The short version
- The recipes made on the lawn mostly followed Master Cho. Dr. Hoon Park's Protectors (LAB) matched him point for point: 1 part rice-wash serum to 10 parts milk, five days in the shade, sprayed at 1:1,000. Kim Chang's Food (FPJ) and Medicine (OHN) kept his ratios. Where people drifted it was in small things: jars packed fuller than his two-thirds, sugar judged by eye, and moisture and dilution numbers that changed as people talked.
- The only field trials came from the university, and they say the Microbes need something to rot. On Koon-Hui Wang's CTAHR plots, natural farming gave softer soil and more soil life. Yields matched or beat fertilizer where there was a sunn hemp cover, crop residue or part-rotted mulch. On a Kula field fallow for more than ten years, mulched with bamboo leaves and with no seedling feed, natural farming tomatoes gave about 4.6 kg against about 18.5 for conventional.
- "Not one." James Rushing of UH Hilo told the room that no top-tier peer-reviewed paper yet showed natural farming working (Rushing). Nearly everything else at the symposium is a farmer's or a teacher's own account.
- Farmers running it on hundreds of acres reported savings and healthy animals, all from memory. They described a 750-acre Kohala macadamia farm with about 300 acres in natural farming, a piggery that grew from 9 piglets to about 500 with no shots, and a kalo farmer who stopped spending $8,000–12,000 a year on fertilizer. No records were shown.
- Three people gave an acre rate for Microbes (IMO-4), and all three came in near or below Master Cho. The rates ran from 1,000 to about 1,300 lb an acre, against his minimum of about 1,320–1,340 (Wang, Weinert, Trump).
- Worn-out land coming back is the most common story, and the least measured. People told of worms after IMO-4 under sick kalo, red cane soil turned black, and fireweed gone from a pasture in two months. Each is one farm, judged by eye.
- The wild bees are gone. After varroa (Big Island, 2008) and the small hive beetle (2010), farms that used to get free pollination now need a beekeeper. Nobody on the bee panel had data on natural farming and bees.
- Next to Master Cho's teaching, 90 points were checked: 51 agree, 11 go further, 25 differ, and 3 can't be settled. He was not at this event.
How much weight each recording can bear
The 25 recordings are not equal. A few have numbers from field trials or published studies. Most are recipes shown by hand, or farmers telling what happened on their land. Some are speeches. Here they are in program order, so nobody leans on a story as if it were a trial. "Transcript" is how sure we are that the words are right. It says nothing about whether the claims are.
| Recording | Who | Kind | Transcript | What it rests on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, October 1 | ||||
| A sewer-pipe worm trough | Vincent Mina | Talk | High | One farm's worm bins and IMO-3, from his slides. No measurements. |
| A Hilo grocer and local food | Derek Kurisu (KTA) | Talk | Medium | One retailer's figures, from memory. |
| Thanking Dr. Park | Host (not named) | Ceremony | Medium | A thank-you. Nothing to weigh. |
| Worms back on old cane land | John Caverly | Talk | High | One farmer's story. Seedling flats judged by eye. |
| Microbes (IMO) by hand | Dr. Hoon Park, John Caverly | Demonstration | Medium | A recipe made on camera. Numbers shift as they talk. |
| Sweet potato Food (FPJ) | Kim Chang | Demonstration | High | A recipe made on camera. Nothing weighed. |
| Medicine (OHN) | Kim Chang | Demonstration | Medium | A recipe shown with jars made ahead. Jar levels, not weights. |
| Fermenting the weeds bugs won't eat | Richard Perea | Demonstration | Medium | His own ferments and what he saw on his land. No controls. |
| Protectors (LAB) | Dr. Hoon Park | Demonstration | Medium | A recipe made on camera. The rice-wash step is cut off. |
| Four jobs Microbes do | Dr. Hoon Park | Talk | High | A lesson. Every example is secondhand. |
| Pesticides in Paradise | Ashley Lukens | Talk | High | An advocacy report: public permit records, Kauaʻi spray data, medical studies from elsewhere. |
| Liquid wood chips and the 1:2:2 mix | Drake Weinert | Keynote | High | His own formulas and cost estimates. Observations, no trials. |
| Four scientists | Ted Radovich, James Rushing, Josiah Hunt, Jana Bogs | Four short talks | Medium | Lab results and published studies. None tests the natural farming solutions. |
| Friday, October 2 | ||||
| Purslane Food (FPJ) | Vincent Mina, with Drake Weinert and Dr. Hoon Park | Demonstration | Medium | Two farm videos. The purslane was never weighed. |
| Hawaiʻi's farmland, mapped | Jeff Melrose | Talk | Medium | A draft statewide map from satellite and aerial images, 2015. |
| School gardens | Donna Mitts and seven school staff | Panel | Medium | Program stories. No rates, no measured results. |
| Mac nuts, kalo and 500 pigs | Chris Trump, John Caverly, David Wong | Panel | Medium | Self-reported numbers. Two informal comparisons. |
| CTAHR's field trials | Koon-Hui Wang | Talk | Medium | More than ten small field trials, mostly one season. Chart values read by eye. |
| Bees | Danielle Downey, Jen Rasmussen, Jenny Bach | Panel | Medium | Beekeepers' experience, plus preliminary state residue data. |
| Kanaka farmers | Dana Keawe, Ala Jellings, Gene Tamashiro, Alika Atay, Chris Chang | Panel | Medium | Practice and views. Anecdotes, no rates. |
| Sizing a natural farming piggery | Adam Reed, Sally Bredeweg, Kori Hasashima (NRCS) | Panel | High | Agency design rules and one worked example. 2015 program rules. |
| Food waste, taro, soil from a gulch | Paul Tower, Vincent Mina, Dave Sansone, David Fuertes, Bob Shaffer | Panel | Medium | Project pitches. Plans and self-reported numbers. |
| Why they came | Attendees | Interviews | Medium | Short personal statements. |
| Saturday, October 3, evening | ||||
| Senator Russell Ruderman | Russell Ruderman | Talk | High | A political speech. His own estimates. |
| HFUU presidents | Vincent Mina, Kyle Studer (identification not certain), Alika Atay | Panel | High | Short remarks from the stage. |
Drake Weinert spoke twice, filmed much of the event, and later founded the Pure KNF Foundation, which publishes this page. His recordings are held to the same standard as everyone else's, and their errors are listed the same way.
The recipes, made by hand on the lawn
Thursday's lawn was the heart of the event. Under tents, farmers made the solutions with the crowd and answered questions as they went. Here is what each one did, next to Master Cho's own recipe.
| Solution | What they did | Master Cho | Where they part |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food (FPJ), sweet potato leaves. Kim Chang | Leaves with an equal amount of brown sugar, by eye (about 2 lb of leaves to a half-gallon jar). Packed to the top to settle, capped with sugar, paper cover, one full week. Pick at dawn with the dew on, don't wash, wait "maybe one day" after rain. | 1:1 by weight, sugar on top, paper, 5–7 days. Fill two-thirds and leave a third for air. Wait 2–3 days after rain. | How full the jar is, and the wait after rain. The sugar, the timing and dawn picking agree. |
| Food (FPJ), purslane. Vincent Mina | About 4 lb of sugar on a tub of purslane, never weighed. Chopped to a mash with a flat spade. Jars three-quarters full under a paint strainer, about a week. Made about three gallons. | Weigh the plant and add brown sugar 1:1 by weight. Two-thirds full under porous paper. | Sugar by eye, maybe less than Cho's. A slightly fuller jar. Drake Weinert's tip from the floor, a little salt for dry plants, is not in Cho's recipe. |
| Medicine (OHN). Kim Chang | Dry herb to a third of the jar, beer to the half line for 1–2 days. Equal brown sugar brings it to two-thirds, one week. Vodka to the top, lid sealed, stirred every morning. Every two weeks pour off a third and top up, five times, about three months. Mix 2 angelica : 1 licorice : 1 cinnamon : 1 garlic : 1 ginger, dilute 1:1,000. | The same levels: half, two-thirds, then the last third of alcohol. 4–6 days with sugar. Filters all the liquid off and returns a third. The same 2:1:1:1:1 and 1:1,000, but older stock gets more water. | The pour-off. Fresh ginger and garlic filled to the neck instead of two-thirds. She keeps 1:1,000 for old stock. |
| Protectors (LAB). Dr. Hoon Park | 250 ml of sour rice-wash serum into 2.5 litres of milk (1:10). Covered, in the shade, five days. Keep the yellowish liquid. Fridge, or 1:1 with molasses or brown sugar. Spray 1:1,000; stop about two weeks before a fruit harvest. | 10 parts milk to 1. 5–7 days. Fridge, or the same amount of brown sugar. 1:1,000. Less late in the season, since too much lowers sweetness. | Nothing of substance. Molasses is his own option. How the rice wash was made is cut off the recording. |
| Microbes (IMO-1 to IMO-3). Dr. Hoon Park, John Caverly | Rice box two-thirds full, about three days. IMO-2 1:1 with brown sugar, 10 days to two weeks. IMO-3: mill run wetted with IMO-2 water ("0.5%", about 45 cc in about 4 gallons) and Food at 1:500, squeeze-tested. Pile 1 to 1.5 ft, covered, shaded, kept under 120°F, 5 to 7 days. | IMO-2 1:1, over 7 days. IMO-2 diluted 500–1,000 times. 65–70% moisture. A 35–40 cm pile kept below 40–50°C, turned 3 or 4 times. 5–7 days. 70% shade. | "0.5%" is stronger than Cho. Moisture was said as anything from 60% to 75%. Dr. Park's "7 light, 3 shade" reverses Cho's ratio, probably a slip. John's 130–132°F ceiling runs a little hot. |
| Richard Perea's ferments. Richard Perea | Christmas berry: rehydrated dried leaves, brown sugar, water (no amounts), 15 days open in the forest, then 15 sealed. Sprayed at 1 teaspoon per gallon. "Wild grass fertilizer": guinea grass to two-thirds of a drum, about a pint of LAB, forest mulch, water (amount unclear), usable in 24 hours. Used at 1.5 cups per 55 gallons (about 1:590). | Food is fresh growing tips and sugar, no water, 5–7 days. Green Grass Liquid Fertilizer is weeds plus 5–10% oil cake or manure, IMO-4, rice bran and water, 4–5 days in summer. | Both are his own ferments, not Food (FPJ) and not Cho's grass liquid. His LAB at a teaspoon per gallon (about 1:770) is close to Cho's 1:1,000. |
| Drake Weinert's maintenance mix. Drake Weinert | Medicine 1 : Food 2 : Cleanser 2, about 20 mL per gallon, every 11 days, 25 gallons an acre. Plus one stage add-on at a time: Fuel (FAA) for leaf, Structure (WCP) for flower and root, Reproduction (WCA) for fruit. Minerals (seawater) at 1:30; 1:15 three days before harvest. | For weak crops: FPJ 500, BRV 500, OHN 1,000, every 7–10 days. Seawater 1:30. To sweeten fruit, seawater plus water-soluble calcium 15–20 days before harvest. The stage add-ons follow his nutritive cycle. | The strengths match. 11 days, not 7–10. The pre-harvest seawater leaves out the calcium and moves from 15–20 days to three. |
How much Microbes (IMO-4) an acre
| Who | IMO-4 per acre | With it |
|---|---|---|
| Koon-Hui Wang | 30 lb per 1,000 sq ft, 0.65 tons | She set it against about 10 tons an acre of compost in organic farming. |
| Drake Weinert | 1,200 lb | 250 lb of char soaked in IMO first, wood-chip mulch, then a liquid drench. His estimate: about $500 an acre per application. |
| Chris Trump | 1,000 lb, once a year | Plus about 500 gallons of liquid IMO-4 per 20 acres, about twice a year. |
| John Caverly | 500 lb under one kalo field | Field size not given, so no rate. |
| Master Cho | About 1,320–1,340 lb at least | Scattered so the topsoil is barely covered, never buried, late in the day. |
What it adds up to. The Protectors (LAB) recipe came through intact, and the rest kept Cho's ratios at heart. The differences are the kind that creep in when people teach from memory and by eye: jars filled to the top, sugar never weighed, a moisture target said four ways in one session, and Dr. Park's spoken arithmetic for the IMO-2 water, which doesn't add up. Water for IMO-3 is a real open question. Chris Trump uses 2.5 gallons per 60 lb of material, half of the 5 he was taught, because he thinks 5 suits cold, dry Korean winters. Cho's own rule is the moisture level, 65–70%, not the gallons.
Why to hold it loosely. These were demonstrations. Nothing was weighed on camera, and no batch was followed to the end. The recipes are what people said, which is not always what they do at home.
What the researchers measured
Koon-Hui Wang, CTAHR: field trials since 2010
Dr. Wang, a UH plant pathologist and nematologist, ran more than ten field trials of natural farming (Microbes as IMO-4 plus weekly leaf sprays) on Hawaiʻi farms and stations. She used soil nematodes as her measure of soil health. Some trials failed outright from pests. In her words, "it's not magic."
| Site | Compared | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Farm 1, soybean after sunn hemp, no-till | Natural farming vs ammonia fertilizer | About twice the bacteria- and fungus-feeding nematodes. Softer soil: the penetrometer went about 22 cm vs 16. Darker green leaves. |
| Farm 3, Puna permaculture farm | IMO-4, then IMO-5 with manure | IMO-4 alone gave no yield gain. IMO-5 with manure improved leek and burdock. No yields shown. |
| Kāneʻohe, grape tomato, yard-waste compost mulch, 2013 | Natural farming vs vermicompost vs 16-16-16 | Natural plants were smaller at six weeks (11.50 in vs 16.00 and 16.17). They stayed vigorous longer when the others got early blight and leaf spot. The fruit was bigger but not more nutritious: 14.88 per fruit vs 10.79 and 10.47 (unit not legible), but vitamin C about 0.16 mg/g vs 0.22 organic and 0.35 conventional. A higher yield was said aloud, not shown. |
| Kula, Maui, field fallow more than 10 years | Natural farming with bamboo-leaf mulch and no seedling feed, vs organic and conventional | Total yield (kg): zucchini 2014, about 2 vs 5.5 organic vs 12.3 conventional. Tomato 2015, about 4.6 vs 11.5 vs 18.5. Natural plants were greener but shorter, and fruit fly and pickleworm came in after two months. |
| Poamoho, Oʻahu, grape tomato | Natural farming or organic, each with sunn hemp mulch (no-till) or weed mat (tilled) | Tomato, kg per plant (approximate): natural + sunn hemp about 12.9; organic + weed mat 11.2; organic + sunn hemp 10.8; natural + weed mat 8.0. Sunn hemp, not natural farming, held down reniform nematodes. |
| David Wong's farm, taro and ginger, all with IMO | Mulch vs none | About 660 bacteria-feeding nematodes per 250 cm³ under six months of mulch, vs about 110–170 without. |
Her conclusion: the Microbes "need something to recycle". Where there was crop residue, a cover crop or mulch that rots easily, natural farming matched or beat fertilizer. On bare, long-fallow ground with slow mulch, it fell far behind. She called the bamboo leaves at Kula "one big mistake", and the Kula seedlings got nothing before planting, a step Cho teaches. And healthy soil didn't replace pest control.
Why to hold it loosely.
- Plots were small (2 × 2 ft to 8 × 30 ft) and few: 2 to 10 per farm, three replications at Kula, not stated elsewhere.
- Most sites ran one season. No statistical test was named.
- The natural plots often differed in more than one way (mulch, seedling care), so the effects are tangled.
- Numbers were read off a projected screen at an angle and are approximate.
- How the leaf sprays were made is described only as "Type II and Type III solution".
Ted Radovich, CTAHR: soil, cover crops and compost tea
Dr. Radovich said plainly he was "not a soil biologist" and had done little natural farming work. His slides showed how far apart Hawaiʻi soils are: a red, weathered soil with 0.9 ppm phosphorus against 480 in a fertile one, and 38 ppm calcium against 4,524. Adding rhizobia helped perennial peanut in poor soil but not in fertile soil. In his published compost tea study, the teas raised soil respiration, and a synthetic NPK solution dropped it below plain water. In compost-fed soil the readings ran about 6.6 for the best tea (labeled NCT), 3.7 for water and 2.3 for NPK. He advised against simple sugars like molasses in compost tea, since they narrow microbe diversity. Soil under perennial peanut was as active as a forest floor, and under black weed mat "way down". That was said, not shown. None of his data tests the natural farming solutions.
James Rushing, UH Hilo: what science doesn't know yet
Rushing wrote his master's thesis on IMO-4 as a soil inoculant, but didn't present it here. His talk was a list of open questions. As of 2015, he said, no top-tier peer-reviewed paper showed natural farming working. Nobody yet knew whether it works across places, or why. He named possible harms worth studying: pathogens surviving fermentation, fire ants carried with IMO and plant material, and soil mining. When asked, he said he had found no pathogens in his own ferments. In his preliminary work, breadfruit flour worked better than some prescribed carbohydrate sources. His warning: "Don't fall for the proof is in the pudding."
Josiah Hunt, Pacific Biochar: published biochar studies
Hunt makes and sells biochar, and picked the studies himself ("some of my favorites"). From the slides: a Tuscany vineyard gave up to 66% more over four harvests, most in dry years. Biochar cut nitrous oxide 14–73% and 23–52% on two soils, and ammonium leaching 55–93%. In poultry-litter compost it cut ammonia up to 64%. It lowered plant uptake of lead and atrazine rather than removing them. Cho later taught the same core idea: charcoal is a home for microbes.
Jana Bogs, Beyond Organic Research: test before you add
Bogs, a nutritionist and soil consultant, showed seawater's makeup: 10,500 ppm sodium and about 19,000 chlorine against 400 calcium. She would use ocean water only where a soil test calls for it, diluted a lot. That is more cautious than Cho, who counts diluted seawater as an essential nutrient. She finds Hawaiʻi Island soils often high in magnesium, so she steers people away from dolomite and Epsom salt. Her fungus-to-bacteria chart (vegetables 0.75:1, fruit trees 5:1 to 100:1) and the claim that food nutrients have fallen as much as 70% come from other sources, not her own trials. "You can't manage what you don't measure."
Where the researchers meet the farmers. Wang's mulch result, Radovich's perennial peanut and Cho's rule against bare soil all point the same way: cover the ground and feed the soil life. The open tensions are seawater (Bogs's sodium against Weinert's and Alika Atay's flavor "finisher") and proof itself: Rushing asked farmers to lend land for proper trials.
At scale
The producers panel
| Farm | What they reported |
|---|---|
| Chris Trump, macadamia, Kohala | About 750 acres, about 300 in natural farming. In a 14-tree trial, trees with fungal disease flushed with leaves, and three he called quick decline were bearing within a year. In a drought, only the 25 natural farming acres stayed green. Spending "significantly less per acre than even conventional", with no dollar figures. Mowing is the big extra cost without herbicide. Fireweed on a two-acre pasture was gone in two months, and it now carries four cows instead of two. |
| John Caverly, kalo, cane and vegetables, 18 acres | Seedling flats with IMO were greener within two weeks. Thousands of worms after 500 lb of IMO-4 under sick kalo. He stopped spending $8,000–12,000 a year on fertilizer. |
| David Wong, Asian vegetables and pigs | From 9 piglets in 2012 to about 500, with visitors finding no smell and no flies. No pneumonia, no diarrhea, no shots. He says a conventional farm his size would expect about 10% pneumonia and 15% diarrhea. The piggery needed a building permit, NRCS clearance and a 5 mil plastic liner, and was inspected daily its first year. |
Chris Trump also makes IMO-3 by the ton. Side-by-side piles with wood chips grew "astronomically more fungal growth" than mill run alone, by his microscope, with no counts. One person needs about six hours to turn a one-ton pile by shovel. Every number on this panel is from memory. Only two informal comparisons were described, with no counts or replication.
Sizing a natural farming piggery (NRCS)
Sally Bredeweg, an NRCS engineer, worked through a deep-litter (IDLS) barn for 1 boar, 3 sows and 20 growers. It was "Example Only", built with the 2015 Pacific Islands sizing tool.
| Step | Number |
|---|---|
| Bedded pack per head | 6 ft² (10–25 lb) up to 20 ft² (221–260 lb). Gestating sow 48. Lactating sow and boar 60. |
| Feeding areas | 24–30 ft² a pen, sloped to drain toward the alley and away from the litter |
| Ridge opening | 3 to 6 inches per 10 ft of barn width; 6 in humid climates |
| The example barn | 35-ft truss, 9.25-ft pens, an 18-inch covered ridge opening, 51 ft long |
| Litter moisture | 40 to 65 percent |
Her rule: build for the most pigs you'll ever keep. Too many pigs overloads the bedding. Kori Hasashima said NRCS took up the IDLS piggery after Mike DuPonte brought it back from Korea, and that in 2015 EQIP paid about 50–90% of average practice costs. Next to Cho: the talk never gave a litter depth or recipe (his is 90 cm of sawdust, 10% soil and 0.3% sea salt), and it covers the ridge against rain where Cho builds for sun on the litter. Its 15–18 ft² of pack per grower is a little roomier than his figure. Program rules have surely changed since 2015.
New projects
- Kohala. David Fuertes's ʻohana project plants 400 kalo and sweet potato plants a month and had harvested about 600 pounds a month so far. Its pig and chicken house cost $15,000 in materials and over 1,000 volunteer hours, with a back room for making IMO up to a ton a batch.
- Food waste to pig feed. Paul Tower pitched a $40 million Oʻahu plant, sized for 10 million pounds of feed a year. It was a plan, not a plant.
- Soil from a gulch. Bob Shaffer described about a million cubic yards of buried bagasse and mill mud at the old Haina mill. He said tests at 40 sites came back non-detectable for pesticides, dioxin and heavy metals. The lab reports were not shown.
- Trap crops. Dave Sansone plants cranberry hibiscus to draw rose beetles off other crops. That's his observation, not a measurement.
- A small farm. Vincent Mina grows 400 pounds of greens a week on 2,000 square feet, about $100,000 a year gross.
On the shelf
Derek Kurisu of KTA Super Stores said the store's Mountain Apple Brand had about 45 partners and 210 local products, each with one supplier so local makers compete with imports, not each other. He said 90–97% of KTA's leafy produce was local, and local beef rose from about 5% to 45% of beef sales in five years. KTA sold a bagged Microbes product made with Dr. Park, but carried no natural farming food yet. These are one retailer's figures, from memory. Cho would say farmers make their own Microbes rather than buy them.
How much land is farmed
Jeff Melrose previewed the 2015 statewide map, a draft made with UH Hilo's mapping lab for the state Department of Agriculture.
| Year | Crops | Pasture |
|---|---|---|
| 1937 | Sugar 240,900 and pineapple 50,100 acres, among others (low-resolution legend) | 2,076,000 |
| 1980 | 350,000 acres | 1.1 million |
| 2015 | About 153,000 acres | About 765,000 (slide header; his table says 763,100) |
In 2015, sugar (38,810 acres), seed (23,940), commercial forestry and macadamia led the statewide crops. Wetland taro was down to 610 acres. The state had 2,189 sows, 58% of them on Oʻahu. On Hawaiʻi Island, 89% of farming is on the poorer C, D and E lands, because people can afford it there. And since the state laid off its 25 enumerators in 2007, "Agriculture data sucks." It's a snapshot of commercial farms. Nothing under 3 acres had to be mapped, so small farms are undercounted.
Bringing worn land back
The story told most often at the symposium was land that had been farmed hard, coming back to life.
- Old cane land at Onomea had no worms. Two weeks after 500 lb of IMO-4 went under a diseased kalo field and was mulched, there were worms everywhere. What became of the disease isn't said. The storm, the mulch and the season changed at the same time.
- Under cane given IMO once a year for three years, red soil turned black, by John Caverly's account.
- On lava rock in Ocean View, Richard Perea has eight inches of soil under a foot of mulch soaked with his ferments. No time span was given.
- Vincent Mina's taro rows, mulched with sunn hemp and given IMO-3, grew no weeds while weeds grew tall beside them. There was no control plot.
- A downtown Hilo strip, herbicided for decades, grew kalo in 2010–2011 after biochar, IMO and coconut husk, per Drake Weinert's photos.
- In a native forest restoration above Kalapana, transplant success had been about 40–50%. After IMO-infused biochar, the treated plants looked bigger and healthier, Dana Keawe said. No figures were given for the treated plots.
What to make of it. Every one is a single farm, judged by eye, with other things changing at the same time. Only one result was measured: Wang's softer soil and higher counts of soil life on natural farming plots. That agrees with the stories' direction. It also came with her warning that the Microbes need organic matter to work on.
Bees
The bee panel was the plainest about what it didn't know.
- The wild colonies crashed. Varroa reached the Big Island in 2008, and where varroa goes, feral bees get wiped out. The state apiarist, Danielle Downey, suspects wild colonies once outnumbered managed ones 100 to 1. The small hive beetle followed in 2010. Jen Rasmussen lost 36 hives in one month.
- Farms now need beekeepers. "We don't have the freebies anymore." Native yellow-faced bees won't pollinate mac nuts.
- No data on natural farming and bees. Downey had seen no direct effect. Jenny Bach sprayed hives with dead beetles brewed in lactic acid: "We thought it worked... I don't have any hard data." Cho, for his part, warns that his own insect-attractant bottles can kill bees if left open.
- Residues. State pollen sampling found five positives in the hundreds tested, preliminary. A screen for 100-plus chemicals costs over $400 a sample.
- Hawaiʻi bees still produce. Second in the nation at 93 pounds of honey a hive, by beekeepers' reports.
Culture, schools and politics
Kanaka farmers: our tūtū already farmed this way
Five Native Hawaiian farmers and cultural practitioners spoke on Friday. Dana Keawe remembered the tūtūs "putting the charcoal back around the trees". Alika Atay, of Maui, read old practice as natural farming: a fish buried by a tree, two sugarcane stalks beside each ʻulu, kalo planted in old imu pits. He gave the most practice of anyone on the panel:
- Spray calcium phosphate when the plant flowers, then calcium when the flower drops. That's Cho's nutritive cycle.
- Make IMO on bare ground, and move each batch to a new spot, the way the imu was moved.
- Collect IMO about 100 m higher than your farm. Cho agrees microbes flow downhill. Alika's 9,000-ft "Superman" microbes go past anything Cho described.
- No LAB on fruit: his tūtū said his biggest papaya had no taste. Cho says to reduce LAB late, not stop.
- Seawater, or brackish water from the last stream pool, as a finisher for flavor.
- The moon calendar: October 6–18, 2015 was an excellent planting stretch.
Dana Keawe and Drake Weinert made IMO at about 9,000 feet on Mauna Kea for a native-plant nursery, and she said the plants looked healthier after two weeks, judged from a photo. Ala Jellings, a kalo farmer new to KNF, said "I learned how to treat people because I knew how to treat plants." Gene Tamashiro said the biggest obstacle is regulation, not land or knowledge, and spoke at length on sovereignty and natural law. Those are his views.
School gardens
The Hawaiʻi Island network counts more than 60 school garden programs. At Kamehameha Schools a 6×6 bed grew to 8 acres in ten years, and every high school student goes through the mala. Laupāhoehoe charter feeds 150 kids an all-local snack four days a week. Cafeteria rules were the wall. A cafeteria uses about 70 pounds of lettuce a meal, so gardens fed kids in the garden instead. Natural farming came up as students making IMO, Protectors (LAB) "from chocolate milk", burned chicken bones for calcium, and pig pens. Nobody gave a rate or a measured result. Three practices differ from Cho: chocolate milk for LAB, chicken bone for calcium, and regular tilling with Microbes added back after.
The Farmers Union and the legislature
HFUU ran the event, and its politics ran through it. Vincent Mina's line opened Thursday and closed Saturday: "If you're not at the table, you're part of the menu." He said membership grew from 590 to 700, which he called 70%; it's about 19%. Senator Russell Ruderman said moving the local-food meter 10% is worth about $300 million to the state, his own approximation. He said the new farm-to-school coordinator was "a very, very tiny crack in the wall", and urged farmers to run for office or vote. Alika Atay gave the same $300 million for cutting the school lunch program's imports from 92% to 82%. Neither gave a source. Kyle Studer of the East Hawaiʻi chapter (the identification is not certain) said farmers have to be in politics.
Pesticides in Paradise
At Thursday lunch, Dr. Ashley Lukens of the Hawaiʻi Center for Food Safety presented her group's report. Her figures:
- Hawaiʻi had 1,141 genetic-engineering field-test sites in 2014, against California's 172.
- Seed crops covered 25,034 acres, against 12,566 for fruits and vegetables. The industry was 0.23% of Hawaiʻi jobs.
- Most field-test permits were for herbicide resistance.
- One company's Kauaʻi spray logs showed spraying on 65% of days, up to 16 times a day on a plot.
- At least 27 schools are within a mile of seed fields where restricted pesticides are often used.
She argued for mandatory disclosure and buffer zones. As she said herself, the spray data was Kauaʻi only, from one company's lawsuit records and a voluntary program. It counted only restricted-use pesticides, not Roundup. The health evidence is about pesticide classes in general, mostly from elsewhere. It's an advocacy report, unreviewed, and nobody from the companies or agencies replied in the room. Some spoken figures differ from her slides: 500 million vs 527 million pounds, and "12 years" of permits against slides showing 2010–2014.
Next to Master Cho's teaching
Master Cho was not at this event. Every recording's main points were checked against his books and recorded seminars in the Pure KNF library: 90 points in all.
- 51 agree
- 11 go further than he did
- 25 differ
- 3 can't be settled
Where they agree most closely: the Protectors (LAB) recipe, all five points (Park). Dr. Park's four jobs of Microbes, point for point. The Medicine (OHN) mix. The strengths in Drake Weinert's maintenance mix. Calcium phosphate at flowering (Atay). Wang's finding that the Microbes need residue and mulch (Wang).
Where the talks differ from him, again and again:
- How full the jar. Cho fills two-thirds. Kim Chang packed Food to the top and fresh herbs for Medicine to the neck. Vincent Mina went three-quarters. Dr. Park stated Cho's two-thirds in the room.
- Sugar by weight. Cho weighs the plant. Vincent Mina put about 4 lb on an unweighed tub. Kim Chang judged "equal" by jar level. Drake Weinert added salt. Richard Perea added water.
- Moisture. Cho's IMO-3 and IMO-4 are 65–70%. Dr. Park said 60–75% for IMO-3 and 90–95% for IMO-4, hedging the second. Chris Trump uses half the water he was taught.
- Rates. IMO-2 at "0.5%" against Cho's 0.1–0.2%. IMO-4 at 1,000 lb an acre, under his minimum. Char at 250 lb an acre where Cho uses as much charcoal as IMO-4. Old Medicine kept at 1:1,000 where Cho dilutes more.
- Timing. Seawater three days before harvest without calcium, where Cho uses seawater with calcium 15–20 days before. One day's wait after rain where Cho waits 2–3 (Kim Chang).
- Shade. "7 light, 3 shade" reverses Cho's 70% shade, probably a slip.
- Buying instead of making. A bagged Microbes product sold in stores. Cho's farmers make their own, from their own land.
- Other single differences: raising worms in bins (Mina), regular tilling, chocolate-milk LAB and chicken-bone calcium (schools), Perea's grass and Christmas berry ferments (Perea), Kula seedlings with no seedling treatment (Wang), seawater only on a soil test's say-so (Bogs), a lined, rain-covered piggery (NRCS), and an industrial food-waste feed plant (Tower).
Where they go further: biochar in worm bins and IMO beds (Mina). A squeeze test for moisture (Park). LAB caught in the forest and made with powdered milk (Perea). Cover crops and rhizobia (Radovich). IMO a ton at a time under a roof (Fuertes). The NRCS piggery sizing rules (Bredeweg). Cho has nothing to say on varroa or the small hive beetle.
Corrections to the record
Checking the recordings line by line changed some things the YouTube titles have said since 2015.
- "LAB Core Solution" is Dr. Hoon Park, not Drake Weinert. His voice matches, an audience member asks "Dr. Park", and he describes himself as a 76-year-old physician who learned the 1:1,000 rate from Master Cho.
- "Biome Rejuvenation Juice" is never said on the recording. It's Richard Perea's Christmas berry ferment, which he calls "the mother of the Christmas berry". It's neither Food (FPJ) nor Cleanser (BRV). Only "Richard" is said aloud. "Perea" comes from Drake's later Office Hours and community notes, so the surname is not confirmed from this recording.
- "Commercial Support of NF" is Derek Kurisu of KTA Super Stores, not Vincent Mina. He thanks "Vince" for the invitation. His surname is never spoken. He is identified from "Derek", KTA and Mountain Apple Brand.
- "VermiCompost & BioChar" is one talk, by Vincent Mina. The biochar is part of his worm-bin slides, not a second speaker's talk.
- "Keynote Address" (Na Leo) holds Drake Weinert's formulation talk, then the four scientists. Nobody on the recording calls it a keynote. It was Thursday, not Friday: he says "Derek spoke this morning". The four scientists are placed on Thursday because the recording runs straight on, but nothing they say names the day.
- "Demonstrations" (Na Leo) holds four pages. It opens with John Caverly's story, where he is never named and is identified from his matching accounts elsewhere. Then come Kim Chang's Medicine (OHN) and Dr. Park's lesson on what Microbes do, all on Thursday's lawn. Its Koon-Hui Wang segment is Friday.
- John Caverly is called only "John" in three recordings. The surname spelling still needs confirming with the family.
- Numbers speakers got wrong:
- HFUU's growth from 590 to 700 members, called 70%, is about 19%.
- Dr. Park's IMO-2 arithmetic: "0.5%" of about 16,000 cc would be 80 cc, but he poured about 45. His Food math used "60,000 cc" for 4 gallons, which is about 15,000.
- Drake Weinert's field-treatment parts add to 157 mL per gallon, not 164. A 500 mL bottle at 20 mL a gallon makes 25 gallons, not 30. His bucket-to-gallons figures conflict. Glyphosate contains no chlorine; glomalin comes from fungi, not bacteria; LAB don't add oxygen.
- Dr. Wang said "less than half a ton, or 1,300 pounds". 1,300 lb is 0.65 tons, as her slide says.
- The NRCS barn width was spoken as 25 ft. The slide's math gives 29.
- Jeff Melrose said 250,000 crop acres for 1980, then corrected himself to 350,000. He said 470 acres for Waiʻanae where the slide says 570.
- In the LAB demo, 250 ml was called "one pint". It's about a cup.
- Richard Perea's "35 to 40 ounces" of water can't fill a drum. The real figure is unclear.
- Kim Chang's "six gallons from six half-gallon jars" only works if the last pour drains everything.
- Machine errors that would have flipped meaning: "then it's too good" was "then it's no good". "Public schools are now their own school food authority" was "not". "Rock phosphate has a lot of chlorine" was fluorine. Nutrients "lost over seven years" was 70 years. "80% off and 30% left" was 20% left. "Zymofor... common herb" was "IMO 4... cow manure". A senator heard as "Richard Friedman" is probably Russell Ruderman, not confirmed. In all, 322 meaning-changing corrections are listed on the talk pages, and 258 lines we could not confirm are marked.
What to test next
These are questions the recordings raise and can't answer. Each one is a season's work, or less, for a careful grower.
- Settle the jar. Food (FPJ) from one plant, weighed, at 1:1 brown sugar: two-thirds full against packed to the top. Record juice per kilo of plant and any mold.
- Settle the water for IMO-3. Three piles from the same IMO-2: 2.5 gallons per 60 lb, 5 gallons, and wetted by squeeze test. Weigh a sample before and after drying, log the temperature twice a day, and note when it turns white.
- Give the Microbes something to rot. IMO-4 on bare ground against IMO-4 under part-rotted mulch or after a sunn hemp cover, on one crop. Count yield and dig for worms.
- Feed the seedlings. The Kula lesson: natural farming transplants with and without Cho's seed and seedling treatment, planted the same day.
- Find the IMO-4 rate. 1,000 lb an acre against Cho's 1,340, with the same mulch. Yield and soil softness.
- Test LAB before harvest. Keep spraying, stop two weeks out, or stop at flowering. Check fruit sweetness with a Brix meter.
- Test seawater for flavor. Seawater 1:30 with water-soluble calcium 15–20 days before harvest, against 1:15 three days before. Check Brix, and test the soil for sodium after a season.
- Count bees. On the same crop in bloom, count bee visits for ten minutes in a natural farming block and a sprayed one. Nobody on the panel had even this.
You can run any of these and log it in Research. That is what the Research section is for.
Where these numbers come from
Everything here comes from the 25 checked recordings. Na Leo TV, Hilo's community station, filmed the sessions. Drake Weinert filmed the skill shares and panels on his camera and iPhone. Each page was matched to its original by audio fingerprint, so a page cut from a long Na Leo video, or joined from several phone clips, lines up second for second with its source.
Each recording was transcribed with Whisper large-v3 and checked line by line. For nine pages, a second, independent transcript of Drake's own master was used for the check. For others, unclear stretches, or the whole recording, were run through a second Whisper model. Where no second transcript existed, the check leaned on the slides, captions and context. Every page was also checked against the slides, read off the video frame by frame, and against Na Leo's name captions and conference badges. Speakers were named from diarization plus introductions, never from diarization alone. Each point was checked against Master Cho's books and seminars in the Pure KNF library. Nothing was added from outside sources except that comparison with Master Cho.
Nine transcripts are rated high confidence and sixteen medium. Saturday's farm tours were not recorded; there are photos only. A keynote video by Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard on the same YouTube channel is from a later HFUU convention, and is not included. Every link above opens the recording at the second it was said.