Phyllis Robinson, Farm Mentoring , Environmental advocate

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union united and we’ve graduated over six years 84 farmers who are now uh doing their best to um to farm under these conditions and they’re very grateful for the subsidizations that are coming through um i found out that the meo application uh for the 2.5 million dollars for farmers is now open uh as of today well let me let me i’m gonna expand it meow is maui economic opportunity here in hawaii meo and that the federal government i guess through the cares act has filtered out to us two and a half

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million dollars is that from maui county alone 2.5 million is coming from the county of maui i’m i don’t think it’s federal funding i think that keaney rollins fernandez our county council member uh put that uh through uh her office and it was approved as a line item in the budget and it’s been sitting on mayor victorino’s desk because he’s been i think trying to make sure that the county uh doesn’t need that money for other things and my feeling is is that what’s more important than

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supporting our farmers who are growing our local food to supply maui especially um in the distribution sites that have been happening for people who are down and out because of the layoffs and the closings and you know we need to support our farmers so i took a look at that application just before we came on air and there’s certain restrictions so i really recommend anyone who is a farmer go on to the website and you can do so by going meo.org amazonmaryeo.org and uh it’s the first thing that comes

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up when you hit that link and it is the farmer application so scroll down and make sure you qualify don’t don’t waste your time on that finding out that because you haven’t filed your schedule f for 2019 for your farm income that you can’t apply so those are the kinds of restrictions that i’m talking about you have to have a get tax you have to show that you’ve filed and paid your debt tax for your farm income so if you haven’t had any farm income and you haven’t had to

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to even file your taxes um they still want to see that you’ve um filed uh a a 1090 excuse me filed a schedule f even though you haven’t got any income now that’s going to be hard so can you do it now retroactively file uh what do they call it uh right a late filing but still appropriate i mean otherwise yeah if you if you can gather together all that information and and um get your tax return in and and do your get taxes then uh for 2019 then i guess you know then you’re you’re compliant

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the other piece is that no money is going to go from this fund directly to the farmers it’s only going to go to the vendors so if you want to use this 25 grand to go buy a tractor uh the meo will pay the tractor uh sales department they’ll pay for your tractor but you’re not going to get the money so and if you’re looking to get education then you know and you want to take a course at the college and excel spreadsheets then to improve your business acumen as a farmer then you can um you can have them pay

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uh maui college for for that class that you want to take so that’s the way it’s going to work the farmers aren’t going to get the money directly oh so you have to basically have some substance before you can get help you have to have you can’t just have a dream of being a farmer and doing it or having gone through a class you have to put some of your own money in you’ve got to be putting your own initiative in for them to buy you the supplies and equipment to support your business okay

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i get it yeah so grants you know grants like this are um are helpful uh and uh ongoing support of our uh farmers is going to be essential and uh including uh you know this future department of agriculture that’s a good question there that department do you think that the the department of agriculture will make a big difference in things for the farmers immediately i mean i always are wondering about that because that’s our our election right here we go we have all these uh charter amendments

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that to me when you talked about keaney i really had thought that keaney was involved with that was that you and kelly and keane how did that all happen you’re frozen sorry someone yeah repeat the question jason well i’m trying to understand the department of agriculture well you said you know when the there’s a department of agriculture it will what is it going to do that isn’t going to happen now well i think that the first thing that can happen is uh before the department is actually

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created is to do a baseline study of where are our farmers at right now and um it’s a hard sell to get farmers to take the time to fill out surveys however um it may require a team maybe a partially of volunteers who are going onto the farms and sitting down and filling out a baseline study to ascertain where are our farmers at on maui we don’t really know we have no idea because you know aside from a study that was done by a man named melrose jeff melrose may he rest in peace um that jeff

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did a study of um our agricultural needs our what he called a food self-sufficiency study that was done under the uh hawaii department of uh labor and industrial relations and and it was uh you know was comprehensive but uh he i don’t think he talked to our small family farmers i happen to believe that our small family farmers are as important as you know the the bigger farms in uh in feeding uh our population and that’s what is not clear um in in his study and so i agree with kelly that we do

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need to establish a baseline because you can’t create a department um based on concepts and ideas it has to be based on what is the real need what is it that this department can do that the state department of agriculture hasn’t been able to do because the legislature only funds our department of agriculture at 0.4 of the overall budget all right so if our if our county council are committed to food self-sufficiency and want to support our farmers uh then we need to know what is the level

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of support that they need what are the ways that they currently get food out to the population you know we never even considered barter which you know if we go back to the native hawaiian um cultural traditions of you know of the aha system uh people uh exchanged they bartered fish for for vegetables or you know so that that kind of thing is happening all the time here all the time i get you know the the neighbors across the street bring over avocados and i give them my star fruit and you know we’re we’re

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constantly doing that but it’s not somehow factored in to our food sales efficiency so if food security is the most important thing i think that we need a baseline study and you know then the the naysayers who are saying we don’t need a department of agriculture we can’t afford it well i don’t think we can’t afford not to have a department of agriculture but we’ve got to know what the need is out there and right now we can’t base it on current knowledge so if we wait until 2022

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um to actually start the department of agriculture then we will be starting it based on some real data some real information and with alliances that are being built the support networks that are being built and understanding how those networks actually are helping our farmers and um and those are the kinds of things that i’m not so sure that funding for agriculture currently really looks at strongly enough is what are the networks of support does it need a department to be able to do that kind of study you think it would

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be helpful to have that department in place that’s why i don’t think that the i don’t think that we need the department to do the study i think that um i think there are people in our county council right now who believe that we can do this uh through an existing alliance it’s called the maui nui food alliance okay as a steering committee that is reached out to the various uh parts of our food system you know kamehameha schools is right now doing a mapping exercise of our food system

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statewide and they’re trying to bring people together through zoom to um you know to to work on that so you know combining that with the maui nui food alliance steering committee of um you know that that way you start to really see how these connections are vital you know the food hub for example uh there was a bill for food hubs at the state level do you know what happened to it no committee i don’t either i i know that it was um written partially uh by myself and a number of others from the farmer’s

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union it was submitted uh i did think that it made it through um the ways and means committee because i visited um de la cruz in his office who is the the chair of the ways and means committee for the legislature and he has a food hub proposal of his own in his own district so i’m hoping uh you know it has to pass over though and then kovitz hit so i don’t know if it passed over into the into the house but um it did make it through the senate um all the way to the to getting on the agenda

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so so food hubs are a way in which we um be able to give farmers um a leg up because the it’s more of an integrated vertical model where you’re not so dependent on the district distributor um who you have to pay a certain amount of money to get your food out you’re maybe part of a cooperative so that’s our audience needs to know the words food hub food hub is where all the produce comes in centrally and its distribution and marketing is done in a cooperative way that’s right

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yeah and the maui hub which got some funding and then was part of the farmer’s union and then it broke off and is its own entity they’re doing that right now they have i think they have almost 100 farmers who are contributing food they have a beautiful online um way to shop for that food the food is packaged at sun fresh down which is a certified kitchen um and then the district the distribution i think is happening through sun fresh because when i go to pick up my order ab and their regional pickup sites

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i go behind the ace hardware in kihei i live in kihei i go behind the case hardware and my order is right there and the volunteers put it in my car and i take it home and it’s a great variety of vegetables and fruits and and value-added products and so that is an example of how in a covid environment of maui uh food hub could operate now there are other ways are they able to take more than cash how does that work no you do it online with your credit card or paypal so i mean i’m thinking

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about all the people with the food stamps because we still have to somehow deliver i’m thinking about good quality produce to what do we say some of the people that really they when i see what they give out in in these food things to people pasta canned goods some of the veggies are okay but i am that’s why i’m i’m seeing they’re like uh almost outdated produce that’s not what we’re talking here no rash current is fresh at least um i think they they um i think the delivery is made on a

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wednesday to sun fresh from the farmers so it is a few days before um you actually get it delivered to a regional site pickup site so um it’s all fresh food i mean well i was just all i was doing earlier you talked about barter and right in the middle between barter and cash is this thing called food stamps so i’m just looking at those people go ahead yes so so the maui hub has got their snap benefits um certificate so if you are on snap if you have food stamps then if you buy on using your ebt card if you buy online

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um your card is worth double wow because you’re buying locally that’s the way they’ve set this up to get um to get our food stamp edt card holders to buy locally as if food is local that’s yours benefits are worth double wow that should be a big poster they should have a plane carrying that behind in a banner because that is like if you go on the maui hub um and i think it’s a dot-com because i think they are you know they are trying to be uh self-sufficient um they started out with some county

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money um i don’t know if it carried over when they split from the farmers she did but um you know they are you know attempting to um to at least break even what they want to do uh is to be able to make sure the farmers who are used to getting you know fairly decent prices from hotels and restaurants who have lost those um accounts cost those accounts to um be paid a decent amount for for their produce and you know through through subsidization that hasn’t had to be passed on to the consumer right yet now that may

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change when things open up in october um it is october october 15th once once the um the floodgates open and people go back to work and like that you know maybe the prices will rise but right now the prices are very reasonable for for the food they’re kind of like farmers market um pricing you know that’s great how do now so are they at mauihub.com is that where they must have another name yeah it’s called the maui hub.com um yeah and and um yeah it’s not food hub it’s the maui hub

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i remember when they were doing it and it was uh visible but then i suddenly didn’t see it in view well it’s because they moved uh they were under the farmers union and they were receiving funding from the care act via the mayor’s office and a certain amount went to the farm bureau and then a little less amount went to the farm machine and the idea was to basically have food distribution where the food was free but then it became a movement to have some of it be free to those who qualify for the ebt

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and then the rest would actually pay it which would assure its longevity um it would ensure it’s being able to move forward yeah yeah so i’ve been very pleased um with their service um they’re you know it looks like it’s it’s growing because i went down uh it’s between 12 and two is the pickup time on saturday and i went down um and there was a line of cars waiting to pick up their food that was going all the way back to the post office so wow yeah so i’m glad to hear it’s

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kicking it’s still hanging in there and yeah hopefully we can there’s csas besides that rebecca harbor up at uh um at greenlee farm has um has a csa the way the csas work though is you’ve got to come up with a substantial amount of money up front csa stands for community supported agriculture community supported agriculture basically whatever when you use these slangs i’m i’m thinking that by giving them the long names they can start asking for it and you know keeping it visible in

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in the words because it’s such a beautiful thing and uh i think we all we got to promote this and get the word out because i’m sure that a lot of people would want something that gives them good quality produce at reasonable prices or competitive prices and like you say double with the food stamps that’s a great thing and i know that food security hawaii is another group right jenny pell in that whole group are you with that also you’re probably with everything i’m an advisor to their board and um

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and i’m also going to be um there’s a couple of grants that are going to be going through um food security hawaii including a grant from the county for their ohana gardens which is a wonderful program that i talked to you about on rosh hashanah uh jason when we um a month ago right yeah he took a swim and uh what i um was explaining about that um is uh oh i just i just had one of those uh brain things go i started thinking about rosh hashanah what was i talking about just now oh omaha garden

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sorry ohana gardens is um going to be a grant from the county um that will support you if you want to get some help with your backyard gardens they’ll send advisors to you we’re calling them geographic ambassadors because uh you know sending someone from coola down to key a is not going to be particularly helpful in terms of what grows in kia so we’re gathering neighborhood ambassadors to come and advise you um there’s going to be some funding for the materials for building a maybe a raised bed kind of

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um fantastic yep and then money for some seedlings we’re going to work with some of the nurseries to provide seedlings uh the atherton foundation just gave the ohana garden some funding to get a delivery truck so that we can be delivering these seedlings to the backyard sorry wow no that’s okay i uh sent the word out um about the meo grants that i would help people because i’m a grant writer maybe i shouldn’t have said that oh it’s all right i mean that’s another subject we should

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probably jump into because you are a grant writer like you say unemployed you uh just submitted a grant that i know is also a line item for uh i don’t know how we describe it regenetech is how i think of it how do you think of it yeah it’s called regenetech um michael smith who was featured in the in the film was on your show this past march and he came to visit us on maui and he was featured in the feature-length uh documentary um called the need to grow yes now you just mentioned it earlier and

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in that movie when you know when when he came here i remember when we were sitting you and me and kelly king and just michael a couple of us in the park and we really conceived of how do we get this technology which is let me just taking uh algae and growing it and being able to produce fuel that can run an engine that creates biochar and siphons off i guess we call them phytocells is that a condensed way of looking at it um we refer to it as bio stimulants oh okay phytoceuticals biostimulants meaning

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jurassic park like thing things to make things grow exponentially yeah and to clean up unhealthy soil which um and also exponentially faster than um you know the generally they say a couple of years you know cover cropping and laying fallow and um you know mulching and there’s all kinds of ways to build up the microbial life in soil but the regenetech approach through the it’s called pyrolysis through that process what you actually are doing is creating a biostimulant that when it’s applied to damaged soil

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it cleans it up including herbicides and pesticides within two days i remember in the need to grow movie i think it was when when michael was asked about what it does what it takes nature four to five hundred years we can do in a week so uh the thought that we can regenerate our soil and that we you know between need to grow and kiss the ground another movie that’s been out recently netflix yeah well that was very good yeah well that to be able to realize that it is within our control and our reach to

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solve our problems with our environment yes yes and we can be an example right here in maui and have people coming from all over the world to see what we’re doing here and then take this technology home that’s been my dream to be in oh mine too jason mine too i am with you and i know there are many many people that are with you and with us um the thought that our if we cleaned up our soil that we could contribute to uh the alleviation of uh the co2 problem that we have the excess co2 in

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our atmosphere and all these models that we’re talking about here about food hub about what we’re doing with the soil they all integrate together that’s the kind of community you and i want to live in that’s what we’re doing here we have we’re we have a rich soil of great people here who have tremendous love for for our planet i we i’m just always thrilled to know some of the people that we have in our uh in our group here people like yourself the energy that you put in and the the

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love that you put into the people that come out as products of what you do really fantastic work you know you do you want us to uh to talk a little bit about um about the regenerative tech grant because um it’s kind of fresh in my mind that would be great let’s that’s that’s what i was thinking we might talk about i’ll let you start what do you think so first of all um thank you kelly king for putting the regenetech um into one of your favorites you know you had to have top five in the county council budget and

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you really saw the uh promise of being able to um to use um tons of junk wood that goes into our landfill to use that and to feed it into this thing that michael calls the dragon and the dragon then takes that and through a high heat combustion that’s all in a closed system you’re creating methane gas and you’re creating um carbon dioxide and in the center of this wonderful thing called the earth power lodge you have an algae pond and the co2 is what feeds the algae so you’re basically taking the byproduct

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of burning um this wood the ultimate byproduct is going to be biochar and biochar has its own long history of cleaning up soil and then what you’ve got with the algae is that you’re feeding it and you’re creating a bio stimulant that you then are able to produce at the other end an inoculant something that inoculates the biochar and makes it vital enough that it can be spread over large tracts of land i mean we’re talking about this this uh earth power lodge can take six tons of waste wood a day

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and turn it into 1.2 tons of biochar and yes i know amazing and so you know farmers what we’re hoping is that um you know and that’s part of michael smith’s vision is that you know basically we create our own maui earth power watch it’s run by um maui people who who own it and all we’re doing is giving a portion of the profits going forward to michael to help with um their um fund which is trying to help farmers they’re trying to take this far and wide across the world and this model is uh

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i i thought of think of it like a franchise but it’s it’s a self-contained business plan that in theory generates profits so before someone is going to even put their toe into duplication they realized that this is something that will be sustainable and the more it gets understood we’re going to need more i would think that when we first start someone says well six tons of green a day and then we realize we create extraordinary amount of green waste a day and that this might mean two or three or more of

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these so that’s what this is of this feasibility study to show what it can do and how it can be profitable so that someone that would invest really sees the what do they call the feasibility that’s why it is that’s right yeah and and the county you know much to their credit uh asked initially for a feasibility study uh partially because um you know do we have enough feed stock in other words that you know the dragon is thirsty or hungry you know it functions best when we’re giving it

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as much as that but if you think of how things are delivered here on the barges many times they’re delivered on pallets there’s so many pallets that are delivered to the landfill a day um i believe that a yale study was done with rob parsons when he was our environmental coordinator for the county and that study measured the amount of different products that were being delivered to the landfill and the amount of waste wood that was going into the landfill was far beyond the six tons that we

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would need to make this um this earth power lodge uh be able to churn out about the biochar so i mean that alone is uh is a reason to think the question of whether there’s enough to go in i don’t think is a question i mean uh when i think of the green waste you never mind what we want to clean the invasive species could be a constant job a constant job and give us tremendous amount but just in trimmings from everything there’s so much oh yeah there’s limiting going on you know to have that go into our

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landfill i mean you know i know echo products maui has had a business at the landfill and they’ve also i believe have taken uh the sludge from the waste treatment plant and they’ve turned it into a compost and they sell it here um the only problem is is that if you’re certified organic you can’t use that compost and the reason is is that it’s human waste and i think there’s a fear of pharmaceuticals that even though you’re putting it through a process to make the compost that involves heat

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heat doesn’t necessarily kill all the pharmaceuticals so oh yeah i understand that uh they found birth control pills the all kinds of things in the eye of a fish when you think about all the things that go in that can’t be that’s one of those things pharmaceuticals is the big issue yeah but there are things that can be done but that’s another show because i i happen to know that hydrogen they can use hydrogen for cleaning and it’s the only thing that will actually get there’s this i guess i’m going off

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subject here but there’s some you can there’s something called an exclusion zone where particles can be excluded out of water and get rid of the pharmaceuticals again it’s things that the world knows that america is a little bit slow on the on the uptake but these things are possible so yeah and i’m going to go back to the um how this earth power lodge would benefit our farmers good guides the product um coming out of it and through the feasibility study we should be able to establish

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the overall costs how long it will take to recoup what had to go into the construction of it you know the leasing of the land or or maybe we are given land you know there there is someone who’s willing to give us some property it doesn’t take much property actually five to ten acres including the storage of the wood for feeding the dragon but um and that’ll be part of the feasibility study too is choosing the right site for it and there’ll be all kinds of criteria and factors of how each how we

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decide where it should be um you know in the and the landfill is one of those sites so um but we have to we have to work with some of the existing people that are already recycling stuff uh before we um make a decision because we don’t want to put other people out of business but the point is is that what we’re envisioning is either shareholders um where maui farmers can be you know or anybody the public it’s a public offering where everybody can invest into this and um you know it’s like buying stock right

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the other uh approach would be to have the recipients the farmers of uh the byproduct of the of it that they would uh form a co-op a cooperative and so those are also going to be the things we’ll be exploring during the feasibility start is what is the best organizational structure to bring the best benefit to the people of maui in terms of soil reconstruct regeneration farmers getting bio stimulants that will increase their productivity you know all of these wonderful things that can come out of this so excited

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i’m very excited i when i first heard of it i was excited and now more than ever um especially in all these i want to say covet times the unpredictability of food supply is greater than ever some absurd number like 90 of our food supply comes from off island now it’s like why are we waiting till now to consider a priority but i’m so thankful for like all that you do i mean i think of you as really um one of the most important backbones of this you’re right in the center you’re in the middle of that hub you

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know just so important over the years the work that you’ve been doing and i just really have appreciated it um well thank you jason i’ve appreciated you too for bringing these things out to the public so that um you know that you know as people are driving uh they can tune in to your station on the radio and um also they can tune in to akaku correct and also all over the web because my target that sounds sort of funny my target isn’t maui because maui is a beneficiary i think the world needs to see what we

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are doing here that’s why i started this maui arts and music association to show the world what we can do here not you know i don’t want to go off again on the tangent but papa mama and papa the name was there to be exactly that a foundation to make dreams come true for the world and show them how from our remote land mass and people like you that this none of this happens without all of us doing it and you’re the kind of leader that has been standing all these years be quote before it was fashionable now

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it’s easy for people to say the words food security organic you know how many of us have been talking about this stuff for so many years but now it’s like well yes we have to concern ourselves about bringing food to the island we should be creating it here you need to pay attention for this election year and the election is uh how many days away 30 less yes less that we have to really pay attention to what candidates are talking about food security are seeing food security as a major issue

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for our small fragile ecosystem here in the middle of the pacific ocean and so as you go to decide who you’re going to vote for you know look at their track record how have they contributed to um to agriculture uh here um and this is the at our local level of elections and also looking at the at the um the charter amendment uh proposals that are on going to be on the ballot there’s six of them um there should be some information coming in the mail read it read it educate yourself i personally am going to vote yes for

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all six of them because they are designed to address this major issue of food security and and soil regeneration and and also our leadership um and how uh how our county government is constructed and you know we need to we need to get out and vote um i know ballot should be arriving any day now in the mail and so vote early is the is what i hear yes but i feel safe like every vote we have here is going to get counted i i really trust our local uh group here to do the right thing but i i hear these stories on the mainland

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so much fabrication of what can happen it’s almost like they’re setting a road map to try to create obstacles for people to trust this whole election ah it is getting exhausting phyllis i’m getting exhausted well let’s go have some um really healthy food that will um help to revitalize us through the afternoon get the work done that needs to be done and yeah eat healthily it can make all the difference in our energy levels to be able to get through this very stressful time and and it will

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build our immune system so that if we want to be um immune to the uh the covid virus then you know we we can do that through eating healthy local food food that’s grown regenerative with regenerative methods like organic and biodynamic permaculture principles we have such wonderful leaders and i’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of our farmer mentors who are just churning out this beautiful food so take advantage of it yeah well you’ve been you’ve been a really good guest today

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gave people a lot to think about and and uh really have been i think you’re on the foundation and that you’re the reason that things like this continue to move forward with certainty oh my blessings to you jason for um giving us a voice well you know i’m just the place to be the voice i got things to say but i couldn’t do it without all of you and all of us doing it and that’s always been my point that we have to be people aligned in positive action and so you are the they’re the what do they say you’re the

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wind beneath the wings of this whole thing thank you really thank you my pleasure i look forward to doing some more shows as we see this project of regenetech uh putting its feet on the ground we’ll do updates and reports and and try to show some of the results as we’re going along i’m sure the public will want to be supported on uh in january that’s part of the uh the grant is to pay to get him here so that he can guide the feasibility study right i saw that and we get to see diane too that’s a

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great thing yes parker diane she’s she’s delicious she’s wonderful well we are so blessed to be part of all that’s going on here because we all of us in the audience and you and me are the reason that we can save this planet are the reason that we can make it through difficult times because we all are co-operating you know we grant each other the possibility that if we work together we can make it go right and that itself is going to make it go right so thank you for joining us phyllis i

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appreciate it here today phyllis robinson from i don’t want to call you unemployed you are a woman who should be constantly writing grants and and and teaching people about everything you’ve just been wonderful my pleasure take care jason thank you and thank you guys for joining us out there in the world we’ll see you next week aloha everyone