ASSOCIATED PRESS
Crop Care Hawaii agricultural consultant John McHugh measures herbicide at a demonstration for immigrant farmers in Waialua. Behind him are University of Hawaii entomologist Sabina Swift, left, and Laotian immigrant farmers Ohn Cavan, Boonmee Saenthong, Somchay Manivong, Ving Venevongsoth and Paul Louangrath. Watching at right is Crop Care Hawaii consultant Lynne Constantinides.
UH program aids
immigrant farmersLanguage barriers have led
to problems with use of
agricultural chemicals
Like many of his fellow small farmers, when Somchay Manivong looks at a pesticide canister, the warning labels, usage charts and safety requirements can sometimes seem like a foreign language.
That's because they are.
Manivong, a native Laotian who grows Japanese cucumber and zucchini on 4 acres in Waialua, is among a growing number of immigrant small farmers in the islands whose first language is not English.
While that doesn't pose a problem in the growing and harvesting of crops, it has led to problems when using pesticides and herbicides.
"They don't know, a lot of times," which chemicals to use and how to apply them, said Manivong, 52.
A program being developed by the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, in cooperation with the state, aims to change that.
Since 2001, the college's pesticide applicator training program has been teaching new and immigrant farmers the proper methods for using such chemicals.
What makes Hawaii's program different than others is that it targets small groups of farmers out in the field -- instead of classrooms -- and provides them with instruction manuals and other reference material translated into their native languages.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
University of Hawaii entomologist Sabina Swift, right, hands a list of herbicides to farmer Ving Venevongsoth, an immigrant from Laos. Swift is holding metal stakes to mark herbicide application areas.
"Basically, we're focusing on providing a training program for underserved populations," said Barry Brennan, associate dean of the college.
Roughly one in every five farms in Hawaii is owned or operated by an immigrant, according to the college.
The growth in small farms stems in large part from the decline in Hawaii's sugar industry, as many displaced sugarcane workers turned to farming small acreages, growing everything from pumpkins and tomatoes to string beans and okra.
In 2001, there were roughly 200 such small farms in the central Oahu-North Shore area alone, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
The impetus for pesticide training came in 1997, when a state Health Department survey of produce markets showed high levels of illegal pesticides on some crops and incorrect application of chemicals on others, Brennan said.
Much of the improper pesticide use was coming from the North Shore area of Oahu, home to immigrant farmers from Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations.
The survey's findings prompted the state to start a training program using interpreters in a classroom setting, Brennan said, but that didn't always work.
"Sometimes it's hard to interpret a particular word, so you don't know that you're really getting across," he said. "We thought, why not try it from somebody who was either a native speaker or somebody who would speak their language to deal directly with them."
He enlisted the help of Sabina Swift, a Ph.D. in entomology and native Filipina who had experience teaching plant protection to farmers in Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Swift, who has provided materials for Hawaii farmers in Laotian and Cambodian and also is working on translations in Korean and Tongan, is the coordinator of the college's farm safety program.
"They can understand some, but when it comes to very technical terms, for example the calibration part, that needs really intensive, really technical information," she said. "It has to be very simplified information for them to understand it.
"You can tell if you talk with them, they know they are smart, it's just a matter of not knowing the detail of it."
Brennan and Swift also worked with John McHugh and Lynne Constantinides, founders of the private agriculture consulting firm Crop Care Hawaii, to develop the program.
"Gaining the trust of the farmers," was among the biggest startup hurdles, Constantinides said. "It's really rewarding to see that they got to the point where they feel like what we're teaching them is something that's going to actually help them make money and have a sustainable business."
Farmers have been thankful, too, noting that previous training efforts were either inadequate or too expensive. Because it's funded entirely by grants, the pesticide applicator training program is free.
"They've been patient with us. They come here every week for us," said Dina Sayner, a native of Thailand who with her husband, Paul Louangrath, farms 12 acres of cucumber, pumpkins, tomatoes and other vegetables in Waialua. "They sit there and explain person to person."
Since it started, the training program, which includes not only initial visits to farms but continuous follow-up sessions, has served more than 100 small farmers on Oahu funded by roughly $150,000 in grants from organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency and American Farmland Trust.
The original intent of the program was to expand it statewide, but the existing amount of work, as well as the lack of resources -- the program is always applying for grants -- has made that difficult, Brennan and Swift said.
Still, there has been interest from other states, Swift said, noting that some details of the program will be presented to the American Association of Pesticide Safety Educators' national meeting, which will be held in Honolulu in August.
A subcommittee of the association already has begun identifying which languages are spoken by farmers across the country.
"We're on the bottom rung of this ladder in terms of where we need to go expanding the program," Brennan said.
"We want to make these farmers economically successful -- that's good for Hawaii," he added. "This is another type of business ... but it's a risky business also. Those that receive some sort of assistance have a much better chance of succeeding and this is the sort of assistance that we can provide."
