800 Acres of Macadamia on KNF for $21 an Acre a Year

0:00 Aloha! Aloha! My name is Chris Trump. I was born and raised in Hawaii. I currently, my family and I farm 800 acres of macadamia nuts using natural farming only for nutrition. Today I will speak about the, briefly about the science and the economics that we have encountered in this training.

0:48 It is important to have inspiration to change the world. And this is my family and in part my inspiration to make the world better for the next generation. I have hope. We currently use only natural farming to feed all of our trees on 800 acres. We have dealt with diseases using natural farming that the universities in our country and many countries around the world have spent millions of dollars to try and solve and correct.

1:38 Natural farming has completely solved those problems. We have very little pests where we practice natural farming because we have seen an increase in predatory insects continually and it continues to grow. Due to tree health, we're seeing an increase in yields across our natural farming areas. Our cost to produce all our inputs, to pay people a very high wage where we live and to spread all the inputs to pay for the tractors to pay for the fuel to

2:32 get all our natural farming into our orchard we currently our entire nutrition program costs $21 per acre per year. We have been doing this for about six years in our orchard. We started small and we've grown. One of the things we sought to do is make solid IMO on a large scale. I personally, usually or often by myself, made 150,000 pounds of IMO4. And it is possible to maintain the high quality of IMO4, the best quality,

3:29 not compromise while making very large piles. However, there is the potential risk of an environmental issue. One of the piles I made, we had a week-long rainstorm that came in the midst of making IMO4 and it was something I could not correct or prevent and so we had to spread the IMO4 before it was finished. My conclusion with making solid IMO on a very large scale, when I say large scale I mean 50 ton batches, is that there needs to be a structure where you can use equipment under

4:22 and regulate your moisture. There's investment in making large piles. You need to be able to protect this investment. This may not be necessary if you live in an arid environment and you can have a reasonable sureness that there won't be rain. So that issue began a journey of looking into liquid IMO. And Master Cho has, in his book and his teaching,

5:13 talked about making liquid IMO for soil treatment solution. and so I began to experiment to try and figure out if I could achieve the same quality or similar quality and effect through liquid as I could through solids. Just briefly to tell you, the solid IMO is better. It is the best. So liquid IMO is very good, but the solid is still the best. There's manifold benefits.

5:59 Some that cannot be duplicated in liquid. But, on a large scale. So I began to experiment with the recipe and SOS solution and ran many many batches and assessed the work with a microscope and looking for balance of biology and because I farm trees looking for a high fungal content. So qualitative assessment was very important for us because I was going to spend a lot of effort and time doing this on a large scale. And so these are

6:52 fungal spore heads, so this one is getting ready to sporulate. Those are the spores that have dispersed and sporulated. This is a microscopic mushroom. This is what it looks like without a microscope when you find it in a forest. What I found in my studies and practice is that what you start with is vitally important. Making good IMO2 or going to a good place that has high diversity of biology is

7:47 very necessary to have a good outcome. So take your time and do it right. This is IMO3 made with our macadamia nut waste, shell and kernel. IMO2 collections from wild indigenous forest. So now we are making liquid IMO of what I believe is very high quality, using the practice Master Cho has taught, to spray 800 acres three times a year.

8:36 We spray in the afternoon and it is going very, very well. We also save and process all our farm waste, our wood chips, our macadamia nut shell, and we inoculate it with IMO and we turn the piles using equipment. This is also the turner I use for making large piles of IMO 4. So we have a composting pile and a liquid spray program.

9:24 So the results after six years, 98% of our diseased trees recovered. Side note, for those of you wanting to study or make hypothesis and thesis, IMO4 is a viable cure for Phytophthora, a root-borne fungal disease that plagues the entire planet of agriculture. I can tell you more about this. Our trees no longer show nutritional stress. The yellowing of the leaves has gone away.

10:10 The diameter of our nuts is increasing so much that we might have to change our husking operation equipment. Overall production is increasing while costs have not increased. Our pest pressure is decreasing due to our beneficial insect populations. Master Cho sought God's wisdom. And in doing so, got insight to bring another way for us to make food.

11:02 This is wisdom from the one who made all of this in the first place and I think it is vitally important that as we go forward because Master Cho said something to me a year ago or less than a year ago he said natural farming is not finished and so many of you in the room represent the future of natural farming and how it will continue to grow. And to use his words, it is important that we rely on wisdom and not knowledge to continue to go forward.

11:47 Wisdom comes from the one who made it and we want to know how he made it so that we do it properly. My vision is to assist in a few, even just three large scale operations to duplicate the success we've had on our farms I would like to help make that possible because I believe that irregardless of whether governments get behind it capitalism can be the Trojan horse that we use to spread natural farming across the world.

12:36 Meaning, if a farmer succeeds and is making money and making high quality produce, then other people will want to copy him. And so I hope to assist some large scale productions to succeed in natural farming. I think it is very important to further what's happening here. The vision Professor Kim has and what is happening here, I think, needs to happen all over the world. That accurate information be perpetuated or shared.

13:22 So I have limited time, but my attempt at contributing to that is making videos of what we're doing on our farm and putting them onto YouTube. I'm very thankful for the freeness with which, or the love with which this information was given to me. I'm very grateful for my teacher, Master Cho, and the opportunity to be a part of something like this.

14:09 Thank you.