant starts having these
25:27
issues that sounds like the fertilizer industry to me and so that’s one of the the biggest problems that i see is is that monsanto and bear has so much money for marketing that everybody thinks that the only way to grow food is with miracle-gro soil america grow fertilizer and this is how i this is how i do it when really all it takes is just a little bit of education or research to show that yeah if i need nitrogen there’s multiple other products that i can use that are regenerative or organic
26:02
or that are not synthetic chemicals that i can use for nitrogen or calcium or phosphorus bananas and eggs and i mean nitrogen feather meal among other things so there’s all these different answers out there but they have just poured so much money into advertising and marketing into governments and everything else that we could go into that they’ve just flooded the market and and nobody nobody has the time or the willingness to go outside that normality of what the advertising is to really see what the
26:32
difference is and and that’s what we’re kind of getting now in this last half decade maybe is that people are awakening to finding new resources to be able to grow regeneratively organically because they don’t want to continue to poison their families and i i’m sure i’ve already heard from other areas using the this regenetic product to be able to heal the soil and get rid of some of those chemicals you know we heard words like glyphosate we’ve heard all kinds of exciting things around monsanto on how
27:10
they’re poisoning us and round up that’s part of what you’re doing isn’t it you’re trying to really make that soil better and grow good plants all at the same time and then put things down to make the soil better and the soil better do you find in some of the areas you work at that over time you use less and less supplement and your soil is really improving it over the years i imagine you see that well even justin so the last farm that i was i was doing a lot of work on i had
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somebody that was there for three years and after i came in and i started doing all the things that i i typically do in the sense of rotating beds and putting organic material back into the beds they said the increase in soil fertility or the fluffiness we like to call it the chocolate cake the fluffiness chocolate cake layer basically um just became so much more prominent and when we’re working with a lot of clay especially where we were it’s it’s amazing to hear that in such a small amount of time
28:16
you’re still able to see great progress when i first got there i could hardly put a pitch fork into the ground in some places because this the soil was so compacted and again lots of clay lots of heat lots of moisture and so it just compacts or not lots of moisture but a good amount of moisture and allow it to compact and so basically what i do is i adjust everything that i possibly can i put back into the soil so that means if i have a whole row of broccoli that i’ve harvested i’ve come back now and
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i’ve mowed that and then i i rotary plow which is basically walking through the foot pass and taking soil and throwing it onto the bed and allowing all that to decompose so when you start learning these tricks of the trade of how i can farm soil because again that’s the most important aspect to me especially here in hawaii is taking care of the aina um to making it look putting it back giving it leaving it better than what i received it in when you start learning those tricks of everything plays back
29:12
into each other whether it goes back into the soil immediately or you use it and you compost it and you put it back into the soil six eight months later that’s really what you want to do is these closed-loop systems of creating all of your own biomass and really taking heat of that and and putting everything you possibly can into the soil that’s beneficial that’s organic that’s natural when i say natural i mean a plant naturally going back into the earth and decomposing in a way that’s
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allowing the nutrients to go back into the soil you really start to see a huge difference when you’re dependent on industrial agriculture and you’re seeing these big fallow fields where they have 10 foot spacing of tractor space that has no cover crops or nothing and it’s just dirt and they just keep putting chemicals or nutrients back into the soil to be able to grow is there’s no micrology there and that’s and that’s what grows things obviously nutrients and trace minerals and stuff are right there
30:09
with it but if you have no microbiology going on in the soil and there’s no life you’re not going to have life there’s going to be no life or energy into that food and then you’re consuming that food and you’re taking on that bad energy those chemicals those toxins and you’re deteriorating your body and so yeah again as when you start learning those regenerative or indigenous practices if everything goes back into the soil and you start seeing the results almost instantaneous and
31:04
and that’s the importance of experimentation and control areas is because without any kind of starting point or control you really don’t have a comparison and so when i have five trays of lettuce one’s my control one’s my quarter one’s my half one’s my full and one’s a foiler spray you really start to see the differences in just normal behaviors of i have these tray i have these seated and trays for four weeks i feed them once a week with the the biostimulant and you start seeing the difference and
31:33
that’s the only difference is literally the the dilution of what you’re putting on it or how it’s applied whether it’s again dressed liquidly uh in a liquid form or it’s dressed in a powder form or it’s dressed in a foiler spray which is still liquid but it’s going directly onto the the plant tissue or sorry the plant leaves versus being soaked in by the root system right wow do you find that you have a lot of young people that are thinking about farming i mean i know
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that when i was growing up farmer wasn’t even in our choices to give the list of possible career choices farmer never hit the list but now i hear lots of people i say lots of people many more people are gay they i want to do this and even if i’m not going to have a big field of this i want to do this even in my own little world absolutely so can look can people do this kind of thing on an individual basis i imagine they can i i definitely agree with the right tools and the right let’s just say mentor which could be
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anybody that’s growing or the the right the right attention is when you work with something every single day you start to notice the habits of the plant that is i used to say and i guess up until maybe right now i would say that i’m the next generation farmer but really i’m this generation farmer it’s it’s it’s our generation’s time to step up to this farming so yeah i think there are lots of young people that are interested and intrigued because one they care about sustainability they care about
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sovereignty they care about climate change um they care about these natural ways of what the world is so they’re they’re stepping up to the plate but i think without the educational aspect that that’s what makes life harder is if there’s nobody to look to um for these answers or for these teachings or for these mentorships then it becomes a lot harder to grasp because the information isn’t willingly there but i think we’re there i think we’re at the the time frame of the information is
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becoming there people are doing more market garden or master classes and people are signing up for it so yeah i think we lost a big opportunity during coven because there was a lot of transitional periods here for people especially in maui where they were working restaurants or hospitality and then that basically dissolved over a year span so we we could have captivated a very large audience that was looking for something to do in the sense of work um in maui i even if you’re on unemployment it’s
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really hard to get behind once you get behind you stay behind typically and then you see a lot of transient people end up leaving and so i had probably five people that would have been willing to work for me at that point in time and i wasn’t in a position because of partnerships um to be able to hire and to bring other people on which is really unfortunate because i missed out on a couple really good people that i could have had under my wing at this point and and starting to build the five farms
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which is my goal in the next five years yeah well do you um do you think that in what you’re doing you’re finding that there’s a tr i i just keep looking locally you know you talked about originally calling this indigenous agriculture have there been um that would probably be an interesting thing maybe it’s already happening to to create online course to show how the indigenous agriculture and the local agriculture go hand in hand and work together the the young people that i see
35:28
i guess i’m talking about the very very young ones they’re looking for to leaders like you to teach them because they seem to be hungry looking for something the young hawaiian kids they um i may be you know putting things on to it but there’s a tremendous pride in the hawaiian community and i would love to see agriculture and teaching of these methods that you’re doing to get a more global reach you know to for us to be an example to the world and the most remote land masses in the world
36:05
to grow and to improve our soil and to be independent and to have everyone involved in that idea of supporting each other local product that has greater quality and uh everyone’s happier because they the cost they spend the money they spend on on things don’t have to be spent because they can now be growing it and you know we talked about the three dollars for a bag of avo’s versus avo one for three dollars you probably could find more nutrients in that one and that’s why i’m going
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back all this comes together where money doesn’t become an issue like you say it’s it’s a local thing to to have everyone grow up learn the trade that’s going to save our planet regenerate our soils grow good quality food care about each other and it’s like it all this sort of works together to me you know in our world now we separate things out into categories maybe because there’s just so many people we have to separate there’s just too many of them but when it boils back down
37:20
they all fit together isn’t that what self-sustainability is is a an everything model like you said you put the stuff back in the soil you’re growing it and you eat it and then however it comes out it all is regenerating i’m hoping that leaders like yourself who have really high powerful positive spirit can bring our present and future generation into a place where we can be sold people everyone you see that’s old like me with all this silver hair we’ve been abusing this earth i mean
37:57
it’s been it’s beyond even casual we can’t how can one deny we’ve been really we’re so far down the road toward bad we got to do dramatic things that are good even if they cost more right because it will otherwise we’re not going to have a planet where people are i hope that that’s what that’s what i like keep sharing that the young people are picking up the shovel and picking up the hoe and learning from people like yourself who will be the grandfather someday who hopefully you’re going to do
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help what i do which is at least be aware we blew it and it’s time to change it now you guys are are there how is it moving are you seeing enthusiasm are you getting greater yields and things like that i know you’re the product we’re trying to add is hopefully going to be a giant game changer but you’ve been doing this without that kind of stuff are people jumping in you know like i don’t know how to say it any other way i’m i’m concerned that young people don’t find it sexy enough to go out and be a
39:07
farmer although so i believe his name is his i know his name is travis wu and i believe he’s on big island and he came over for one of the the the conferences one time and he said there’s a lot of things i disagreed with him on and this one thing that i took away very very much so is we have to sell social media we have to sell the rockstar lives the rockstar lifestyle and so how you when you think of agriculture you think industrial agriculture you think hot hot humid dusty dirt not soil
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dirt out in the middle of this field and you’re just in your your sun burnt all these other things but with social media and our new style of market gardening or regenerative agriculture indigenous agriculture what we’re doing is we’re selling and showcasing a lifestyle a rock star lifestyle who wouldn’t want to be in four acres of lush permaculture food forest that has an acre of vegetables with 40 different varieties and every color of the rainbow that you could ever imagine that’s what we’re
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selling and that’s how you you inspire and then educate the young or you intrigue them in order to to want this to want to to grow and to be part of what that means in this in the community is farmers don’t grow for themselves we grow for the community and that’s what we’re here for and so yeah i think there’s a lot of uptrend on farming and agriculture and sustainability sustainability has been a huge word over the last decade and they’re they’re becoming more and more
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driven to grow food to know where it comes from whether it’s in their backyard or it’s their farmer yes absolutely again and social media has so many different cons to it but it also has so many pros to it as well like you said before the outreach that you can now i can now grasp people from from pakistan or argentina or china where they’re they’re they’re asking questions of what we do or they’re like oh my gosh we have that tree here because it’s a nitrogen fixer and it’s a
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legume and it creates shade cover and organic material leaf litter that goes back into the soil that creates mulch and all these other different aspects of things um so yeah there it’s again selling that rockstar lifestyle is showcasing that yeah farming is absolutely hard it’s it’s very hard and no matter how passionate you are about it it doesn’t it doesn’t take away from the hardness of what the tasks are but the passion that you get with it and the fulfillment that you get with it
41:51
it’s just something else it’s it’s to to see to see baron to see nothing and to to create green or to create food and and to create this network of self-sustaining permaculture forest or food forest or vegetable beds is just it’s just incredible and and so that’s what we’re showcasing is we’re showcasing how you start from nothing to something how you continuously get good yields with low input because that’s when you do all the work on the front end such as a permaculture style of everything kind
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of a whole systems approach which is what evan ryan would say a whole systems approach that everything feeds into each the other and everything has multiple purposes to it you’re putting all the work on the front end and you’re really making your life easier on the back end which is why i said we blew it now it’s time we got to dig in and do a little bit more because we didn’t do it before right um and if i may i think that’s going back to what i said about it takes microgreens a couple weeks but food 45
43:00
days to a couple months it’s the investment needs to happen now um the investment for maui needs to happen now the investment for shell gas of regenerative means of energy needs to happen now because down the road it’s going to be too late when when the fires happen or the tsunamis happen or any kind of natural disaster happens we’re the last on the list they don’t care about maui maui in hawaii is last there will they will not and i repeat they will not send food to us period and when we rely on 80 to 90
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importation of goods and it takes two months to grow food then i i don’t i farmers can’t make food pop like that and so we really need to as a community in maui and hawaii itself we really need to invest in our farmers which the county council of maui has done in the last two years which is absolutely amazing i’m very appreciative of our council that we have right now it’s because there’s going to be disasters and they’re going to continue until we do something dramatic enough where we we
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start getting a grasp on the tipping point of what’s going on in climate change and that’s what we need to do right now and and the more demand there is from local agriculture and local produce the the the growth can be exponentially it can it can be tenfold i mean there’s so much room when you import 80 to 90 percent of food there’s so much room for progress like i don’t see it as it’s terrible but i see it again area of opportunity because i’m a problem sorry i’m a solution oriented person i
44:34
see solutions in every problem that i’m given and so i just look at it as in that means we can increase our agriculture by 90 that’s astronomical that’s plenty of jobs um and it needs to be in a responsible manner growing food is better than having concrete but it has to be responsible so when you look at a large farmer like amay pono you probably see some good and some bad and you’re not one to smack them across the face because you’d like to educate them and i know all that stuff is happening
45:07
uh pros and cons to everything in life yes mahi pono is growing food in a very in a very different way than i would choose to grow food and again i spent a lot of my years in the last decade fighting monsanto fighting alexandra and baldwin and i got to a point where they were too big of a monster to fight that i needed to fight the fight that i could which is what i’m doing now is growing food so i have a vague relationship with mahi pono and that’s what i try to do is i try to be that outreach person that if they
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ever have a question or they ever have i i want them to ask me because i want them to be successful in the sense of growing regenerative and organic produce and although they’re not there yet i want them to be there over i want concrete going into central valley which it’s a whole other conversation and it takes a lot of money and time but companies have a lot of money and time and so my ultimate nightmare is to see central valley look like aya or honolulu or waikiki whichever you want to call it
46:14
and that’s what i really don’t want so growing food is better than placing concrete but there’s still responsible ways to do that and and to not create toxins in our soil and toxins in our body i’m very um what is that called i’m very not cautious i’m very prone so basically i i i when i try a vegetable i can taste if there’s anything on it in the sense of being sprayed and i’m very sensitive that was the word that i’m looking for i’m sorry very sensitive and
46:47
i get migraines very easily and so when i eat produce like that it doesn’t sit right with me and i can taste the chemical flavor and i start getting migraine and i get sick and so just in that little taste test because again taste tests are important to have to to be able to tell the difference of quality and i just it’s it’s so different when you eat chemically introduced food versus there’s biostimulator sorry there’s bio pesticides and bioinsecticides that we can use on in an organic method that organic
47:17
certified but the fact of spraying something my friend joel says that you just plant enough food for the the bugs to eat and i mean that’s what that’s part of the ecosystem right and i think somebody else said to me if if bugs aren’t eating your food then your food’s not part of the ecosystem and so you have to account for a 10 loss or let’s just say 20 loss if you want to go higher and the loss isn’t necessarily a loss as long as you put it back into compost or you can still mow it and put it back
47:47
into the soil and so what you’re doing is is you’re not wasting anything and you’re not spraying proactively you’re just accounting for it so maybe i need to plant more cauliflower and it sounds like what you’re talking about is accounting is actually it you’re not losing anything everything is there and then it’s gaining it’s just how we identify it and see it right perception thank you for being a hero with all this here you know um in what we’re doing we’re going to do another
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little segment where we’re going to show the feasibility study and all the little steps we’re going to do that here but it’s important for our whole world to know that that there are people like you and maui needs to know that what we’re all doing has people just like you except you have your specialty and you are good at it and it’s so nice the farmers here that i know the small local farmers become a community and like you say it’s it becomes a culture who wouldn’t like to be
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part of that community with great lofty ideals and they’re actually doing it and you can be part of it and helping our future so that your grandkids can eat a tomato that doesn’t taste like uh it’s been you know there’s tomato in there somewhere right it doesn’t taste like sulfur or some other chemical nutrient that they just pump in there absolutely anything that you know you’d like to share with an audience here i don’t want to just keep driving it no and i want to touch back on what you
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just said in the sense of the community the collectivisticness of what our agriculture industry is here i would say mostly i don’t know one honestly but we all see this as we’re not competitive there’s no competition between farmers here even though a lot of farmers grow the same stuff there’s no competition it’s we’re such a collectivistic tight-knit community that i have great relationships with evan ryan and ponogram farms michael at lapa owl farms hokule at noho anna farms so we have
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these great relationships because like i said evan said is he’s been doing this for a long time but he doesn’t know anything all he knows is what he’s done on his personal lane evan knows a lot don’t get me wrong don’t let evan fool you either he knows a lot of information he’s the go-to guy but we don’t know anything and all we’re doing is is going through trials and tribulations and figuring out how things work in the particular area that we’ve been stewards of and that’s what we do and
50:23
and that’s why we learn from each other because what evan’s doing at i don’t know what elevation he’s at but maybe 2300 maybe a little bit give or take and then what somebody’s doing at 2100 could be a significant difference it could be a significant difference in pests it can be a significant difference in climate soil content organic material acidicness versus alkaline there’s so many different aspects that can change here specifically in maui so having all of us be such a tight-knit
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community in that sense of agriculture and we’re all working towards the same goal i don’t want i don’t want to be a mahi pono or i don’t want to be a a monsanto in the sense of i want to be the biggest farmer in the world so everybody knows me i don’t i want to build microfarms i want to help farmers build their farms i want to help people who want to build a farm build a farm and that’s what we’re trying to do and that’s what’s really going to create food security and food
51:17
sovereignty is that a lot of little people are growing food and it doesn’t take these huge monoculture which monoculture if you’re farming 40 acres of this if you’re farming one acre of the same thing it’s monoculture so there is a lot of diversity in the sense of central valley and what’s going on but it’s all monocultured plots i mean yeah i have 40 acres of citrus it’s still monoculture i have 20 acres of potatoes it’s still monoculture there’s no inner cropping or
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intertwining of designing that permaculture food forest that allows things to kind of feed into each other um and hopefully we in what we’re doing will create enough influence to give some of those larger farmers a better idea and show them and right thank you for all you do i mean you’re a very important part not only of our project regenertech can you imagine if the whole world had people like niles james what a better place this would be might drive people crazy a little craziness is good all right
52:25
thank you for taking the time i know it’s been hard for us to find a time yeah thank you for being patient oh of course things are always changing on the farm so so we’re going to be back in a few days you won’t know it on the other end it might be part of the same show or separate so you can see the pieces of how the feasibility study is laid out for this regenetec product super slime i love that’s a fun word but the the even the early results are so dramatic you know they’re all over
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the world but we’re now doing it here it’s dramatic when you see something growing like this and the next one’s like this and it’s only been six or seven weeks and it’s gigantic difference and then you dig into the soil and see that difference that you don’t see but you know you’re building the soil then the next generation of product is even better and that’s what’s so great about this this is an accumulation of good you don’t have to think one crop next got to start from scratch
53:25
everything is building it’s getting better and better like you say more on the front end creates an easier life on the back end right and if we haven’t done the front end now to do the heavy lifting now is for us to really dig in and save our planet and save our future yeah there’s no shortcuts in farming whether you put it you put the work on the front end or the back end and so what industrial agriculture does is they put it on the back end and what i mean by putting that on the back end is that
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they’re now so confused with why they’re not getting yields is because they took shortcuts in the very beginning such as synthetic fertilizers and now they’re paying the price for it and now they have so much work on the back end to transition out of that that style that that’s where we’re at and that’s why microfarms are are now becoming more and more prominent because they don’t deal with that much torment into the soil and they actually that’s what they focus on is
54:19
soil health niles thank you for taking the time to join me here today i appreciate you
