DISCOVERY RETURNS TO HAWAII

[Music] this is work full-time and on a family scale with everybody pitching in it's a story that looks as though it could go on forever this way of life may vanish within a very few years but if it goes it won't have been without a fight we'll find out why today as discovery returns to hawaii our 50th state [Music] discovery 69 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen and virginia gibson hi welcome to discovery there's a way of life right here that's a little bit different from life in any other part of the united states that life is dependent on a crop a cash agricultural crop that isn't grown anywhere else in our country but right here this is coffee when it's like this still on the tree these little red globes are called coffee cherries in fact their growth pattern is pretty similar to that of real cherries their trees have white blossoms which bloom before the fruit appears and coffee is technically a fruit or at least it's closer to a fruit than it is to anything else the fruit when it's still unripe is a light green like little apples when it's ripe it's a rich red and you could mistake it for a cherry but unlike cherries coffee is very difficult to grow hawaii because of its unusual climate and soil is the only place in the united states where coffee is grown commercially and then it's only grown along a 21 mile stretch on the dry side of the largest island of the hawaiian chain the island of hawaii the coffee produced here is called kona coffee because it's grown along the coast of the geographical district of kona the area which produces kona coffee is a small compact region there are really only the mountains and the slopes to the sea the farmers are either mauka on the mountain side or makai toward the sea in between there's a road and on the road three small towns which bleed into one another without very noticeable borders they are kaina liu kealakakua and captain cook just a few miles from this supermarket is the monument commemorating the death of captain cook the famous british explorer he was killed in 1779 during a fight with hawaiian natives a little more than a year after he first discovered the hawaiian chain of islands the coffee growing activity is concentrated along these few miles of lava-filled mountains and coastline the farms are generally small and the families who work them have been here for generations the growing and harvesting of this one crop coffee has been the rock on which the lives of many families along hawaii's kona coast have been built one such family is this one hansa miyata and his wife and his children hansa miyata's parents came from japan 70 years ago he himself was born in honolulu just one mile from this spot this 13 acre farm which has been his home since 1930 [Music] hansa's mother is 88. [Music] his wife yaiko comes from a family that has been in hawaii five years longer than the miatas altogether there are seven sons and daughters the younger ones all work alongside their father and their mother particularly when it's time to pick the coffee cherries coffee on the kona coast has always been very much a family operation and a farmer without a fairly big family is in trouble for when four or six harvests come around every year everybody is needed susan is 17 and a student at konawaena high school [Music] jean is 13. flighty is 12. [Music] gail is 11. bruce is eight he's the only boy in a family of seven children as the sole male member of the next miata generation special attention falls on him this would be true anywhere but perhaps even more strongly in a family with japanese attitudes and traditions he will inherit these 13 acres he'll also inherit the way of life and the work that goes with the land [Music] once the coffee cherries are picked most of the local farmers put them into bags and place the bags on the side of the road on special stands where the collecting truck from the milling co-op will come by and pick them up it works sort of like a milk collection route in wisconsin but that isn't the way hansa miata works the coffee produced right here by hans and his family is taken one step further the miatas turn out parchment coffee and this is how it gets that way the coffee cherry consists of an outer skin a fleshy pulp and two seeds the coffee trade and the general public call them coffee beans but they aren't beans they're seeds the seeds are flat on one side and the pears grow with the flat sides facing each other each seed has two layers of protective matter the inner layer is very thin and papery it's called silver skin outside this skin there's a tough parchment-like layer and for this reason the coffee after the cherry skin and the pulp had been removed is called parchment coffee the miata family pulps their coffee here at home and by taking this one step beyond merely picking it and bagging it they bring a higher price for the coffee they grow the pulping process the removal of the outer skin the cherry skin and its pulp starts here the coffee cherries are fed into the pulping machine along with water an enclosed conveyor with a series of small buckets inside carries them upstairs to the pulper itself [Applause] [Music] the seeds drop into a container where they are soaked in brine overnight then the seeds are spread out sun dried for several days and transfer to a forced air dryer to complete the process the coffee is now called parchment coffee still bearing its two internal skins for the work of turning cherry coffee into parchment coffee hansa miata receives about a dollar and a half more for each bag of coffee he delivers to the mill [Music] it's here at the mill that those two inner skins will be removed by machinery turning the product into what dealers call green coffee dry unroasted coffee the sunset coffee milling company is an organization which supplies chemicals and fertilizers to the coffee growers and then receives their produce refining packaging distributing and marketing it here on a larger scale the sunset mill does what the miatas do at home and then takes the coffee one step further turning it into a marketable product mill is able to handle cherry coffee or parchment coffee and it's up to the individual grower to determine whether he wants to take the extra time and effort to make the parchment coffee and the additional dollar and a half per bag that goes with it is it worth it it's probably rather marginal some people say it's more trouble than it's worth obviously hansa and his family feel it's worth the work and worth the time at least for now each year the profit is slimmer and each year more coffee growers turn to other crops or take jobs in business and industry there's a very small very personal industry here and it's in some trouble [Music] this is or was the kamigaki coffee mill until a few years ago it was an operating if not exactly thriving mill then in march of 1962 the mill closed probably forever one of the reasons overall what caused it is a three-prong problem which confronts most small industry rising costs a shortage of cheap labor and lower prices for the finished product this is just a failed mill a small business that didn't make it in a competitive world but it's indicative of the dangers which hover over the mountains and the slopes of the kona coast and over the lives of men like hansa miata he's engaged in a declining industry there's a grave question if there will be a kona coffee industry when bruce miata is ready to inherit his father's land hansa miyata is fighting a war a war simply to remain what he is a coffee grower the outcome is still in doubt in the meantime is there anyone helping him and men like him we'll find out in just a minute this is the university of hawaii's cooperative extension service at kainalu one of those three little highway towns between the mountains and the sea it's about a mile from hansa miyata's farm and if hansa has a problem you can come here and check it out with the men of the university's college of tropical agriculture extension supervisor john iwani is holding one of the things university engineers develop in order to help farmers hang on a little longer make a better profit out of their time and work and in short remain farmers it's called a coffee shaker and it can be an adaptation of a car polisher a weld saw or an electric drill in this case the gadget started life has an electric chainsaw any hand carryable machine will do with the head removed and a clamp put in its place a good coffee shaker should weigh between 8 and 15 pounds so that can be easily carried it runs off a portable generator the way the coffee shaker works in the fields is very simple the clamp is attached to the vertical members of the tree's branches the machine shakes the branch at the same time shakes loose the riper coffee cherries from the tree it works however in doing so the shaker creates another problem green unripe cherries are bound to come off with the red ripe ones no matter how good a shakers develop sorting them is another chore which can eat up man hours and eventually reduce the profit margin for the grower here again the university of hawaii's engineers came up with something [Music] this is called a separator it's based on the theory that the unripe coffee cherries like little green apples are harder and when dropped from a height will bounce farther than the softer ripe ones to a point it works at the moment there's only one of these separators in existence there are 12 shakers still in the experimental stage which is best is still to be determined hansa goes home with a coffee shaker he'll try it and come back to mr iwani and report on it this way in this collaboration of theory experiment and application the best possible mechanical aid will one day be arrived at will it be enough to make a great difference maybe maybe not one of the universities engineers says i'm afraid we started ten years too late maybe it's true and maybe it isn't but hansa miyata is too heavily occupied with the business of working to think much about theory meantime everyone works everyone helps two women of the miata family work here in the kona inn in the town of kalua [Music] there was a time when women of japanese background did not work in public but that time has passed partly as a cultural change and partly as a concession to the altering structure of the coffee growers lives judith is in the reservation office her mother yaiko is a pantry assistant in the hotel kitchen meanwhile through cooperation understanding and hard work the life of the family moves on it's hard to tell what will happen in the future hansa speaks of 40 years on these same 13 acres should bruce grow up wanting to be a coffee grower it may be impossible what are the alternatives in his future we'll find out in just a minute if coffee growers like hansa miyata are to survive there are basically two paths to follow they must alter the entire pattern and structure of their lives or they must change their traditional way of farming this man yash taguchi chose the first path he is lycansa the son of a full-time kona coffee grower and like hansa he still has the land but now it's just a hobby something to do on weekends his real work is here when josh de gucci gave up coffee growing he became a local sales representative for a commercial manufacturer now he runs kona crafts a rehabilitation center for vocational training of handicapped students and older people now the closest his work brings him to coffee is the kona coffee wood from which the trainees make bookends and walking sticks yash taguchi is a product of the kona coast coffee fields but he has stepped aside stepped away from the economic struggle of growing coffee but coffee has left its mark on surprising corners of the area including the schools josh's boy stanton is six he goes to the same school that bruce miata does the schools out here used to be run according to the seasonal growth of the coffee crop they used to be on what everybody called coffee schedule that meant that youngsters had their summer vacations so called in the period between november and late january in order to be out of school and able to work in the harvest when they were needed and they were needed starting next season they'll be four school terms and parents can apply to have their children out during whichever one they desire growers with a late harvest can have their children out later in the school year it's a variation on the old plan and yet one more way in which the public community is trying to keep the kona coffee growers in business a little longer there's another way the coffee growers and the men who process and market their produce have developed to help in the overall picture they're changing their operations so that they can grow and handle another product which may contain the major part of the solution for the coffee men's problems these are macadamia nut trees macadamias were brought here from australia almost 100 years ago as ornamental trees and then someone discovered that they produced excellent and unusual nuts [Music] coffee farmers if they want to stay farmers at all will of necessity switch to macadamia now or in the near future this tree is just one year old it won't bear a crop until it's five and it won't really be mature until it's seven or eight coffee on the other hand will bear a crop after just two years hansa miyata is in the process of converting 11 of his 13 acres to macadamia during that process of conversion there'll be a lot of work but then mr miyat and his family have always worked always and they'll have a future but it won't come without sacrifice compromise and change most of all change we'll be back in just a minute [Music] we hope you've enjoyed our return visit to hawaii our 50th state if you'd like to find out more about hawaii's kona coast then ask your librarian for any of these books hawaii usa by ruth edelman hawaii nay by ruth m tapra and this book hawaii r50 estate by charles a board be with us next week for another exciting discovery bye bye bye the discovery unit's transportation and promotional consideration provided by united airlines [Music] this has been a jules power production in association with abc news you