Mac Nuts, Kalo and 500 Pigs: Natural Farming at Scale

0:00 Kyle Studer: My name is Kyle Studer. I'm the current president of the East Hawaii chapter of Hawaii Farmers Union. I also am a full-time farmer in [place unclear]. I grow certified organic vegetables on about six acres right now, but will be 16 acres before the end of the year. do a wide variety of stuff and I'm not currently practicing Korean natural farming so I'm really excited to hear about how these gentlemen have adapted it to their farms and are doing it the scale that they're doing it so if you guys would take maybe five minutes each to talk a little bit about your farm

0:38 and where it's at and what you grow and how many acres and that sort of thing that would be great

0:42 Chris Trump: My name's Chris Trump. I'm a farmer out in Kohala with my family and we farm macadamia nuts exclusively. We've played with other things, but we're back to keeping it simple, as simple as farming can be. We farm about 750 acres of macadamia nuts. Currently, about half of that is organic or natural farming and half is conventional. I have about 200 acres that are in their first year of natural farming and about 120 that's two or three years in the natural farming. I have some small trial sections that are four years or more.

1:28 But yeah, we observed nature doing a better job of farming than we were in a few situations. and we decided that we didn't know enough about how God made it all work. And so we took our ag knowledge, our collective ag knowledge, and set it aside and said we don't know anything. And that was our beginning in the natural farming journey.

2:01 John Caverly: My name is John Caverly. Everybody knows me as Ginger John. I have an 18 acre farm in [place unclear], right up the road. My main crop is kalo, sugar cane, ʻulu, diversified vegetables, and other fruit trees. And turmeric and ginger, that's how I got the name. I grew the first organic, yellow organic ginger crop about 40 years ago. So I've been farming on this island for 40 years, grew up on a dairy farm in the state of Maine back in the 50s. And when I got this farm 8, 9 years ago, I was growing kalo and started planting sugar cane.

2:56 It turns out that this particular area of the island grows the highest yield of sugarcane on the planet because of the weather and the soil. But, you know, when I bought the land, it was poison. I'm talking poison. It had been 15 years in rotated commercial sweet potatoes, other crops, 70 years in cane. and when I got there, the owner had just poisoned the whole thing. The sweet potato people had just left, so it burned 18 acres brown, brown, not a worm on it. And so I thought, well, I can fix this. And so there was a field nearest where I built my kitchen and my first little shed.

3:45 I was going to put my first garden in it, and it was an abandoned ginger field, rotten ginger in it, so the land had been methyl bromided you know earlier and so I started adding my compost and my mulch and my organic fertilizers and I planted the kalo. For two years I struggled, everything was diseased, everything was sick, nothing would grow couldn't get the worms to show up getting very frustrated and I heard about um uh Dr. Park bringing over Master Cho about eight, nine, ten years ago And so I got a hold of Dr. Park and at the time [unclear].

4:26 So long story short, about eight years ago, I started, seven years ago, I started working with Dr. Park on making IMO 1, 2, 3, 4. And when I got my first IMO 4 pile, I was just getting ready to plant out some parsley and poha berries. And I had six flats of each and three of the flats I did with my organic mix and three of the flats I put IMOs in it. And if you really want to see how your methods are working, you try it on little vegetable plants, because you get immediate results. And within 10 days, two weeks, the plants with the IMOs were really green, really lush, large,

5:09 and you pull them out of the cups with the solid roots. So I thought, great, this is the way to go. So I got very excited about that. I got really enthused about farming. I felt like I could make an impact here. So I built a big shed, because when you make your IMO 3 and 4, they've got to be on the ground, out of the rain. And I started making piles, and I had cows that I milked, and I milked my cows, and I'd go make my piles. I kept working at it every day, every day. And after a month, I had about 500, a couple months, I had about 500 pounds of IMO 4 stashed.

5:46 And it was in November, first of November, and we had, this was seven years ago, we had a really big storm. A really big, you know, six-day kind of, I think, a hurricane was going by or something. And a little bit of a storm, we had a wall in the rain. And I had this kalo field that was really, it was diseased. I think they call it the dasheen mosaic virus, some type of virus. and at this point still no worms on the farm. So I went out and I dumped all 500 pounds of IMO 4 under the kalo and mulched it. And on Thanksgiving morning I went out to my fields

6:27 and I started crawling around pulling back the mulch and lo and behold there were worms. I couldn't believe it. Thousands of big, jumping, gorgeous, beautiful, shiny worms. And that kind of was like a miracle. I thought I had just witnessed a real miracle. And since that time, I've grown kalo, monster kalo. I've never seen the likes of it ever in my life. No blemishes, no disease. So that kind of really, like when I met Master Cho, he came up to the farm, and I told him that at one point when I got up there,

7:06 I felt like I was becalmed in the middle of the ocean, like you're in a sail ship and there's no wind and you're just sitting there. There's nothing you can do about it. And natural farming came along. It was like the trade winds blew into my life and off I went. So that was my convincing moment of practicing natural farming was the appearance of the worms. And so since then we've been, since that day, you know, I used to spend maybe $8,000, $12,000 a year buying these organic crumbles from the mainland, you know. I don't buy any more fertilizers.

7:44 All we use is IMO 4, mulch, and horse and cow manure. That's it. And we're having success. You know, everything is very green and lush.

7:54 David Wong: Hi, I'm David Wong. We used to run one of the largest dairies in the state. And the state for numerous and other reasons decided that they didn't want any more dairies on the [island?]. So we were ordered to shut down. So when we shut down, we kind of made a decision that in order to go back into agriculture, we had to find an entity where we would not be dependent on importation, we would not be dependent on Matson, and we would not be dependent on oil. So we looked at various different alternatives and nothing would measure

8:44 correctly if we continue to impose those three conditions. And in 2010 we had a Korean Natural Farming seminar and I distinctly remember it because that was in the middle of a tidal wave and that's when they withdrew all of us from the [unclear] and the whole area. But I got to hear Master Cho and the thing that struck me was he was so far away from conventional thinking of agriculture. So either this guy is a quack or this guy does something that nobody knows anything

9:34 about. That was my basic conclusion. So I don't know if you folks have ever had a chance to participate with Master Cho. But his first language is Korean. And he can sort of understand and speak English. But he would prefer to speak Korean, because he doesn't want something lost in between. So you've got to use an interpreter. So one night I found out that he likes to drink wine, so I kind of sat around and watched him drink wine. So I said, Master Cho, obviously you don't have linear data. And he looks at me and kind of thinks like he didn't hear.

10:22 And God blessed me in a sense that I had a chance to work with an animal master like maybe 10 or 15 years before. One thing I learned from them, well I learned from him, is you can't ask too many questions. Because they're so far ahead of us, and we're trying to catch up. And if you ask 20 questions in a row, they think that you're so dumb, I don't want to work with you. So I kind of put a question on the table and he doesn't answer so I let it go. So then about an hour later I said, I said, Master Cho, what's the source of your knowledge? And he looks at me and he goes,

11:05 Well, I learned it in Okinawa, and I learned it from a sensei who was a microbiologist, and I learned it from a sensei who was an enzymologist. I said, oh, okay. And he's speaking English. So I said, okay, I got a chance now. So I said, so you have to wash rice for ten years, right? Before they teach you anything, because that was in that generation. So he said, yeah. So I said, so how come these two guys couldn't put the information together? He said, that's a good question, because they never talked to each other.

11:46 So then he went back to Korea and put these whole concepts in his head together. and he started teaching the people and the first thing the university said is you can't do that because you don't have a college degree so all that didn't stop him so he kept on going so he started teaching the farmers and guess what the chemical companies threw him in jail, trumped up charges, and he served time. So when he got out he went to the Korean Methodist Church because that's where it came from and he said to them give me all the people that don't have money so he

12:32 taught them family-style Korean farming process so you make all your inputs to keep the cost down and you eventually end up with more production than you can eat. So they started selling it. So they made income. So the great church said, wow, this is so fantastic. So we're going to put you on a missionary thing. So they went all over Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and Hilo through Dr. Park. Because Dr. Park is a great Methodist background. And that was the connection. So that's how all this started. I had no idea. I don't recall if you guys had any idea either.

13:15 So then I said to him, so the source of your knowledge is the two guys in Okinawa? And he kind of laughed. Then he reached in his briefcase and he pulled out the Bible. And he said, it's all here. Everything I know came from here. those two guys helped me but it came from here so then I said to myself ok so when I went back to my room that night I said well I can't say he's a quack but for whatever worth it is I'm going to give it a shot because it's God inspired and I'm Christian so I'm going to follow it

14:00 even if it doesn't make sense to me and the truth is it didn't make sense to me I had no clue and everything I was doing because I'm linear is opposite of how I thought so the first person that had the hardest time was myself because I couldn't believe that it could overcome these issues. I mean, [unclear] about pesticides, herbicides, residuals, hydrocarbons, all this which is stuff that goes through my head all the time right and you're gonna deal with all this bacteria all these virus, all this fungus, and I come from a milk background and every one of those

14:43 things is absolutely the worst thing in milk because if you're gonna kill a baby you're dead so and I'm thinking how can this actually work it's opposite of how understand it but by faith I kept going so 2010 I learned it not learned it but got exposed to it and in 2011 we started with like 500 square feet and planted it and I did what John did I planted in small sections and did the comparative test cause you know I'm just linearly born so we started comparing the growth grades and son of a gun this thing works I don't know why but it works I can't

15:29 explain it but it works so I run to the university I go up to the Dean and I said we got the answer to save agriculture and he said oh so you do yeah so what's the source of your knowledge oh that's the joke so does he Does he have a Ph.D.? No. Does he have linear data? No. Has anybody written a paper? No. Has anybody done a side-by-side trial that's linear and actually repeatable? I saw you're working on it, so there's the door. I said, wait, wait, wait.

16:16 The university is supposed to be creative and innovative and try to reach outside the box with new and better ways to do agriculture. So don't you think we should at least try? Nope. Because this is bogus. So I said okay. So then I tried NRCS, EPA, everybody. Same logic sequence going on. So I said okay, I'll just go back and try. So that was how we started. So in 2011 we started planting crops. Today we are up to 10 acres and we are planting basically Asian vegetables. And then in 2012, because I have a lot of livestock experience, I said we should try the pigs.

17:02 So in 2012 we started with 9 babies. And today I can tell you we have just about 500. And it started with those nine babies. So the progression is, you guys should come and see the pigs. You know, we haven't seen them yet. They come, they look, and they say, you know what? Well, this is what we had, like maybe 50 pigs. We said, we must have taken a doggy poop pan and cleaned up the pen before we came. That's why you have no smell and no flies and no waste management problem. Okay, so then we got to 100. They still had the same story. Then we came to 200.

17:50 Well, it's kind of hard to carry a poop pan and pick up that much poop. So they said, well, maybe something is working. Can you explain it? I don't know. It's your job. So when we got to 400, they said, well, obviously, it's sort of works, but we can't explain it. So I said, yeah. So that's kind of like where we're at.

18:24 Kyle Studer: Nice. So, David, you and John kind of got into this a little bit, but I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about what you were doing prior to picking up Korean Natural Farming and then kind of how it's changed on your farm and really, I mean you got into this pretty good, David, but how you really got sold on it, the results that you saw that said this is the direction that I want to go. Chris, can you pick up on that?

18:52 Chris Trump: Yeah, so we got into organic. We had a deal with a processor, [unclear], and had an organic product. And so we had 360 acres of organic and 360 approximately conventional. And the organic was tough. We switched from, you know, big fat 10-30 fertilizer to expensive organic inputs. inputs and was struggling and then we had a crop failure due to a pest of stink bug and we had to we basically lost the farm we lost the house we were going to move a new trailer on some leased land and a little bit of crop insurance came in at the last

19:40 minute and we were able to eat along with the business and so we just farmed the easiest to get highest yielding conventional because organic was struggling and much more expensive to farm at that time. So organic would fallow for about two years and all of a sudden these yellowed mac nut trees became flush and green and productive and beautiful with grass you know six feet tall and we're like okay what happened and so we opted in that time to say, there's something we don't know about agriculture. Our extension agent can't explain that. And we need to understand.

20:25 And our understanding to this point doesn't work. So we began kind of a journey, and Master Cho came out, listened to Dr. Park first, and had a lot of questions. Because like David, I want to know I mean I'm linear but I'm kind of like obsessive in that I want to know why I want to understand it and I don't need to understand everything because that's just crazy, God's bigger than me I'm like on the shore of the ocean as far as that goes but I wanted to and Dr. Park didn't have any answers for me so I was like okay so I went to Master Cho

21:11 and learned from him and got to go to Korea, and all of a sudden there was good, still a lot of questions, but some, enough to kind of be like, so we decided to try it with a lot of skepticism. Because it was like, alright, these people are all saying it's awesome, but there's some questions here, and so we began a 14-tree trial, and kind of, I'm going to do it exactly right, I'm going to do it properly, but with a lot of skepticism still. And I had some dead, dying trees on that trial. And after a year on those trees, and we were messing

21:53 with other things, natural farming, during that time, all my dying kind of fungal disease trees all became flush with leaves. I was like, okay. I just had 14 trees, and three of them just stopped from, and with quick, not even a quick decline, those trees were dead give it two years give it a year we were pushing those trees over and pushing them into the gulch, that's just what happens with mac nuts, that's when they get this type of disease they die there's no fixing them really and they came back flush and beautiful, and then by the end of the

22:30 first year they're productive, they're producing mac nuts, and so we're like I was like, okay, that's enough to keep going. And so I started buying some IMO, but then got into some education about microscopes and learning kind of about the microbiology again and the pursuit to understand it. And I didn't like what I was buying. I didn't see in it what I needed, which was high amounts of fungus. So I started making all of it. and taking really care to make it right. And we had 25 acres now. And we had a drought. And all our orchards turned yellow.

23:20 Except these 25 acres of natural farming trees, they're flushed green and beautiful. And so we're like, okay, another mark for this. What's going on here, you know, and why? And so again, I pursued it. Meanwhile, I'm kind of learning about what's happening. And, yeah, so we are now seeing none of our acreage, organic, conventional, looks anything like our natural farming acres. Our natural farming acres are going gangbusters. I'm spending significantly less per acre than even conventional, even with mowing factored in.

23:58 And so we just scaled all the processes instead of making little batches of things. I make one batch and it's done for the year. And I just use it. And, you know, but what I've found, and I think if, you know, take away anything, quality is something we have to be really honest about in natural farming. of farming. If you aren't honest about quality and really what you've accomplished, you can kind of say, oh, this isn't working really well. You skip some steps and kind of cut all the corners. And Master Cho was always talking about love. He always did, you know,

24:42 love as you do this agriculture. And I'm taking notes and he says love more than anything else and I'm like, okay, how do I, you know, linear again, you know, where do I put that in my, you know, business plan? And, you know, I'm just kind of thinking about that over the last seven years, you know. There's a conscientious care for what you're doing. It's when nobody's looking, you're doing something that you know is right and good and that yields results. And so, I mean, from a biological standpoint, it works. There's a, you know, and I really like James Rushing,

25:29 and I invited him out to the farm, you know, before he starts his next research project. Because, you know, there's a difference between what some people make and what I make. And I'm not a master. I'm learning from God, and I'm learning from Master Cho. but I've looked at it under a microscope all IMO is not the same you know just because somebody says I'm doing natural farming doesn't mean they're doing natural farming they're trying to learn natural farming but I think it's really important that if somebody's struggling they ask for help from some of these people that are succeeding because

26:06 that's the difference yeah and we're We're going to stop doing any natural farming on my three-year-old natural farming plots this year. I'm not doing anything else there. I might spray once a year, but I'm done. I've applied it. My trees are healthy. And I went to Korea. This was a big kind of why we said, okay, let's go for it. I went to Korea, and I went to a persimmon farm. And this guy, I was really jealous. His orchard is just immaculate and beautiful. And he said, for three years I applied IMO. I collected it from the mountain. He pointed up at the mountain near his property.

26:50 And for the last 11 years, we prune and we deal with pests. He hasn't done any fertilizing. He hasn't done any input putting on. And I said, you know what? Even if I spent a whole bunch of money, if I could spread that out over 11 years. And so we're reaping the benefit right now.

27:09 Kyle Studer: Nice. So John, you did, oh we have a question?

27:15 Audience: Yeah, I just wanted to ask how much of your farm is natural farming?

27:18 Chris Trump: About 300 acres now, but 120 is in year two and three. The rest, another 200 something is just first year.

27:32 Audience: Within that three year period, about how much are you applying per month IMO?

27:41 Chris Trump: I have an orchard and I have applied IMO once a year with two full year applications in that year. So we're not talking, I'm out there talking to the trees every day. We're talking one application of IMO 4 at 1,000 pounds per acre and about 500 gallons of liquid IMO 4 per 20 acres. That's liquid IMO 4 is about twice a year.

28:15 Kyle Studer: Any other questions?

28:17 Audience: I did go up to Chris's farm and I checked my phone and I do have pictures of his trees. so if anybody's interested you can come afterwards and look on my phone about the trees that he's talking about

28:31 Kyle Studer: so John just to get back to it maybe you can elaborate on what you said earlier that you were doing, you had done conventional organic farming your whole life and when you started doing the natural farming that was like kind of a rebirth for you and you got you reinvigorated about farming I was hoping you could maybe just elaborate a little bit more on kind of the difference that you saw, you know, aside from just the seedlings but like how maybe it affected your bottom line you know, in addition to just what you were looking at Alright

29:07 John Caverly: I'd like to share a little history I was nine years old working on this dairy farm in Maine, I've had three mentors in my life, and they were all grandmothers. And they were all gardeners. And they all made compost. And they all showed me, I remember, actually, I was seven years old, and this old lady behind my house, I'd help her clean up the garden in the fall and make the compost. And in the spring, I'd help her get the gardens going and spread the compost. and we're pulling the compost out and it's all the white mycelium running through the compost

29:51 and she would tell me johnny this is what does it this is what makes my garden so nice because see back in the 50s i think everybody was pretty much an organic farmer you know the chemical thing came out right after world war ii but before that it was people worked literally on their farms. They didn't rely on poisons and chemicals to make things grow. It was their physical labor. It was their love, as Master Cho says. And it's truly, when I first got Master Cho's book, I opened it up, and the first thing I read was,

30:31 a farmer approaches his crops, his plants, and his livestock for parental love. I thought, that's my man. Because that's how we have to approach life, you know. And that, to me, is the most beautiful thing about natural farming. It puts you way more in tune to the mystery and the miracle and the love that is abundant within this life, you know. And you really start, I do anyways. I mean, like Chris was saying, it's not like I'm out there applying these IMOs all the time and doing this and doing that. I'm walking around and I'm communicating with my plants.

31:18 Like Master Cho says, when you start this natural farming, forget everything you ever learned. And start with an open mind and an open heart. And think with your heart. Start thinking with your mind. When you see these plants, think about the plants. And when I see these plants, I really start realizing that it's not the plants. It's the soil. It's the worms. It's the microbes. And that's under our feet. And so, you know, to tell you the truth, I felt kind of funny being here. Because I don't even know how to turn on a smartphone.

32:05 I've never turned on a computer. I'm kind of an illiterate person, so to speak. But I think that I've gotten to where I am in my life because I was taught from an early age to love your work. And I can love farming. That's something I can do. And I really love it. The other day I was driving into Hilo early in the morning. There's all this traffic. And I was thanking the creator that I wasn't one of these people going into a store in office. Instead I was going to go home and I was going to sweat and get dirty and get sore and get wet. But that's what I love to do.

32:44 And because when I sit down to eat for lunch, I have kalo, cassava, ʻulu, fried in my ghee, with curd, fried in ghee. And my cottage cheese and yogurt on top of it. It's all right from my yard. and I kind of eat like that all the time and I think that's probably the greatest reward for me in my life is that when I sit down I'm eating this bounty this gift you can really sense what a gift this is that you have sunshine and you have rain and I have eyesight and I can walk and breathe, I wake up

33:30 and I have the intelligence intelligence, I've been given the intelligence to go out and work on the land and work with these plants that give me love, that give me nourishment, that give me strength in my life. And so it's, you know, over my life of farming, it's become actually, when I get my IMO classes, I kind of, I think, put a lot of these young people in a different space because for me, farming has become my spiritual life. I don't separate my life from living a spiritual life. Because when you're farming this way,

34:16 you're doing good. I'm leaving this planet so that seven generations from now, nobody can complain about, I left them with a problem. You know? So that's the beautiful thing about natural farming is that you can feel confident in your heart that you're leaving a better planet for your grandchildren and your great-great-great-grandchildren are going to benefit from what you're doing in this life. And what else are we going to take? When life is finished and we leave, I think we're leaving with all the good things that we've done. That's the important thing. So I'm getting carried away again.

35:00 I don't need to get carried away. That's why I do it. And I don't have the microscope. And I was thinking about, you know, people talk about this. I just walked in and halfway through the thing. Sometimes I feel inadequate that I don't have the capability to study and understand the mechanisms and workings of all the chemicals and how it all fits together. But I do feel very blessed that I have the capability of getting up every morning and feeling very grateful to be alive and with a lot of gratitude to be working on the land.

35:46 And so that brings a good thing. What happened was at one of Master Cho's big teachings here, Everybody came up to the farm, and I had some IMO 3 and 4 down on the ground. And his daughter was talking in Korean, right, and I had a translator. And she said, I had my piles covered with shade cloth. And she said, oh, shade cloth. Shade cloth. It's no good. And Master Cho said something. And Dr. Park and everybody started laughing. And the interpreter said, Dr. Park said, it's okay. that he uses shade cloth. His enthusiasm will make up for it.

36:31 So, you know, no matter what we do, I think as long as we work as hard as we can with love in our endeavor, I really feel that nature is very, very forgiving and will help cover our tracks and our mistakes. As long as we're working at it and we're trying, I really feel that it just keeps getting But you know, I have these cane fields, and my oldest cane field is now getting on to be eight years old. Eight years old. They never grew a cane field, I don't think, here any more than three years. And they bulldoze it, you know. And I go out there and harvest some cane.

37:12 We were harvesting cane this morning. I made a bunch of cane juice. People in Hilo love drinking cane juice. And this cane coming out of the ground, they look like bamboos. They're like this big. You know. And I only applied IMO once a year for three years on those cane fields. And when you dig down into them, and it used to be just red, kind of like, um, [unclear] soil. Nothing in it. Now it's all black. You know, and yeah, I got guinea grass, and I got weeds, and I got California grass, and I just go out and dig it up, and it's all good. You know, this concept that people have about,

37:57 I know people, organic farmers, but they spray poison on the driveways, they spray poison around the houses. It's because it's in their mind. They want it to look a certain way, but it doesn't have to look like that. It really doesn't. I always tell people, you know, just do what you can do. If there is too much for you to do, there's too much for you to do back off but do what you can do don't go buying poison don't be supporting the death of this planet you know just do what you can do and it's all going to work out you know also someday I really want to

38:42 have somebody take court the story that I have to tell and it's about when I was a kid working on the dairy farm and how the government purposely set it up so that they were able to steal all the small farms in this country. It was a crime, but I got to be there, and I got to witness it, and it was back in the 50s and 60s. You guys want to hear a five-minute story?

39:07 Audience: Yeah.

39:08 John Caverly: About what happened to the dairy farms in state of Maine?

39:11 Kyle Studer: All right, if you can keep it to five minutes.

39:13 John Caverly: All right.

39:13 Kyle Studer: We want to make sure we get a lot of information.

39:15 John Caverly: These farmers, every farm, we had 50 milkers. That was a big herd. Everybody had like 25, 30 cows, right? And they kept the manure behind the barn, under the barn to feed the pigs. We milked in a machine that could pour it into a pail that I'd carry to the milk room to pour into the picket buckets, right? And it was, you know, this farm I worked on, their ancestors came over in the Mayflower. They had this farm for like a couple hundred years. And so what the government did was, because there were people in Washington from the Midwest who wanted to capture the milk market on the East Coast.

39:51 How are they going to do that? They're going to pass laws. So they passed all these laws that you could no longer, the milk had to go from the cow to a stainless steel tank. We used to buy a lot of milk, that was one of my jobs. Bought a milk and we had a little milk group. They made all that illegal. So if you wanted to stay as a dairy farmer, you had to get a loan for a couple hundred thousand dollars to buy all this new equipment. Farmers live hand to mouth. They don't have savings.

40:20 So after everybody went out and spent [unclear] hundred thousand dollars buying all this equipment, they lowered the price of milk artificially. And all these dairy farmers in all of New England, which used to be the dairy capital of the world at one time, there were a lot more cows than there were people in that part of the world, they all lost their farms to the banks so you know it's really hard I really have to admire you young people here that are farming and trying to make money because our government is really set up for us not to make money it's very difficult

40:59 and I don't know how you guys do it but I gotta commend you

41:03 Kyle Studer: well that story underscores the importance as it's been said a few times today, that you can't just be a farmer and put your head in the sand with the world around you, that the government really plays a huge role in agriculture and that it's important for us to get involved in things like the Farmers Union and try to change our legislators and, yeah, to make sure that the people that are making decisions are making them from an educated place and not just hearing, you know, a big ag lobbyist or somebody from the FDA scaring them about manure use on farms

41:37 or having chickens in proximity to vegetables or whatever it may be. So, I don't know if that helped. It's a very good story just to have, I think, in people's awareness that that's really what goes on. And that is very much so, I think, why you go to the U.S. today and there's 10,000 acre farms, 12,000 acre farms, people growing vegetables on tens of thousands of acres instead of how it used to be 50 years ago when the majority of farms were smaller just because government policy and the way the rules are written has pushed everything in that direction.

42:18 So I'd like us to spend some time talking about the challenges that you guys faced when you first started practicing Korean natural farming and being able to adapt it to your farms and, you know, Chris, you're doing over 200 acres of mac nuts. That's pretty substantial and very different than anything in Korea in terms of scale. So I'm just kind of wondering what you guys' challenges were getting started. What do you think were the biggest hurdles you had to overcome? David, do you want to lead off on this one?

42:52 David Wong: I think one of the big challenges is on natural farming it requires a whole different perception and understanding and you know I've already talked about that, all the things you know you were relying on, but in addition to that, you know, when you're working with employees the mindset has to change. So let's take an example. In the pig side, we all know in a conventional system, you're feeding so many pounds of feed every day, and you just dump it.

43:40 On the Korean natural farming side, it's a significantly different approach because the first thing you gotta help everyone understand is we all don't eat the same amount every day some days we feel really good and we can eat a lot some days we don't feel so good we can't eat so much but we decide not to eat so much and then all of us are not the same so all of us have different levels of appetite some eat more some eat less so it's exact same thing that happens with the pigs. So you need to use your eyes to work with the pigs so that you're

44:19 feeding the right amount for that group for each day and it's not the same every day. That sounds logically and sequentially correct but that's not how we've been working employees. You know, you pass a rule, the rule is unbendable, two pounds per head per day, then they just on and mechanically do this. Now you're asking them to kind of think, assess and respond to these circumstances every single day. It's a whole different mindset. In a conventional farm for our use, for our size and our density, the practice is you have maybe 10% with pneumonia,

45:07 15% with diarrhea and you're walking around with two syringes, one with penicillin, one with tetracycline and you probably go through 500 to 1000 cc's every day. On the farm we're running, we have no diarrhea, no pneumonia and no sick animals. So you're walking around scratching your head. How did this happen? And the crew are ex-dairy guys, so they're used to giving shots. So we're not giving any shots, something wrong. So again, it's a whole different mindset, a whole different, you're playing a different game. And you have to think differently, and you have to react differently.

45:53 So those are huge steps to retrain everybody.

46:00 Chris Trump: Can I say something right on that line? Exactly what he said. It's because we have this body of knowledge that says this is how farming works. And it's our extension agents and stuff. And all that knowledge isn't bad. It's all good knowledge and useful. It's not like, oh, anything conventional ag knowledge is a negative. It's not true. But, like, I'm doing natural farming and my brothers, my little brothers, you know, came back. He's working with us now and we're, we're, he just finished working for a giant ag company, biggest in the US.

46:44 And, you know, doing, you know, all their feed production stuff and with ag education. And, uh, doing natural farming, and he keeps wanting, like, why can't we just add chemicals to what you're doing with natural farming, chemical fertilizer, because you'll get this double benefit. Well, what if, you know, and this is crazy talk if you're a conventional farmer, what if you don't need any of those? What if you literally are going to have high yields without any fertilizer, conventional fertilizer?

47:21 And so we're, we have, we, within my family, we're butting heads on this, this conversation on how we're going to do this going forward. But not, not in a bad way. We're having fun with it. But there's, there's all these, I mean, you have soil deficiencies. Now in my, in my natural farming fields, we do soil tests and there's soil deficiencies. and on our conventional acreage, those soil deficiencies equal this much pounds of this fertilizer per acre, you know? That's the prescription. You figure it out, you send it in, your extension agent or recommend is a fertilizer mix for the year

48:03 based on your soil test. Well, the problem is, in my natural farming fields, though I may have the same soil as a conventional and they have this prescription, my tissue results are very different. What my tree is uptaking from that same soil that is deficient in those other trees, because they're not uptaking my natural farming trees, have it in the leaves. They have the right nutrients. They're getting what they need. So now we've just thoroughly, with biology, destroyed an entire system of fertilizer companies telling us what to buy. It's wrecked. It's ruined for us.

48:41 We can't take our soil test and figure out what our trees need. with it because my trees aren't showing those soil results in their tissue because they're creating fungal relationships at their tree root tips and getting micro minerals through access to it through the fungal pipelines so we're now, this conventional ag knowledge is lost, and I'm, I mean people are with it I mean just within my family we're looking at the same trees they're healthy they mean nothing and we're saying why don't we put something on there you know some

49:17 of them are telling me why don't we put something on there and it's like well maybe but that costs money and we don't need it and uh so i you know i have the final say on everything natural farming acreage so they don't get to touch my acreage but if we you know we we argue over the other acreage But good news, we're taking over our entire 750 acres with natural farming in the next couple of years. Yeah, it's working, so we're gonna...

49:46 David Wong: Let me add to it, please. Because I'm linear, and I still kind of haven't given it up. So, the first thing I do is I get on a plane and I go see my friends who are farming like 10,000-15,000 acres. So I want to see what they're doing and what level of thinking they're at so I can figure out whether I'm doing this thing half right or all wrong or all right. So the first thing they do is they tell me, did you do a soil test? Yeah. Did you react to the soil test? Uh, no. So did you do a tissue test? Yeah. Did you react to the tissue test? Sort of. So they say, well,

50:23 Let me show you what we're doing now. So they take drones and they fly over the field, and they take ultraviolet photographs. And they take the ultraviolet photograph, put it in a computer, and it's all digitized because they use GPS. So then they match it up. So they can tell you within three feet of any size field where you're selenium short, where you're iron short, where you're magnesium short. So they got this train that's going down the field, right? And so the tractor has three computers on it. One for the GPS, so it steers on a straight line. And there's a whole story about that,

51:06 but I won't go into that. The other one is to take the path. And the third one is to control the dispensers. So the third one says, okay, to the dispensing, in three feet, you're gonna have to shut off we're going to turn on the selenium and they might go 200 yards and it says okay shut off the selenium put the magnesium so I said wow and they said well get in the truck so we get in the truck and drive off and it says look at this field nice and level it never had that usually it's got a wave or it's got a color distortion look at it

51:43 that's where it's at and the production is going to achieve that so okay so now come home I get off the plane I drive to my field and I look hey it looks all green and it's all about the same height so I look at it after so then I start thinking about what Master Cho says you know he comes in and I said I remember to the tee we went to a farm and I said oh should I look at this farm farm it's beautiful I mean it's got like 20 brand new hot houses and he walks in and looks at it and he goes so I said so we're all asking here so what do you think and he says it's a

52:30 beautiful facilities no what about the plants and he says well they're okay I said no what what do you really think he said well you go ask the farmer if it's okay for me to say what I really think and in front of you because it might be embarrassing to him that's okay so he goes so I went to the farmer, I said to the farmer, show him your biggest problem so he's all excited man he went all the way in the back so I said he's gonna show you his biggest problem. I'm going to tell you the fun part of the story. Master Cho walked from here to the back of the room, turned around and walked back out.

53:18 That's how far he walked into this [unclear] facility. And then he came back out. And then he said, go get your friend. He said, okay. So I went back there and got my friend. He said, I can show you the worst part. I said, no, get your friend. so right in the front of the very first house he has all the babies, the seedlings the seedlings so he says so he looks at me and says so what do you think of this I said they look great they're bright green they're growing like crazy they're too big for the pot and he stands there and he goes So he says, 50% of the roots are black.

54:04 So we took it out. But he was wrong. 60% of the roots were black. So then he turns around and starts walking back to the van. And we got in the van because we cannot ask too many questions because it might look stupid. So later on when he's drinking wine, he says to me, wine he says to me remember that situation where 50% or 60% of the roots were black yeah he said if you're raising a baby you want this baby to run a marathon do you want an 8 pound baby

54:51 or you want a 40 pound baby? And I said, well, easy, 8 pound baby. So why are you raising 40 pound baby plants? So I stopped. I knew I was in deep kimchi, so I just stopped. So what he was really telling us is, why are you showing me the worst problem in the back of the building when your babies are not healthy? You can only get worse going that way without fixing this. So the whole perspective of how you look at natural farming has to change. Inputs are inputs. Methodologies are methodologies. But natural farming also requires exactly what John and Chris are telling us.

55:39 Your whole perception of how you look at that planet, how you perceive things, has to change first. Because if you don't change that, All other pieces don't make sense.

55:55 Chris Trump: And this is where natural farming is going to have a struggle to be used on a commercial scale. Because if you start talking like this in a room full of long-term commercial farmers, conventional farmers, they've stopped listening. Maybe, what, five minutes in? No. And it's, why? Because I can order a mix of fertilizers. They come in their crates. I have a measurement that I'm supposed to apply. I pour it all in the sprayer. It goes out hydrostatic, electrostatic. Application sticks to the leaf. I get foliar conventional application to match with my soil test

56:41 and the expert that tells me what I need. There's no human error involved. There's no thinking involved. There's no work involved. Now I'm not saying that conventional farmers don't work hard, but that is really straightforward. And somebody's telling me I'm doing it right, that has a degree next to the name. This is what is happening here. You know, what is happening on your farm? What is happening with these trees? How did they react to that thing you did? really, you know, and that's hard. That's asking a lot from somebody that knows a lot. You know, you get conventional farmers,

57:28 big scale commercial farmers, and you say, check your mind at the door and learn something new. That's a tall order. Us farmers, we're so leveraged. I mean that.

57:40 John Caverly: When I first found out about natural farming, they had a meeting here with the the Big Island Organic Certification organization, this was about six years ago and I'd never been to one. We're organic certified, which as far as I'm concerned we only do it out of necessity, I think it's really pretty to be certified as an organic farmer you get penalized big time So I went to this meeting and there were two different, I forget the name, a couple of different ag professors from UH Manoa and they had this talk and I went up and said,

58:26 have you guys heard about this natural farming? And so I was trying to tell them about it and they kept saying, well, you know, there's no proof, there's no science, there's no papers. it's out the door, you know. And you know this is the kind of the problem that we face in life in so many instances is that it doesn't seem to be any room for compassion, any room for openness, for understanding that there's probably something greater happening than what they're learning under their microscope.

59:12 You know what they're being taught in these schools and all these schools are being funded by you know who? The chemical companies. And we all know about that too. but yeah it's you know I have and I know people for farming and it is to no fault of anybody's it's really hard to make that switch it takes an amazing amount of faith and trust to step out of the box and you know just like so what

59:51 happened in Korea? Master Cho was telling us some years ago, I think it was five or six years ago, he made really big news. This whole county in Korea, they have like mayors, they're like patriarchs of the county, right? And this guy goes, okay. Because, you know, they're pretty famous farmers. They grow a lot of food in very little land. And they're very well respected worldwide. just like the Sikhs and the Punjab, they're very, worldwide they're known to produce the best food with very little. They don't have drones flying over the field and they don't have

1:00:33 all this fancy stuff but they can put it together they get high yields of dense uh nutrient-dense food.

1:00:41 Chris Trump: And a lot of it's the wives.

1:00:42 John Caverly: Huh?

1:00:43 Chris Trump: And a lot of it's the wives.

1:00:44 John Caverly: Yeah, it is. So anyways, [unclear] County decided to do natural farming with their rice. And all the farmers in Korea are like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, you guys are going to fail, you're going to lose everything. You're crazy, you shouldn't be doing this. But they decided to do it, and they did it. and the first year, they got a 6% higher yield, which kind of blew everybody's mind, 6% higher yield. They got a 6% savings on the inputs into their crop, and they got a 100% increase in what they got for it. Because over in Korea and Japan and other places,

1:01:29 you can actually have a natural farming certified farm, and you get twice the prices organic farmers get. They have those high end stores and the wealthiest people buy the food produced in the best way.

1:01:44 Kyle Studer: So one thing that seems like you guys are all saying as far as your challenge is more so than being able to manage your time to make the inputs or purchase equipment to apply those inputs, that the biggest challenge was just changing the way you thought about your farms operated them. I really like another thing that you guys kind of touched on is maybe a different way of looking at conventional farming versus natural farming is that with the conventional farm, you're a chemistry manager. So you're looking at your soil test and nutrient tests and saying,

1:02:21 you know, I'm low on zinc or too much of this or these things are out of balance. And as a natural farmer it seems like maybe you're more of a biological manager that we're looking at you know the health of the soil and the microbes and they're doing the management of the chemistry like what you are saying is that you know you're looking at your two mac nut trees in two places, same soil, over here you're saying we need to add zinc and then over here same soil different the trees has the biology though connected to its roots and it's the biology is

1:02:56 providing with the zinc and you're not going to have to add it because it's out there so I like that way of thinking about it. You manage the biology and the biology manages the chemistry.

1:03:08 Chris Trump: And it's you know the reality is we know very little of how that works. And James was saying that we have like three percent. We don't we don't understand it. So this natural farming concept is we don't know everything so So we're going to take carefully, without changing much with our inoculum to our land, we're going to try and just take it as it is and get it to our land and let it do its work. And it works. It does do that. I had just kind of nuts and bolts problems that I encountered. when I sat with Master Cho and all of their amounts

1:03:54 were like wheelbarrow amounts. I'm like, okay, 750 acres with wheelbarrows and then he's telling me like, and then you take like this [unclear] and a paintbrush and you paint your pruning marks and I'm like, paintbrush, 60 trees per acre, 750 acres. I'm like, these guys. And then I'm like, and then they're talking about, like, amounts and time to make. And I'm looking and I'm like, there is no way this. And so a lot of my problems were material handling type problems. And what happens when you take a pile from wheelbarrow size and make it, you know, two tons?

1:04:42 And then what happens when you make it from two tons to 20 tons? And then what happens when you make it from 20 tons to 50, stuff like that. And so there were some nuts and bolts things that it's all pretty surmountable. And it can be overcome without losing any quality. You don't have to give up like, oh, well, you don't have any love involved because you're doing it on a big scale. You can really care for it and do it properly on a large scale. And a lot of our mechanization in agriculture came before, you know, we had tractors before they were, you know, using chemicals.

1:05:21 And it's to take their compost and all these quality things they're making and get it out without, you know, breaking their back. And so I'm just using my farm equipment to make natural farming stuff instead of, you know, put out conventional fertilizers around it.

1:05:39 Kyle Studer: So you're using like a windrow turner, turn piles, and a manure spreader, and that sort of thing?

1:05:45 Chris Trump: Yeah. Yeah, I spread my IMO with a big old, big old, it's actually a compost spreader. So it has one giant belt that takes it forward, another belt that throws it out under the trees. I can apply on the drip line up and down, and then I fill back up with a big old front loader, and away I go. So I used, for making one and two ton batches, I used short, I made short party tents, gray tarps. And then I just made all the poles shorter. So I got two-foot and three-foot poles. So I have this short tent that sits over my IMO.

1:06:31 And then I picked it with a center setup. So I put a few holes in the center of the tarp, and I picked it with a forklift setup on my tractor, took it off, turned it with my compost turner, set it back on so I was regulating the moisture. And, you know, great for like 10, 20-ton batches, 30 by 30 tarps. You know, you can even make them overlap by changing the height of some of the poles so you can make longer rows. But one farmer can make a two-ton batch with one 20x20 and 20x30 tarp, and all you do is you make it low like that,

1:07:09 and then when you want to go in and turn it with your one front loader, you get some 10-foot poles, prop it up, take away the center pole, and you have this big lean-to looking thing, and you come in and you scoop it with your front loader, place it all over there, and then you scoop it with your front loader, place it all over there, and you've completely taken everything off the ground, and then you spread it out, and you've thoroughly aerated and turned an IMO pile, and it's pretty quick, and it's one person,

1:07:38 you're not lifting a bunch of things. But I just really want to caution anybody, if you're getting large scale, deal with equipment, because it'll take one person to turn a one-ton batch by shovel a good six hours of shovel work. And that's pretty insane. So just, you know, if you're going to scale up, mechanize it, because it's, or what the Koreans do is they come together, you know, ten farmers need one ton between the ten of them, and they come together and make it together. And ten guys working that pile can do it in a whole lot less time.

1:08:15 Kyle Studer: So, do we have a couple questions from the audience?

1:08:20 Audience: Are you having problems with the amount of heat in your pile, or how do you manage the heat?

1:08:27 Chris Trump: The bigger the pile, the more carbon you need. So carbon materials, so wood chips. Let's say you had an IMO 3. IMO 3, wood chips.

1:08:36 Audience: So even in that, it's necessary?

1:08:39 Chris Trump: Necessary. See, in Korea, on your ingredients you got mill run, right, or rice bran. But in Korea, I went there, I watched, they lay all this rice straw on top of their pile. And then when they turn it, they turn in all the rice straw. And then they lay more rice straw on top of their pile. Then when they turn it, they turn in the rice straw. So without it being on our input list, it is in their inputs. It's high carbon material. That rice straw is high carbon material. And so I did a bunch of side-by-side

1:09:09 trials, mill run only, mill run and wood chips, mill run and wood chips and humic acid, and I got astronomically more fungal growth with wood chips, and then I got that much again with wood chips and humic acid, and the vermi humic acid, which if you have your own worm bins, you could take the leachate, and that's really good humic acid. But, yeah, that will help you regulate so you won't have that high spike of temperature right there on day two and three. And also you need to be careful as you get bigger size-wise, and you're going to have to get a feel for water.

1:09:55 and that 5 gallons per 60 pounds ratio, my ratio is about 2.5 gallons per 60 pounds in general in natural farming, and I find that's about right. The 5 gallons per 60, I mean, maybe if you live in an arid climate in the winter and it's very cold, that amount, like Korea, that amount of water works in that temperature, that air moisture, whatever, But one of the things Master Cho told us to do when he came here was figure out what works here. I'm giving you natural farming concepts, and you have to figure out what are your things for making fermented plant juice,

1:10:38 what are your things for making IMO, and what of these things that I'm teaching you don't work the same in Hawaii as they do in Korea. That was his kind of commission to us.

1:10:50 Audience: Do you have a ratio for your mill run to wood chips?

1:10:52 Chris Trump: Don't say mill run to wood chips, say carbohydrate to carbon material. And you want it. I would recommend a 50-50.

1:11:05 Kyle Studer: Is there a couple more questions?

1:11:09 Audience: As far as macadamia nuts, I know that a lot of farmers, we farm a pretty large amount of them. And of course, the conventional way. And a big thing for us is keeping weeds off of the ground so that when the mac nuts fall, the pickers don't have a hard time making them. So as far as weed control, what are you using for your Korean natural farming acreage?

1:11:37 Chris Trump: It's a really, really good question, and that is the crux of the argument on cost in my family. So, you know, Roundup, I can make strips and it's really easy to pick up where the nuts fall. Natural farming, I can't use any Roundup. I have to mow. And I have to mow with really expensive zero-turn radius mowers and big old batwing mowers. I mean, we run five 15-foot Schulte mowers all year round. and we have three guys on zero turn radius going and hitting that last bit on the tree. But with my green natural farming acreage, my canopy's filling out, shading out my ground,

1:12:25 and I'm getting all this grass die out. I'm getting all this kind of bare, different kinds of grasses instead of those kind of big, huge grasses. I mean, if we leave some of our orchards for a month, We have six foot grass. I mean it goes crazy in Kohala. So this is this is the significant cost of natural farming compared to conventional is the mowing but if I am not fertilizing and Not using any inputs now, and I just have to mow and harvest that's okay You know if that's what but I mean that is a cost you have you have a bit now you have a job

1:13:08 you just opened up where you get to hire mowers you know and they can be out of high school you know hopefully they don't bang the trees too much if my yield is up and my input costs are down and mowing is my only problem now that's that's manageable but yeah you got them all and it and it's a lot of mowing and that is the problem however in my two three year acreage all the the canopy is coming together up above, we pruned it up for mechanical harvesting, all the canopy is coming together and I'm losing grass. However, I'm not losing, I'm not getting

1:13:48 soil erosion because I have this sponge of soil roots. My top feeder mac nut roots are just stoked and I have a whole lot of organic matter that's happening and it all gets meshed together with the biology. So though in a normal conventional field if I had no grass, my topsoil would wash off and I'd get a bunch of exposed roots. In my natural farming fields I don't have the exposed roots because I have this crazy water retention. It rains and it just stays in the soil and doesn't run down the hill.

1:14:23 Kyle Studer: So David, would you mind tackling that question also? I'm interested to hear how you deal with weeds in a vegetable system with your natural farming?

1:14:33 David Wong: I can't explain it. If you put mulch on the fields, after you go about a year, we don't have weeds. I can't explain it.

1:14:45 Kyle Studer: So you're not doing any tilling in between crops?

1:14:47 David Wong: We don't till. We might have a grass infestation in certain parts of the field and we'll manually pull it off.

1:14:55 Kyle Studer: So you just have been able to hand weed your way ahead of it and keep applying the mulch. John has a bigger system, right?

1:15:05 John Caverly: That's, like in my cane fields, we've been applying mulch only like once a year but you know I put it down really thick. You know, and pretty much what came up in that farm was guinea grass and sleep grass. And if I don't want it there, I dig it out. I have some really nice special hand tools, makes it really simple. But right now we're doing a big, the cane, the sugar cane is like a perennial, and this is the harvest season right now. right now we're getting in there we're harvesting and we just started today cleaning around the

1:15:51 clumps as we harvest, and if there's any weeds or grasses, it's like they just come out of the mulch you know it's pretty much all taken care of we've been working on it for a few years the guinea grass is all gone the California grass is gone it's just very little but it's the mulching Plus the plants, it's just like with the mac nuts, you know, it's getting so filled with the cane that nothing else has really grown in here. It's quite amazing. You know, the thing with natural farming or organic farming, it's a lot about pulling weeds.

1:16:32 And you've just got to wrap your head around the fact that you've got to get out there and deal with it physically. you and then you figure it out and it works out.

1:16:41 Kyle Studer: Question in the back. Yes please.

1:16:45 Chris Trump: Real quick, one story. So my uncle, my dad's good friend, is going to pay a bunch of money to fix his pasture land because his pasture land was killing all his cattle. He had two acres. It's his hobby. He gets a couple of cattle that they don't want. and he grows them out on his two acres and he takes them to market and he makes a little money. He's stoked. All his pasture became fireweed. He's going to spend like eight, nine grand, disk it and reseed it. And that's not going to fix any of the problem. So I thought fireweed is the first thing that comes up on a Roundup strip.

1:17:27 You Roundup, fireweed pops. Why? Well, because Roundup will kill fungus. Kills all your biology basically. gets piped down through your roots and creates all those relationships with the fungus, gets piped through the fungus and kills your whole network. So what's the first thing that comes back in your soil after you kill everything? Bacteria. Because the fastest growing, it pops up super quick. So if fireweed comes back first, then fireweed is bacteria loving. So his pasture has bacterial imbalance. So I went in, spaded really light kind of break up the top layer of grass, applied IMO

1:18:06 4, 1,000 pounds per acre, you know, on his two acres, and seeded it with just wild guinea grass cuttings from our farm, and then some signal grass. And then a week later, sprayed liquid IMO on the whole thing. Didn't pull the fireweed. Left it all there. It was all fireweed. Pasture right next to it, acres of solid fireweed. So I come back a month later, and I look, and there's still some fireweed there. It's not as much. But I started looking at the fireweed and pulled it up, covered in pests and disease. And then within two months, there's not a single fireweed in the whole pasture.

1:18:52 All of it's gone, and the grass is just jumping. Beautiful. But all the fireweed became the weakest thing in the two acres because it was dealing with this fungal dominant soil now. See, and it became threatened or it became an unhospitable environment for this fireweed because it's bacteria loving. So your weeds in your garden are going to have a harder time, kind of those funky, you know, bacteria loving weeds are going to have a harder time if you balance your fungal to to bacteria ratio through good IMO making. See in IMO making, you do natural farming,

1:19:31 you can sneeze and make good bacteria. It's really easy. I explain this, I mean it's really easy to make good bacteria. But the whole concept of IMO making is cultivating these really good fungal diversities and getting them into your plant. And so yeah his his pasture he had to get two more cows. He runs four cows on two acres now because his two cows couldn't keep up with the grass. and it's two years later now he still has the too much grass problem and right there on the other side of the fence where I didn't apply, solid fire

1:20:03 weed on this whole other guy's pasture land so it's it's a fungal bacterial imbalance so you can go fix the cattleman's problems

1:20:14 Kyle Studer: Any other questions?

1:20:19 Audience: John, you had said that in your plantings that you did IMOs but then you also used manures, right? Is there plots that you don't use manures at all and just strictly IMOs? Do you think that putting in your manures from your cows is kind of part of the equation for your success?

1:20:41 John Caverly: Actually, I haven't used any manure now in a few years. I had a connection for horse manure. My cow manure is kind of special. I use it for specialty things. I put it in my outhouse. I have a composting outhouse. And I use my cow manure for compost. I use it for starts. But when I first started farming I had a great horse manure connection, so I was dumping truckloads of horse manure there. But I haven't used any manure in years now. I used to buy chicken manure by the pallets. Three, four, five pallets a year. I haven't bought any chicken manure in years.

1:21:22 It's pretty much, you know, once it gets going, you get the mulch down, you apply your IMOs for a few years, and it kind of seems to settle on to a sustainable cycle. And if you apply too much nitrogen, now that you have that super fertile soil, you can see your plants don't like it so much. It's almost like huge. And it's kind of, you know, what I notice and witness is, like I said earlier, there's a mystery to this creation. I don't think any human mind is going to figure out through a microscope or through any kind of testing.

1:22:11 And I really have the faith and the trust that the microbes know way more than we do. The plants know way more than we do. and they can control what's going on in there more than we can. I feel like there's a saying in natural farming, less is more. The less we meddle in things, I think the better results we're going to get. You know, we have a duty and a responsibility to steward the land in a way that we can best do it. But I think at some point you eventually realize that the intelligence of soil is greater than anything we're going to figure out.

1:22:59 And it seems to just balance out. That's why, you know, I'm kind of amazed because, like I said, I haven't gone to ag school, haven't done any studying, I don't do soil tests. I really just kind of have a lot of faith and trust in what's happening with the applications of the, you know, for me, the biggest thing that I've always relied on is mulch. You lay down the mulch, you protect the soil from the ultraviolet light, And once you get the mulch down, all the creatures, all the microbes, and all the little insects can run around and do their thing.

1:23:35 But since they banned methyl bromide in this state, I have these commercial farmers all around me. It's crazy. And what they do is when they get ready to plant a field, they rotovate, they rotovate, and it's like every four or five days they plow the soil and till it and leave it out in the sun. and after doing that for a couple of weeks, the sun basically kills everything and then they run in there and plant. And as soon as things come up, then they start spraying their Roundup.

1:24:05 But the sunshine is like, when you get into the natural farm, by no means you want your, you put out your IMO [in the sun]. It's either late in the day when it's cloudy and misty or you've got to mulch it. But the ultraviolet light is quite deadly for [unclear].

1:24:33 Audience: Yeah, I have a question. But I'm glad I waited after you talked about the cattle.

1:24:39 Chris Trump: What?

1:24:40 Audience: No, I'm glad I waited because you spoke about the cattle thing. So my question was for Mr. Wong. So being that you were trying this litter system with your hogs and being early on, what kind of obstacles did you have to face or were there obstacles that you had to face against government regulation, health board, stuff like that? Maybe something very unconventional.

1:25:13 David Wong: Well, so Mike DuPonte had to fight through it. You're required to have a building permit. So Mike had to go through all that to get the building permit. So he essentially set up the structure so you can get NRCS clearance on proper manure handling. So the basic rule now is you got to put a 5 mil plastic liner in the hole. If you comply with that and follow Mike's progression, you won't get yourself in trouble.

1:25:50 Audience: I just want to piggyback on that. Just see Mike DuPonte. He has a four or five page template. So you just follow his template. He has all the Department of Health state requirements to have a deep litter system. Yeah. I was talking with Mike and I guess it's fine without going through some kind of a Board of Health or some kind of certification and stuff like that. And it seems like you've been doing it for a while. So it's like, and I talked with Mike and it seemed like it wasn't really early on that they didn't.

1:26:26 This is kind of fairly recently that they started to give you the authorization or the clearance.

1:26:32 David Wong: Oh, yeah. I thought you were asking a question in the present tense context. But, yeah, when we first started, oh, yeah, we got inspected to the end. I mean, it's like normally you would get inspected. We probably got inspected to the fifth power. It's like every day we got some inspector walking through to make sure that we were in compliance. And we actually did what we said we were going to do. because it's such a major problem on the [island?] with all of our, you heard it this morning, right?

1:27:06 He didn't want to post all the piggeries because if somebody starts filing complaints then what can you do? We have all these illegal lagoons because the lagoons have to be lined now. So if it's lined, we don't have an evaporation rate strong enough to settle for the size of the lagoons versus the piggeries. Some places are going to overflow. So if any of you have a manure composting system where you're doing [unclear] exchange you need a permit and this has to be in an area and you got to mound the whole area so whatever rain falls in will not move off because if you

1:27:50 got 12 inches of rain you got several thousand maybe 20,000 gallons in there and if it flows out, it's considered hazardous waste by EPA, so therefore you're contaminating and you are violating. And that rule is chargeable by $10,000 a day. So all of these things become factors, and we don't have either. We don't have a compost pile, and we don't have a [lagoon?]. So the biggest problem initially was, where's your [lagoon?] We don't need a [lagoon?]. Oh, you can't do that. required to have a [lagoon?]. We're not going to have anything running out, we're not using any water,

1:28:29 so why do we need a [lagoon?] So all of these issues became big issues. So the inspector said to rethink and we were under microscopic review for the whole first year because they'd come up and check if we have water runoff. Every rain, we're right there. You can come. First thing in the morning, they're going to come in because they want to see what happened to this water. Because they cannot believe, the biggest hurdle is they cannot believe you will be able to handle the urine within this pen.

1:29:12 Audience: And then USDA carcass quality or safety, send it to the inspectors or is that as well?

1:29:22 David Wong: Every pig that went to the Campbell's slaughterhouse which is federally inspected, got doubly inspected.

1:29:32 Kyle Studer: Alright, so I'm just noticing we've gone a bit over our time already, so if we could give these guys a round of applause. Thank you guys.