Kaʻū News Briefs, Monday, October 21, 2019

Rancher Michelle Galimba says, "Agriculture is a very intimate zone between nature and culture, between human and nonhuman." She and her family operate Kuahiwi Ranch in Kaʻū. Photo from animasoul.org

"AGRICULTURE IS ONE OF THOSE DEEP STORIES THAT WE LIVE WITHIN," says Kaʻū rancher Michelle Galimba who operates Kuahiwi Ranch along with her brother Guy Galimba, their family, and employees. She gave a keynote speech at the Hawaiʻi Agriculture Conference on Oʻahu last week and explained that Kuahiwi, in business since 1993, provides beef for local restaurants and markets throughout Hawaiʻi. See the complete speech.
     Here is more of the history of the ranch and her view of agriculture, from her presentation at the conference, sponsored by the Agricultural Leadership Foundation of Hawaiʻi:
     My family started Kuahiwi Ranch in the summer of 1993 with one cow. She was a rather wild black cow. We hauled her in our little trailer up the side of the mountain where we had just finished fencing up a 25 acre pasture, a former sugar cane field, the first of many that we would fence to make up the core of our ranch. It was an overcast afternoon. The guinea grass in the pasture was dark green and very tall, at least eight feet tall. My

Michelle Galimba, of Kuahiwi Ranch in Kaʻū. Photo from Hawaiʻi Agriculture Conference

brother Guy backed up the trailer to the pasture gate that we had painted blue. We opened up the trailer door and the black cow ran straight into that tall grass. We didn't see her again for months. Not a very promising start!
     That story, like most origin stories, is a little over-dramatic. I grew up around cattle on the dairies and ranches where my father worked. We always had our own backyard animals as well. So she wasn't our first cow by a long shot, just the first cow that belonged to our ranch as a business.
     Our ranch slowly grew until we now have a herd of about 3,000 head of cattle, and produce half a million pounds of beef per year for the local market in Hawaiʻi. The reason that I wanted to tell you that story was to point out how ambiguous that beginning was. One wild cow, one pasture salvaged from the wreckage of the great sugarcane economy. I wanted to point out how innovation doesn't have to be about using the latest gadgets; it can be as simple a thing as letting a cow out of a trailer one day. And then carrying on, bringing in new ideas, learning new skills, constructing, and making for twenty-five more years.
     What fascinates me about ranching – and agriculture in general – is that it is a multi-species collaboration. That is the first adaptation that I would like to highlight: collaboration. As Ursula K. Le Guin, one of my favorite writers says:
     To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it. Skill in living, awareness of belonging to the world, delight in being part of the world, always tends to involve knowing our kinship as animals with animals.
     To be skillful as a pastoralist, which is say, as a rancher, you must collaborate with your domesticated animals – in my case, your cattle, horses, and dogs; you must collaborate with the grasses and trees on the ranch, and your soil flora and fauna; you must collaborate with the forest-watershed, you must even collaborate with the undomesticated, feral, or invasive animals and plants – your weeds and wild pigs, your butterflies and two-lined spittlebugs. You need to know them, know their ways, and how to respond to them.

Kuahiwi Ranch manages about 3,000 cattle in Kaʻū and produces Kuahiwi Natural beef available at stores and restaurants, and at its own ranch store on the edge of Nāʻālehu, at 95-5520 Māmalahoa Hwy, across from Nāʻālehu Elementary. Photo from Kuahiwi Ranch

     Agriculture is a very intimate zone between nature and culture, between human and nonhuman. Intimate to the point of being quite often uncomfortable and even dangerous, and not just on a physical level. You are dealing with life and death, with eating and being eaten, on a daily basis.
     Agriculture is a hinge vocation and we in agriculture act as hinges and mediators – mediators between the human world and the natural world. And nature can be as small as the microbes in your cattle’s amazing four-part rumen or as large as a ranch landscape or watershed – or the planetary climate.
     See more in the Tuesday Kaʻū News Briefs, or read the entire talk here. Also, see Agriculture Leadership Foundation of Hawai`i. Buy Kuahiwi beef at 95-5520 Māmalahoa Hwy, across from Nāʻālehu Elementary.

To read comments, add your own, and like this story, see Facebook. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. See our online calendars and our latest print edition at kaucalendar.com.

To read comments, add your own, and like this story, see Facebook. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. See our online calendars and our latest print edition at kaucalendar.com.