Fixing Kalo
A friend asked these questions on a discussion list I run in response so my last article:
- Are there things you and I and other small farmers can actually do better?
- Should we transport taro around as much? Where are the diseases hitting?
- Are there places a taro farmer dare not go or bring taro in from?
- Can we learn more about what kalo needs and take better care of it, and not let it rot and breed disease?
Another friend was kind enough to stress that another source of diseases in kalo has a lot to do with what is poured into their environment – a witches brew of herbicides and pesticides, 16-16-16 fertilizers and whatnot.
So, what’s the solution?
Let me preface this with – as far as kalo is concerned, the absolute best thing you can do is find an old kahuna who is part of a long line of kalo farmers and absorb wisdom from him like a sponge. More than one even. Unlearn everything you thought you knew about farming – all the conventional plowing this, fertilizing that, spraying for pests, herbicides – put all that behind you and become a true student of the land. After all, if they could farm the land back before all these conveniences, so can you.
Indeed, even the Amazon basin supported millions back in the pre-Columbus days – and all without the aid of our conventional methods and products and without the catastrophes that sit on the razor’s edge like they do today. There is a lot of wisdom to be had by those that have gone before us, wisdom that can be melded with modern understanding to form the next generation of farming methods that are intrinsically connected to the past – and not an outright separation and corruption of it that current conventional practices represent.
The recent rash of diseases is perplexing indeed. I read thru transcripts of meetings between the kalo farmers and Maui water board and try to build a picture of “before” from their testimony. From what they say, before the water was diverted, they had no disease problems. Their crops never failed and grew abundantly. They didn’t have pest problems. In their case, they were growing a taro that liked the conditions that they farmed in – and when those conditions changed by the stealing of their water, the taro rapidly weakened and fell to disease and pest. That indicates that the disease and pests are there already – but with strong kalo, it’s managed.
From an organic view of how nature works, this makes sense. In nature, the weak become the prey while the strong survive – and that’s across the board of nature from the Serengeti to a taro patch. Lions don’t attack the first prey they stumble across, but make the selection carefully, looking for the wildebeest that isn’t as strong or as fast, perhaps stumbles a bit when it runs indicating lameness or injury. Plants live in the same kind of environment. Leaves that are stressed don’t reflect light the same way, when viewed from the near UV spectrum. If we can detect this, so can insects. Healthy plants have defense mechanisms. But those mechanisms become lame when the plant is stressed. Same with pathogens. Strong plants have immune systems. But weaken the plant and that system becomes compromised. So the first and foremost goal is a strong plant.
In “modern” agriculture, plants are cultivated as if they were hydroponically grown but not even adaquately so. The soil is treated as a place to park the roots. Very minimal attention is given to the soil then and a disproportionate amount of attention is given to what is poured and sprayed on the plants. It seems that ancient wisdom has been totally discarded as deprecated – a level of arrogance that says they didn’t know what they were doing for thousands of years, we know now after a few decades.
This fallacy is the foundation of the current mentality of farmers – put it in the ground and pour fertilizers on it. Only, the plants look pretty but aren’t getting what they need – so they’re also stressed. You eat nothing but chips for several months and see how healthy you are! But, rather than attempting to get to the core of the problem, the symptoms are treated instead. Pests? Well, spray with pesticides. They keep coming? Spray more! And spray cocktails of pesticides. Kill everything out there. Sadly, this mentality destroys the beneficials. The beneficials may be overwhelmed by the pest multiplication in stressed fields, but are of extreme importance in maintaining the health of non-stressed crops. Killing them off just elliminates yet another partner.
And, with the damaged ground, there is a set of plants that are considered the front-line plants. These plants are nature’s response to damaged soils – they are able to grow in the most inhospitable and dead soils. Anyone who has lawns are familiar with these plants and call them weeds. But, they start the life cycle in soils, paving the way for another progression of plants and soforth until there is a forest where once the soil was dead. When the farmers ignore their soil and crop it heavily, then plow it frequently – they damage the soil and when that happens, weeds come and do their job. But rather than trying to figure out why, another band-aid is applied – herbicides.
The resulting crop is a product of a stressed plant in a stressed environment that lacked what it needed to put the fullness of it’s goodness into it’s fruit. But the fruit is pretty and that’s what counts to the commodities market.
Rather than seeking the root of the problem, a tremendous amount of effort is expended on trying to force the plant to grow under these stressful conditions. This is where breeding comes in. Breed something that will grow in the farm-damaged soils with the least amount of pest and disease problems. Breed it so the fruit lasts long and travels well. Taste and nutrition are often on the far back-burner with this and many hybrids are famous for being rather bland and tasteless.
But – it’s a playing field that breeders find rich as far as making their name. If they solve this or that, they’re famous and their company makes millions. So, there’s yet another roadblock to getting to the root of the problem. After all, fix the root and these new hybrids won’t be needed, right? Millions of potential revenue lost. The same goes for GMO’s as well, with the added twist of intellectual property on the very genes on these plants and draconian licensing terms that force the farmer to buy new material for every crop, buy chems formulated specifically for these genes and remain within this dead-end system of agriculture. I call that self-created job security for the GMO industry.
The solutions to these problems depend very much on the growing conditions and what is being grown, but philosophically and across the board, the first and foremost priority in any agricultural endeavor is the soil. If you have happy soil, chances are you’ll have a happy crop. This means running thru the gamut of soil-building methods that maximize the health of the soil foodweb.
For a kalo operation, this will mean making a bed and planting soil-building crops there first – cover crops – and allowing a particular bed to remain fallow and planted with these soil-building crops for a year or more at a time. It’ll mean looking at the soil and feeding it. This can mean incorporating this organic material into the mud several weeks before planting the huli. Some don’t wait that long before planting and get away with it. Often I get bubbles of methane but the plants don’t seem to mind. Nevertheless, treating the soil as your most important asset and the crop as the resident of that asset will change your mindset and that’s what is most needed. You’re building a fine house and offering it to an honored family member. Would you build a shack instead?
Secondly is to grow what likes your environment. Some kalo prefer cooler river waters, while others prefer warmer swamp waters, and still others prefer boggy lowlands or moist uplands. The Hawaiians had that all figured out and cultivated what grew best in an area rather than what the market demanded. That’s all fine for subsistence farming – but difficult for commodities marketing. For instance, taro was brought in from off-island that produced a very favorable poi as far as taste was concerned. Only, it was brown – no one wanted a brown poi since purple poi was the standard color. That brings up a compromise that we may never be able to fully address adequately, sadly, if you’re a commercial farmer. A better product or expected product? Which to grow? Educating your market can help tho. There are far more than just 9″ yellow banana’s for instance – many that taste much better.
Thirdly – if conditions change, like if you lose your river, then grow something else – another variety, or attempt to simulate the river. Ancient Hawaiians benefited from aquaculture even. Today, we can installed a fish-tank or pond near a taro patch and circulate water from it thru the lo’i. This would consume far less water since it’s recirculated, and feed the taro naturally from the fish. This water may be warmer than river water and a different variety of kalo may be needed, but it’s still a very viable and sustainable option. This takes a bit of logistics that the older farmers may find prohibitive – and they really deserve to have their water back, but it’s still an option nonetheless.
It’s not foolproof or perfect tho. Even healthy people can get sick after all. Often it’s because they get more of a pathogen than their immune system is prepared to deal with. With plants, this can include the introduction of diseased plants into the crop. Keeping your planting material disease free is of paramount importance – the best way to remain disease free is to prevent contact in the first place. This would include quaranteeing new plants and perhaps even testing them for pathogens before including them in your lo’i. Getting kalo from Samoa can be problematic for instance, since most of their taro industry was wiped out by disease. Even if the disease was a result of weak plants, it’s still a vector that could affect healthy plants.
Many of the disease problems are hitting the large commercial operations much harder than the small home plots. A small lo’i or taro patch receives more attention to the plants and sick plants are often individually removed before it spreads, not to mention having conditions that are far easier to change to improve the environment for the kalo. Some pathogens ride the trade-winds so healthy plants are of critical importance to avoid problems. When disease attempts to strike, tho, or pest threatens to take over, seek the root of the problem and address that. It may mean the loss of a crop – something that could be painful for those strapped to loans – but it’s an investment into future crops.
For kalo, trying to recover the old wisdom will be extremely helpful. Combine this with a study and practice of organic or natural cultivation techniques and you’ll be on the path to reduce disease and cultural problems. There will always be the chance of a bad season, but persistance and constant learning will help you ride out the tough times. We must see kalo and our other crops not as dollars waiting to go to the bank, but as part of our family – something that is under our care. Even the Hawaiian story of kalo mirrors this – the older brother that is cared for by the younger brother, then pays the younger brother back by returning the care in the form of food. The minute we see our crops as dollars, we’ve lost. Sure, the crop may pay on our mortgages and loans – but don’t see the dollars until they’re already in the bank. While the plants grow, they’re your partners in this endeavor that deserve our attention, respect and work.
Some good books that don’t spend enough time on my shelf to gather dust are:
And there are many more. While they don’t directly address kalo, getting a good foundation of organic methods will give you a toolbox of methods you can adapt to the cultivation of kalo.
The ancients were able to feed vast populations in the Amazon using their old wisdom developed over the centuries – all without any modern conveniences. On the Islands, hundreds of thousands ate very well using their ancient wisdom. Today, we need to harness our better understanding of science to take their methods into the next century. This does not include tossing their wisdom in favor for GMO’s and other band-aids. Their methods fed millions and melded with modern understanding can feed billions. This bodes ill for industries that have hung over agriculture like vultures, that try to keep their carcass rotting below them at all costs, but we don’t have to sit there under their hungry stare.
Plant breeding of food crops should primarily address issues such as taste and production. second to that should be issues like storage and appearance. The Hawaiians practiced breeding and selection to develop wild taro into the kalo that we have today and every one could double as an ornamental on its own.
Disease resistance can actually be developed out of strains of existing breeds – genetic variability even in so-called identical copies ensures that not every Cavendish clone is susceptible to Panama disease, for instance. Rather than bull-dozing and burning infected crops, we need to go in and clear out the obviously dead and seek out the survivors. These survivors can carry genetics that can keep the bananas going. This is actually similar to how disease resistance is determined anyway – in the lab thousands of seedlings or propagules are exposed to disease and those that survive continue to be developed and propagated.
GMO’s are not needed to accomplish this. Forcing rice genes into papaya wasn’t needed to fix the disease issue. However, finding resistant strains in an existing crop reduces the opportunities of the industry to “own” the crop. There are a tremendous number of un-owned heirloom crops out there that the industry wishes to wipe out in favor of owned crops. If it’s developed in the lab, they can more easily patent the results and own it and dictate exactly who grows it and how much is paid.
Everyone has a right to make a living, however motives here are in the wrong place and ethics are placed on the back-burner in the pursuit of this ownership, even to the destruction of ancient lines of crops that really had no problems at all. In an ideal world, we would be given a choice. However, in the real world, they invade via a few gullable farmers and once their foot is in the door they start making life difficult for every one else and for the heirloom crops. Their goal isn’t to present a choice to everyone, but to erradicate the competition altogether. Choice does not make shareholders rich. Monopoly does. As such, their product will always be suspect and should always be avoided, not even considering the potential environmental and health ramifications of GMO.
MikeV
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