Agrifood summit aims to increase importance of Hawaiʻi produced agriculture

HONOLULU (KHON2) — There’s a two-day event featuring sustainable agriculture and aquaculture.

It’s called “Thrive Hawaiʻi Agrifood Summit”, and it’s happening at the Convention Center.

Joining KHON in studio with more are summit is co-founder Jim Wyban and Valerie Harmon co-founder of Recambrian who will be pitching to potential investors at the summit.

So, what makes the agrifood summit important?

“The simple answer is that we need to help our growers, both on land and in the sea, become more profitable,” said Wyban. “As the recent fire on Maui demonstrated, land lying fallow is dangerous. It is also wasteful given that Hawaiʻi has to import most of its food. On top of that, climate change is changing the world picture on growing food; so we need to look at new technologies, practices and innovations and learn how to grow food, both on land and in water, to feed us here as well as the world.

What does Recambrian do, and what is their technology?

“It will lower the cost of algae production to create aquafeed that has a low carbon footprint, is highly nutritious, sustainable and cost-effective,” explained Harmon. “Commercial algae production is severely limited by light availability, driving high production costs and large land and equipment footprints. Recambrian’s technology, skylight™, will allow us to efficiently bring the sunlight to the algae so that we can increase productivity on smaller land footprints.”

Why does Wyban think Hawaiʻi is important?

“Finding ways for small tropical farmers to success can go a long way to solving critical food shortages, especially in the tropics where 40% of the world’s people live,” said Wyaban. “Investors put $51 billion into agtech startups in 2021, some of that can and should be directed to innovation in Hawaiʻi.”