Newsletter 44 - October 2012
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Aloha! This month we are celebrating breadfruit and banana at Breadfruit Festival Goes Bananas on Saturday, September 29 (more info) at Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in South Kona. The festival is about experiencing and connecting with the culture, history, and current practices associated with breadfruit and banana in Hawai'i. These traditional crops are culturally, environmentally, and nutritionally appropriate for Hawaiian homegardens and orchards. For over two centuries breadfruit has been marginalized in Hawai'i--please join us in revitalizing it and other traditional crops in our locally grown diet and economy. Also, in this issue of the newsletter, we are delighted to feature an excerpt from Angela K. Kepler and Frank Rust's recently published The World of Bananas in Hawai‘i: Then and Now, the definitive work about our island bananas. Angela and Frank will be at the Breadfuit Festival too, taking story and answering all of your banana questions. Mahalo nui loa, Craig Elevitch and Pedro Tama EventsFriday, September 21, 2012, 06:00pm - 08:00pm, South Kohala Saturday, September 22, 2012, 09:30am - 02:30pm, Puna Saturday, September 22, 2012, 10:00am, North Kona Friday, September 28, 2012, 05:30pm - 07:00pm, North Kona Saturday, September 29, 2012, 09:00am - 03:00pm, South Kona Sunday, September 30, 2012, 02:00pm, Hilo Thursday, October 04, 2012, 09:00am, North Kona Saturday, October 06, 2012, 09:00am - 04:00pm, North Kohala Saturday, October 06, 2012, 10:00am, South Kohala Saturday, Oct 13, To Sunday, Dec 09, 2012, Puna Monday, October 15, 2012, 07:00pm - 09:00pm, North Kona Sunday, October 28, 2012, 02:00pm, Hilo Friday, November 02, 2012, 03:00pm - 05:00pm, South Kona Saturday, Nov 03 to Sunday, Nov 04, 2012, 08:30am-04:30pm, South Kona Reports| 21 September 2012
In our modern era of endless conveniences and luxuries, we take bananas for granted, but until about 1900, few Westerners knew of their existence and even fewer had eaten them. In fact, bananas were the first tropical fruit to be mass produced for North American and European markets. Imagine those first bananas exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, wrapped in foil and offered for ten cents apiece! On the opposite side of the world though, in Southeast Asia and New Guinea, villagers had been improving local banana landraces for millennia! Indeed, the seedless banana was one of the world’s first domesticated food plants, at least seven thousand years ago, in the New Guinea highlands. | 20 September 2012
The original store was founded in 1983 by Alex Beamer in a small shopping center that used to sit across the street from the present site, where the McDonalds is now located. Present owner, Wes Fujii was working as manager in the original store and bought it about 6 years ago. Wes is a full time hands-on store owner, and his wife Claudine, who recently retired as branch manager of the Hilo Library, helps with the paperwork from home. He tells me he considers himself the "gatekeeper" of the store, using strict standards for personally approving everything that is sold. He knows his customers trust him to sell them only products he feels are safe and that he would feel happy about giving his own children. The two most important guidelines for choosing products to sell have to be quality and safety. 21 September 2012
Roy Honda started farming in 1997, specializing in oriental varieties of tomato and cucumber. He is best known for a tomato variety he grows that is a favorite in Japan. Originally he grew this variety to satisfy consumer demand in the Hawai‘i market, and now it has become his signature crop. Other crops include bitter melon, lettuce, squash, papaya, beans, and myoga (edible ginger flower). Honda sells his produce to wholesalers, grocery stores, health food stores, restaurants, and at a local farmers market. At the farmers market he can sell at retail, whereas selling to wholesaler venues provides a smaller return. “There is a limit to how much an account buys, so by selling to many accounts I can sell more and get a higher total return,” says Honda in justifying his marketing plan. Even though the profit margin is much smaller for wholesalers as compared with direct retail sales at the farmers market or to restaurants, selling to wholesalers is necessary for times when production is high. |
