Pouring rain didn’t stop Kaua‘i islanders from pouring into the Garden Fair this year. Jointly hosted by CTAHR and the Kaua‘i County Farm Bureau, the 23rd Annual Garden Fair at the Kaua‘i Community College featured a series of CTAHR garden and agriculture presentations.

CTAHR students and other volunteers engaged 169 elementary first- and fourth-graders in garden activities over the spring semester, teaching them about nutrition for people and plants.

A Moloka‘i 4-H participant and his award winning animals were featured in a USDA Farm Service Agency Fencepost newsletter article on the FSA Youth Loan.

The highly popular and acclaimed Gene-ius Day program is the subject of a recent laudatory article on the UH Foundation website that describes how the original program has expanded into three complementary outreach efforts that are reaching and teaching more kids than ever before!

The Western Regional Center to Enhance Food Safety held its second annual meeting, and 10 members of the FSMA team of UH, University of Guam, and the American Samoa Community College, including Extension agents Kylie Wong and Joshua Silva, attended to deliver progress reports.

CTAHR wildfire researcher Clay Trauernicht recently joined other experts on disaster vulnerability and resilience in the Islands on Hawai‘i Public Radio program The Conversation.
 

Junior Extension Agent Emilie Kirk welcomed edible crop and flower farmers to a free spring workshop and tour of the Kaua‘i Agricultural Research Center.
 

Hawai‘i Island CTAHR Extension staff members teamed up with USDA to offer hands-on avocado-grafting workshops for 45 growers and promote their ‘Sharwil’ Avocado Project.

Rajesh Jha (HNFAS) recently offered a training course on “Feed and Nutrition Management” for a group of young ethnic-minority farmers in Nepal, in which he provided knowledge and hands-on skills on utilizing local feedstuffs and food waste as a sustainable source of feed for swine.

Research by Rajesh Jha and his Animal Sciences students focuses on locally grown feeds for chicken to lower costs, improve environmental sustainability and improve flavor of local fowl.

The Waimanalo Research Station will be the home base for the 3rd Annual Parade of Farms, presented by the O‘ahu Resource and Conservation Development Council, on Saturday, May 5, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. This year’s parade will be featuring farms in Waimanalo.

Former CHL trainee and now Guam EFNEP coordinator Tanisha Franquez Aflague was recently featured in Fresh From the Field, NIFA’s newsletter highlighting success stories of its grantees, about her work with the Children’s Healthy Living (CHL) Project. 

A Taro Field Day will be held at the Waimanalo Research Station on Saturday, March 17, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.

Rich Criley (TPSS) participated in the Trees for Honolulu’s Future workshop on March 9 by showing the series of Extension publications he has written called Expanding Tree Diversity in Hawai‘i’s Landscapes that provide alternatives for landscapers and home growers to the most commonly used trees.

Cooperative Extension’s Andrea Kawabata (TPSS) and Stuart Nakamoto (HNFAS), along with Tracie Matsumoto from USDA ARS DKI PBARC, hosted two coffee-pruning field days at the Kona Cooperative Extension and Research Station.

Welcome to Roshan Manandhar, who is joining the Cooperative Extension team in Kaua‘i County as an assistant Extension agent! Roshan has both MS and PhD degrees in entomology from UHM, with post-doctoral experience at Lincoln University in Missouri. 

The Variety Showcase Goes Tropical event hosted by GoFarm Hawai‘i and the Culinary Breeding Network at Kapi‘olani Community College was an exciting celebration that brought an array of exciting crop varietals together with culture and cuisine, blended brilliantly in bite-size tastings by local chefs.

Hawai‘i 4-H is highlighted in the National Institute for Food and Agriculture’s Annual Report. The section on youth development notes the STEM-enrichment activities, such as rocketry, that 4-H brings to youth in the Islands. 

Welcome to Casey Bohan, who has just started at Waiakea Research Station as an agricultural research technician. 

The beginning-farmer training program GoFarm Hawai‘i held its first Alumni Conference on February 17, where over 100 participants from O‘ahu, Kaua‘i, Maui, and Hawai‘i Island came together to network and learn.