Ho Farms: Trading city life for the family farm
By Martha Cheng
With a degree in marketing and international business, Shin Ho might
have imagined herself working in corporate offices around the world.
Instead, business opportunities at her family’s farm brought her from
Los Angeles, where she had been studying and working for five years, back home
to Kahuku, where “corporate” has a much more country feel.
On this rural stretch of Oahu's North Shore, Ho might at times miss the big city and all its conveniences. She’s traded varieties of nightlife for the varieties of beautiful, tiny, multicolored tomatoes Ho Farms is famous for.
As operations manager, she works in an office handling sales and promotional events. But just as often, she’s out on the 40-acre farm, checking up on the tomatoes and long beans, packing produce and doing “whatever it is we need to do,” she says.
Shin Ho tells us about Ho Farms and its mission to grow tasty vegetables with minimal chemical inputs, as well as her hopes for the local agricultural industry.
SYT: What's the history of the farm?
Ho: My father has been farming for 17 years. He started by growing Japanese cucumber. Farming is his passion, and he loves to learn new growing techniques and finetune them.
SYT: What do you grow?
Ho: We grow Japanese cucumber, long beans, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, baby Roma, Kahuku Golden tomatoes, Golden Grape tomatoes, long eggplant, long squash.
SYT: What techniques do you use to decrease fertilizers and pesticides?
Ho: We follow an integrated pest management system. The goal is to significantly reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides while managing pest populations at an acceptable level. IPM methods involve prevention, observation and intervention.
We've also invested in screenhouses and greenhouses, which prevent the intrusion of insects, birds and crop viruses. In 2006 we were awarded a state Conservation Innovation Grant by the National Resource Conservation Services to install a fine mesh netting screenhouse. The results showed that pesticide application can be reduced by 50 percent or more by utilizing a screenhouse.
To minimize our fertilizer use, we actively test soils and do tissue analyses. This allows us to analyze and apply fertilizer only as needed. We also carefully sequence our crop rotations to ensure that we maximize the existing nutrients in the soil and minimize the need for additional fertilizer or pesticide.
SYT: What have you learned in farming?
Ho: We have a lot of farmers working really hard to produce food that demands very low prices, and sometimes no price at all.
Consumers can help farmers and build a sustainable local economy by requesting local produce in their grocery stores and restaurants and buying local produce whenever they can. Imagine if there were 500,000 individuals who shop for groceries each week. If those individuals spend $1 each week on locally grown produce, we would have $2 million each month of revenue generated for our local economy.
I see so much potential in the agricultural industry. If some consumers shifted to buying local produce, that demand will generate revenue, and eventually more demand will create efficiency in production and better pricing, allowing the islands to be less dependent on imports.
Ho Farms products are part of the Hawaii Seal of Quality
program. For more information on Seal of Quality products, click on the logo.
On this rural stretch of Oahu's North Shore, Ho might at times miss the big city and all its conveniences. She’s traded varieties of nightlife for the varieties of beautiful, tiny, multicolored tomatoes Ho Farms is famous for.
As operations manager, she works in an office handling sales and promotional events. But just as often, she’s out on the 40-acre farm, checking up on the tomatoes and long beans, packing produce and doing “whatever it is we need to do,” she says.
Shin Ho tells us about Ho Farms and its mission to grow tasty vegetables with minimal chemical inputs, as well as her hopes for the local agricultural industry.
SYT: What's the history of the farm?
Ho: My father has been farming for 17 years. He started by growing Japanese cucumber. Farming is his passion, and he loves to learn new growing techniques and finetune them.
SYT: What do you grow? Ho: We grow Japanese cucumber, long beans, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, baby Roma, Kahuku Golden tomatoes, Golden Grape tomatoes, long eggplant, long squash.
SYT: What techniques do you use to decrease fertilizers and pesticides?
Ho: We follow an integrated pest management system. The goal is to significantly reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides while managing pest populations at an acceptable level. IPM methods involve prevention, observation and intervention.
We've also invested in screenhouses and greenhouses, which prevent the intrusion of insects, birds and crop viruses. In 2006 we were awarded a state Conservation Innovation Grant by the National Resource Conservation Services to install a fine mesh netting screenhouse. The results showed that pesticide application can be reduced by 50 percent or more by utilizing a screenhouse.
To minimize our fertilizer use, we actively test soils and do tissue analyses. This allows us to analyze and apply fertilizer only as needed. We also carefully sequence our crop rotations to ensure that we maximize the existing nutrients in the soil and minimize the need for additional fertilizer or pesticide.
SYT: What have you learned in farming?
Ho: We have a lot of farmers working really hard to produce food that demands very low prices, and sometimes no price at all.
Consumers can help farmers and build a sustainable local economy by requesting local produce in their grocery stores and restaurants and buying local produce whenever they can. Imagine if there were 500,000 individuals who shop for groceries each week. If those individuals spend $1 each week on locally grown produce, we would have $2 million each month of revenue generated for our local economy.
I see so much potential in the agricultural industry. If some consumers shifted to buying local produce, that demand will generate revenue, and eventually more demand will create efficiency in production and better pricing, allowing the islands to be less dependent on imports.
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Comments from Readers
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m. esther tanaka
After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I buy local produce most of the time. It's great to know that we have farmers here who are producing vegetables with less pesticides and fertilizer. Thank you! Consumers need to support the local farmers so they can make a decent profit with prices that are competitive with imported produce.
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