DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Johnson Hwang's primary crop is basil, but he grows 20 types of herbs, including rosemary, on land in Mililani and Waianae. He is the state's largest herb grower and a major supplier nationally
King basil
Farmer Johnson Hwang is
a major player on
the national herb scene
thanks to his persistence
and lucrative ingenuity
If you could open up Johnson Hwang's head, you'd find a brain operating in hyperdrive. His is a mind that thinks faster, sees farther, dreams bigger than the norm. Idle time, empty land, surplus crops -- he can see a way to make them work for him. It may be necessary, for example, to keep a pond of water for irrigation purposes, but imagine if the pond were full of marketable fish -- a secondary crop is born.
As a farmer, Hwang is constantly mindful of the production process -- streamlining the parts that cost cash (planting, watering, weeding, delivery) to focus on the part that generates cash.
"Harvest, harvest, harvest," he says. "That's how you make money."
Hwang's harvest is herbs, mainly basil, grown on 160 acres of land in Mililani and Waianae. You've seen his herbs, packed in flat plastic boxes marked with the Rainbow Hawaii Farms label. They're in all the supermarkets. Local stores, though, are a minuscule part of his business, 5 or 6 percent.
Hwang is a mega-producer of certified organic basil. He ships out an average of 4,000 pounds daily to 28 cities across the country.
This herb empire was born in the late '80s, when Hwang began casting about for a crop with selling potential beyond the islands. He found that 70 percent of the herbs sold in this country were imported from places such as Mexico and Central America.
"We thought, why not Hawaii?"
To understand Hwang's gift for creating advantage out of disadvantage, consider this particular string of circumstances ...
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Workers make their way down rows of basil, harvesting by rapidly trimming the plants with scissors. Much of the Rainbow Hawaii Farms crop in the Mililani Agricultural Park is covered by a fine mesh netting that keeps out bugs, shades the plants from the harsh noon sun, acts as a windbreak and holds in heat at the end of the day.
Problem: Water pressure in the Mililani Agricultural Park is low in the daytime when demand is high among all the farms.
Solution: Dig ponds on the property to hold water; use that water to irrigate crops. Refill the ponds at night, when no one else is using the main water supply.
Bonus: When Hwang was offered a stock of tilapia to settle a debt, he put the fish in the ponds. Now he's farming 200,000 tilapia and selling them in Chinatown.
Second bonus: The fish -- particularly their waste -- attract algae, which enriches the pond water. Turns out basil thrives on that nutrient-rich blend.
Next problem: Fish gotta eat. Fish food is expensive.
Solution: Make fish food using okara, a leftover product from tofu-making, plus skip meal, a flour byproduct, both of which he can get cheap. Cost of the operation is cut in half.
Ted Andrews, president of HerbCo International, a producer and wholesaler of herbs based in Seattle, has purchased Hwang's basil for five years.
He says Hwang has a knack for consistency -- no excuses for bad weather, pests or the myriad other problems that plague farmers.
This despite running a low-tech operation with no mechanization, no special coolers to keep the basil happy. "As far as we can tell his product doesn't get the TLC that we give ours and his product is superior to ours," Andrews says. "I'm mystified by how he does it."
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Ponds on the Rainbow Hawaii Farms Mililani property hold irrigation water. They also hold tilapia and algae, which provide natural fertilizer for the herbs farm. Dan Coscina, left, and Qin Quan Wang demonstrate how the fish are harvested for sale in Chinatown.
Buyers stick with Hwang even when basil is in season in other parts of the country, he says. "The fact that he is able to consistently supply simplifies a lot of wholesaler's lives. They don't have to switch from one vendor to the next."
Hwang's story begins in Taiwan, where he was a shoe department manager with an aquaculture business on the side. His parents and a sister were living in Long Island, N.Y., and to reunite the family, all the parties agreed to move to Hawaii in 1982. "I'm not the kind of person who likes snow," Hwang explains. "I hate snow."
He and his wife, Chin Mei, planned to set up an aquaculture farm in Hawaii, but upon arriving they found the industry under-developed. In a year he was "looking for another thing."
So he took a job as a tour guide, figuring that shuttling Chinese tourists around would improve his English and help him learn the lay of the land.
Eventually, he was offered the chance to farm 12 acres of land in Waianae. "That's the first time we touch the soil," Hwang says.
In short order he and his wife learned to grow 70 types of vegetables. "We don't know anything, so we try any kind, any thing."
And then came the rains. Farms throughout the area flooded. "First year, we lose," is his flat evaluation. But the important thing is to learn something from any bad experience, he says. Turn a loss into a win. "I'm thinking if everybody floods and I don't flood, I win."
So the next year, he kept a portion of his crops in trays, off the ground, protected from heavy rains. A flood would still wipe out whatever was in the ground, but he could replant quickly using his reserve crop and be harvesting in 45 days, where other farmers would take three months.
Seemed like a plan. Then his landlord went bankrupt. Out of the $10,000 he had borrowed to begin farming, Hwang was left with $45.
Time again to turn a loss into a win. By then Hwang had determined that his future was not in vegetables for the local market. He wanted to identify a crop that would grow better in Hawaii than any other part of the country, a crop that would have a built-in export market and a good price. Focus on a quality product, he thought, and clearly market it as from Hawaii.
He settled on herbs.
Hwang gathered his resources once more, leased farmland and started growing basil to test the market and refine his product. He began exporting to Los Angeles, then San Francisco, then Seattle, Vancouver, Denver, Chicago.
Each year he'd increase production to more than meet all his commitments. With the surplus, he'd expand again. "Every year we are doing two about cities, opening new," he says. "Soon as we grow extra, we put the extra in the new city."
This amounted to a 30 percent "gross up" every year, "non-stop."
Hwang credits his good fortune to good sense and an ability to see farther down the road than most. That, and a willingness to reinvest his money to "build size," rather than see it evaporate in taxes.
His original plan for a Hawaii business, aquaculture, has become a reality. He's growing tilapia not just in his Mililani ponds, but also on the North Shore. He grows shrimp, too, and grouper, and has started a 100-acre aquaculture operation in China.
On another front, Hwang plans on marketing pesto within a month, using surplus summertime basil. Prices normally drop in the summer, when the crop is in season on the mainland. Again, turn a loss into a win, a value-added product that he'll control. "My recipe, my organic basil."
You'd think someone with that kind of foresight should be put in charge of the world, but Hwang, at age 53, claims not to have endless ambition.
"For me the idea is not to get bigger and bigger, because my age is getting older and older."
He hopes to become a consultant, an educator in farming who can help others enter the industry. He figures he has a lot to pass on.
"We love it here," he says. "We touch the land. We touch everything."
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