PRINCEVILLE — A 10-acre tract of farmland tucked away on Princeville’s mauka side is harboring a decades-old secret, but its keepers are ready to share it.
“When I tell people we have koa (Acacia koa) here on Kaua‘i, they don’t believe me and say it all comes from Big Island or up at Ke‘e,” Krista Brodie said. “The truth is, my husband has been farming here for 20 years.”
Krista’s husband is Sandy Brodie, a longtime North Shore resident born and raised on O‘ahu. He began planting the iconic Hawaiian endemic in the mid ’90s, when he retired as a captain from a lengthy career in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.
Since then, the Kaua‘i Koa Farm has expanded into a viable business growing 39 species of trees. It’s a one-stop shop complete with mill, kiln and studio filled with woodwork created by the farm’s arborist, Michael Rollins.
Despite the Brodies’ success, planting koa for profit remains almost unheard-of among Hawai‘i farmers. Most koa, long prized for its distinctive wood, is old-growth harvested from the wild by permitted businesses. Obstacles including fungal disease, growth rate and high-elevation growing conditions seemingly preclude plantation-style koa cultivation.
Sandy, though, has found otherwise, and he’d like fellow islanders to consider planting trees themselves.
“One of my goals is to be able to provide other farmers with disease-resistant koa,” he said, one rainy December morning. “I’d like to know that we have the ability to reforest this island.”
Koa is one of Hawai‘i’s two dominant canopy trees, the other being ‘ohi‘a (Metrosideros polymorpha). It once grew down to the water’s edge on Kaua‘i, according to Sandy, who claims that changed when Westerners arrived.
“The things that got to it are the grazing animals,” he said. “It’s a member of the acacia family, and acacias are a legume, which is a pea and apparently very tasty to cattle and horses.”
Kaua‘i’s koa is now limited to high elevations, where colder temperatures protect the trees from wilting caused by species of Fusarium, an invasive, soil-borne fungus discovered in Hawai‘i in 1980. The disease, which can devastate koa populations, blocks infected trees’ vascular tissue, preventing water from reaching their leaves.
The now 80-year-old farmer, who only harvests naturally-downed specimens, did not always speak for the trees. He built fiberglass boats and owned Sandy Brodie’s Honda, a motorcycle and power equipment dealership, before devoting himself to agriculture.
(Automotive enterprise runs in the family. Sandy’s late father, Kekaha-born Alexander “Lex” Brodie, became famous throughout the state as the TV spokesman and founder of the Lex Brodie Tire Company. Lex’s well-known slogan, “Thank you … very much!” is still used in company advertising.)
Kaua‘i Koa Farm, however, isn’t a perfunctory garden plot.
When Sandy arrived, the land — two, five-acre parcels bisected by ‘Anini Stream — was covered in jungle devastated by feral pigs. He brought in a shipping container packed with lawn mowers, fertilizer and tools, and slept in a tent while building a home and readying the soil.
But the farm’s first crop of koa, planted in 1995, failed.
“We lost almost everything we planted,” Sandy recalled. “It was about 800 trees I planted, and I think about 50 survived. I got really depressed about that.”
The young plants, planted at the relatively low elevation of 600 feet, had been killed by koa wilt.
Sandy eventually partnered with Hawai‘i Agricultural Research Center to identify and propagate disease-resistant koa specimens.
“They sent me 22 families of koa in seeds, and we started them here with about 40 of each,” he said. “We took the death ratio from 75% down to 25%.”
That ratio may dwindle further. According to Sandy, HARC researchers claim his next generation of koa is likely to be at least 5 to 10% more resistant to Fusarium.
Such results would approach optimal mortality rates, according to Hilo-based extension forester J.B. Friday, of the University of Hawai‘i College of Tropical Agricultural and Human Resources.
“In forestry, if you plant 100 trees and you get 90 to survive, it’s good enough,” Friday said.
Friday is impressed by Kaua‘i Koa Farm’s success.
“Sandy is the very first guy on Kaua‘i harvesting some plantation wood,” the forester said, noting Hawai‘i Island farmers have invested in large-scale koa plantations that remain years away from harvest. “He’s the leading edge.”
Friday shares Sandy’s desire for a Hawai‘i once again covered in koa, although he stops short of recommending Kaua‘i farmers dedicate themselves to the crop, citing a lack of research.
“I’m much more optimistic of growing koa where wants it wants to grow, up on high elevations, but you don’t have that on Kaua‘i,” he explained.
But one could argue Kaua‘i has its advantages, too.
“On the Big Island, it takes almost 20 years for those trees to develop the heartwood,” Sandy said, back on the farm. “Here, we’ve got good heartwood in seven years, and that’s because we have 100 inches of rain a year and they only have 15 or 20.”
The lumber from trees grown and processed in Princeville also boasts more curl, a much-desired aesthetic feature, than from koa harvested elsewhere.
Sandy would like to see koa and other trees, which can fix nitrogen, sequester carbon and attract native bird species when alive, become a major export crop for Hawai‘i when harvested.
“We lost our export crop when pineapples and sugarcane went away,” he said. “Wood would be great.”
Friday agrees there’s nothing quite like koa. Visitors from all over the world equate the tree with its home archipelago.
“They’re not buying koa because they looked at koa, mahogany, teak and rosewood and thought koa was the prettiest,” Friday explained. “They buy koa because it is Hawai‘i.”
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Scott Yunker, reporter, can be reached at 245-0437 or syunker@thegardenisland.com.
