In our modern era of endless conveniences and luxuries, we take bananas for granted, but until about 1900, few Westerners knew of their existence and even fewer had eaten them. In fact, bananas were the first tropical fruit to be mass produced for North American and European markets. Imagine those first bananas exhibited at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, wrapped in foil and offered for ten cents apiece! On the opposite side of the world though, in Southeast Asia and New Guinea, villagers had been improving local banana landraces for millennia! Indeed, the seedless banana was one of the world’s first domesticated food plants, at least seven thousand years ago, in the New Guinea highlands.

Roy Honda of South Kona.Roy Honda, Farmer
Roy Y. Honda Farm, Captain Cook, South Kona

Roy Honda started farming in 1997, specializing in oriental varieties of tomato and cucumber. He is best known for a tomato variety he grows that is a favorite in Japan. Originally he grew this variety to satisfy consumer demand in the Hawai‘i market, and now it has become his signature crop. Other crops include bitter melon, lettuce, squash, papaya, beans, and myoga (edible ginger flower).

Emmerich Grosch
Food engineer, Hawai‘i Product Resources, Kealakekua, South Kona

Emmerich Grosch of Hawai'i Product Resources.The soft-spoken Emmerich Grosch has nearly five decades under his belt as chef, entrepreneur, hotel food operations manager, and processor. He brings this wealth of experience to his current manufacturing/wholesale business processing macadamia nuts, coffee, and cacao from farm to market. His company produces a wide range of artisan products including flavored macnuts (honey roasted, wasabi, etc.), roasted coffees, and raw chocolate. The emphasis is on quality products, and all sales come with a 100% no-questions-asked quality guarantee.

Display window at Kea'au Natural Foods.Tucked into a corner of the Kea'au Shopping Center, right next to Ace Hardware, Kea'au Natural Foods is a small but very clean, bright and extremely well stocked and organized store. It has been in the present location since 1996 and seems to have constant traffic passing through its doors.

The original store was founded in 1983 by Alex Beamer in a small shopping center that used to sit across the street from the present site, where the McDonalds is now located. Present owner, Wes Fujii was working as manager in the original store and bought it about 6 years ago. Wes is a full time hands-on store owner, and his wife Claudine, who recently retired as branch manager of the Hilo Library, helps with the paperwork from home. He tells me he considers himself the "gatekeeper" of the store, using strict standards for personally approving everything that is sold. He knows his customers trust him to sell them only products he feels are safe and that he would feel happy about giving his own children. The two most important guidelines for choosing products to sell have to be quality and safety.