MOLOA‘A — Three days into a three-week agricultural internship program with Moloa‘a-based Retro Farms, four Kapa‘a High School honor society seniors are building teamwork skills and learning about alternative ways to grow fruits like pineapples, sugarcane and mangoes.
They’re also getting some hands-on lessons in invasive species management, and in the fresh air of Retro Farms, they can follow social distancing protocols while they learn.
Recently, they’ve been chopping away at guinea grass on the farm and learning why invasive species are such a problem for agriculture on the island from Retro Farms director and instructor Mary Ellen Pearlman.
Ag internship team leader Lei Sitani was the one who initially heard about the program from Pearlman — the two met while paddling for the Hanalei canoe team and competing in the Queen Liliokalani canoe race in Hilo last year. She said she and her friends decided to take the internship opportunity “to get out of the house and do something.”
“I thought it’d be fun to do and to have my friends help with the fun,”said Sitani. “It’s hard work, but its fun with them. It’s just a fun experience to help out, (to) be introduced to the plants and (to) be more knowledgeable nature-wise.”
Sitani convinced three friends to join in the summer internship: Sereniti Williams, U‘ilani Thompson, and Sophia Gregory — all of whom are fairly new to the agriculture industry.
Thompson is the only one of the group that’s been through an agriculture internship before, with a different organization. She said she’s learning similar techniques, but she’s excited to be working at Retro Farms for the first time.
“The internship I did before it was exactly like this, it’s not like anything I am unfamiliar (with),” Thompson said.
Pearlman told the girls from the start that there was going to be a heavy focus on education. That was demonstrated by a 17-question assessment that was completed before the internship started. That quiz will again be administered at the end of the internship to evaluate what they’ve learned.
“I want them to learn about sustainable agriculture and (they) maybe want to have a job in this industry,” said Pearlman. “But at the very least (we want to teach them) that with importing 90 % of our food here on Kaua‘i, we have to make some serious changes.”
Pearlman said over the past years more than 60 kids have been participating in programs each year. The kids were transported to different farms for a couple of weeks before being taken to the next, where they learned different ag techniques. Funding for the ag internship program has historically come from the state and was organized by the Mayor’s administration, but not this year. Schools closed before the Kaua‘i Economic Development Board could place students in farms approved by the Department of Education.
So, without the regular sources of money for the program, Retro Farms fundraised on their own and partnered with Zonta Club of Hanalei to offer the internship to the four young women.
Zonta has been sponsoring the Retro Farms Pink Pineapple Project — an empowerment and networking event that brings women and girls together — for the past five years.
“I really wanted to keep this program going. The high school kids deserve and need an opportunity to learn about agriculture and it also gives them a job experience,” said Pearlman. “So my board of directors approved funding for me to pay the kids out of our own pocket, so we could keep it going this year.”
Office of Economic Development Director Nalani Brun said the county is still interested in supporting the ag internship and is working with the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations — the state agency that gave the County of Kaua‘i funding for student interns — to revamp and re-institute the program when schools reopen.
As the new interns spent their first few days of the internship chopping away at guinea grass, Pearlman was nearby to answer questions and provide guidance.
“We are talking about what a problem that is and different ways to manage that with integrated past management programs, also known as ‘IPM’, which is one of their questions on their quiz,” Pearlman said. “At Retro Farms our main focus is connecting kids to nature, so they learn to understand it, which makes them love it, which makes them want to protect it.”
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Stephanie Shinno, features and community reporter, can be reached at 245-0424 or sshinno@thegardenisland.com.
