Not at the Table? You're on the Menu

0:00 Vincent Mina: Please. And Alika's here, yeah? Where's Alika? Alika, please come up. Right here is two of the presidents of our nine chapters with Hawaii Farmers Union United. And Alika, there's a term Alika uses that I really like a lot, so I'm going to use it tonight. And that's the depth, you know, getting the depth and the breadth of our chapters moving forward. And it really speaks to being involved, just like Russell's encouraging us to run for office. Well, I'm encouraging folks to get on, get on the boards. And it's a stepping stone to that, to getting into office, to being in the government.

0:52 Farmers Union, we've grown in five years exponentially, and it's gonna, they're going to continue to grow because of folks like you who really value all this. And these gentlemen here are extremely busy. They don't have much bandwidth when it comes to outside of what they're doing already. And I used to have a full head of hair five years ago. But in all seriousness, if you have any talents that you feel would align with assisting our chapters, then bring them forward. Because we don't want anybody to do anything that isn't in their comfort zone of what they know to be true.

1:42 And it really helps out a lot. We have people doing all kinds of different things that need to be done. within our organization. And people bring that, their gifts, their talents, to the table and do it. And so it's really exciting. I mean, you've seen what happened with this symposium. The other day when I pulled up, the energetics were just so wonderful. And then the food. The food. Unbelievable. So just heartening. Just very heartening. You guys want to share anything about your experience? what you're representing here.

2:21 Kyle Studer: I could tell you that I think what Russell said earlier, that it's not natural for farmers to be politicians. I think that's a little untrue, actually. I think that if you're a farmer, you have to be involved in politics somehow. Otherwise, you're going to get run under the bus. If you're not involved, then it's not going to work out. Everything is going to be tilted against your favor, which is kind of the situation that we're in. And so that's why I got involved with the Farmers Union. That's why I think it's important and that it's worth what little time I have to give to it.

2:59 I give as much as I can because we need organizations like the Farmers Union to lobby for our benefit. We don't have a voice in the legislature if we don't have the Farmers Union. So I really believe that. That's why I'm here. That's why we put on these events so people can get educated about regenerative agriculture and the farmers union Just want to keep pushing that forward encourage everybody, you know, you eat you should be involved

3:28 Vincent Mina: So you have monthly meetings

3:30 Kyle Studer: Yeah, we have monthly meetings, third Tuesday of every month at the Komohana Extension Center where the symposium was.

3:36 Vincent Mina: Thanks to Michael DuPonte, who is a big advocate and supporter of all this coming forward. Drake, you know, that alignment, those three entities of Farmers Union, Korean natural farming community, and the CTAHR here is this real powerful collaboration so we're really excited about that. This chapter just grew about 50 members over this past symposium. So as the saying goes, you know, if you're not at the table, you're part of the menu.

4:14 Alika Atay: Stole my mic.

4:18 Vincent Mina: I was just going to say that.

4:21 Alika Atay: You know, this little... of what Kyle shared, I always, same like Vincent, we use this saying, if you're not at the table, you will be on the menu.

4:33 Vincent Mina: You say it better than I do.

4:35 Alika Atay: There is more of a reason for us to be participating with what's going on. And today in the car, coming back from John's farm, we talked about inertia. We've taken one step, getting people to awake. We talk about regenerative agriculture. What does that mean to regular people? It means that we live on a land that's been poisoned and we need to wake it up, regenerate it, bring back the land to life so that we can see the worms. So we can eat and know that we're going to be eating good food.

5:22 This last year taught me a lot about politics, being involved with a fight with the biotech people. But it taught me a lot about there's organized money and then there's organized people. And when organized people are at the table making a difference, participating, whether you grow the food or just making sure that you know what you eat, you're participating in that process. Coming in tonight I saw Russell at the door and we talked about, okay what are you working

6:11 on? All the same projects that we push forward. And he asked what I recommend. I said, well, right now, I've always been pushing canoe plants. You know, please consider a proposal to protect our canoe plants from being GMO. We've been protecting our kalo, what about our ʻuala, you know, what about our ʻulu. And so that we know that, you know, maybe too late for save everybody in the world, but at least here we can have a say to protect the food. You know, visiting John's farm today, it's all canoe plants. Yeah? It was all canoe plants.

6:54 It was so beautiful for me to see it that, hey, we can eat that. You know? We can eat that and still survive. And this is what our soil is designed for, to grow this kind of food. So it was an honor for me to see the folks throughout this whole weekend at the symposium. very very happy thank you to all the organizers I involved in a lot of event organizing and I know what it takes the amount of hours of meetings and organizing and I can see it

7:37 Vincent Mina: you can see what the depth and the breadth of this organization is about like how astute these presidents are and we have you multiply that out by seven other presidents and that's what we're representing here in Hawaii and that's the beautiful thing about this form of agriculture it draws out people who are astute and who have talents and who want to make a difference so thank you very much for being here tonight. Who's going to... Drake, you're going to fire up the movie? Yep. Are we ready?

8:10 Unidentified voice: You got that? Yep. Okay. I almost didn't recognize you without your hat on.