KAPA‘A — Produce comes from all parts of the world to help fill Kaua‘i’s requests for special celebrations like New Year’s, said Earl Kashiwagi of Esaki’s Produce. “This year, we’ve had to contend with the heavy rain Sunday, Monday, and
KAPA‘A — Produce comes from all parts of the world to help fill Kaua‘i’s requests for special celebrations like New Year’s, said Earl Kashiwagi of Esaki’s Produce.
“This year, we’ve had to contend with the heavy rain Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday,” Kashiwagi said. “Normally, about this time of the year, we get the sprinkles after the 15th, but this year, it poured.”
The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, in cooperation with the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture, states heavy rainfall brought about flash flood watches and warnings throughout the state. Heavy rains in some areas caused damage to crops, especially where soils were already saturated, according to the USDA report.
Kaua‘i had flooding taking place in some areas hit by heavy rains with gauges registerings 27 percent over normal rainfall.
“Herbs, leafy vegetables, and mizuna were hard hit,” Kashiwagi said. “Mizuna, a form of mustard, is one of the items people look for during New Year’s, and with the rains, it’s water-battered.”
To ensure that customers — including consumers, retail and industry — get items needed for the holiday celebrations, Esaki’s has had to scour the world for food to satisfy the demand.
“We had to work fast,” Kashiwagi said. “It’s local, first, domestic, then world.”
But the rains that plagued Kaua‘i was also shared by other parts of the state and the Mainland resulting in similar problems.
“We got some mizuna from a farm on O‘ahu, but the boxes are coming in wet with all the rain they had and that results in rot,” Kashiwagi said. “Similarly, a farmer on Kaua‘i’s Westside pulled all of his daikon, saying, ‘The crop is lost already, so might as well make the best of it.’”
One of the damages from the rain is the protective layer from leafy produce is battered, resulting in weakened conditions and opening up plants to disease and rot.
For rooty vegetables like the daikon, the root absorbs the water resulting in what Kashiwagi describes as a bloating condition, also weakening the produce.
The conditions created by the weather are also compounded by a trend for people to turn to traditional foods, Kashiwagi said.
“This year, we have a lot more orders for the traditional foods like carrots, dasheen, gobo, hasu root (lotus), and other produce,” Kashiwagi said. “This means we’ve gone international to try and satisfy people’s needs.”
He pointed out that the gobo, or burdock root, used in some traditional Japanese dishes like kimpira and other celebratory foods, is coming in from Taiwan. Araimo, or dasheen, is arriving from China along with hasu roots.
“We have produce coming in from the Mainland as well,” Kashiwagi said, “But, in California, they’re having problems with rain as well because a lot of the stuff is coming in with mud on them, not a good thing for produce.”
He has raddishes, related to the daikon, coming in from Ohio, and a variety of produce coming from all the islands.
“We could never have done this, before all the technology,” Kashiwagi said. “But there has been a lot of changes and today, we even use produce brokers when dealing with foreign countries to make sure we’re getting a fair shake.”
He mentioned that for the 2009 New Year, there was a problem with the weather when shippers could not get shipping containers shipped because of ocean conditions.
To resolve that problem, Esaki’s arranged for a special air charter to get produce to local customers, incurring losses.
This year, Kashiwagi said despite everything, there are no shortages except for fresh strawberries.
“They’re just not ripening, anywhere,” he said. “We’ve bought whatever we could, but because of all the rain, it’s not as durable as they’re supposed to be. We’re checking each tray and finding water damage.”
