Our Vision & Goals
We at Malama Aina Eco-education Center are committed to developing and educating people here in Hawaii a sustainable way of raising chickens, ducks, fish, and goats and ways to enhance our sovereignty as an island. We are working collaboratively with Sunrise Center Research Farm and their 71/2 acre farm research center using food that they are growing directly on their property.
We are in the process of becoming basically a Hawaiian nonprofit and are working with Food Security Hawaii, currently, a Hawaiian Nonprofit organization that supports the proliferation of community-based organic agriculture in the Hawaiian islands. We at Malama Aina Eco-education Center are primarily a teaching nonprofit although we do work with Sunrise Center research farm with their plants and animals as well. We are looking forward to teaching about our very successful methods of enhancing animal growth right at Sunrise Center Farm Research. We are hoping to receive grants to teach our methods to college students and interested adults. Our primary teachers at Malama Aina Eco-education Center are Ty Barnick, Liz Falkenstein BS Soil Science and farm communication and business development teacher Lori Grace MA. Their biographies are on the second page of this website.
Here is a picture of Sunrise Center Farm Research in Huelo, Maui that we at Malama Aina Eco-Education Center partner with.
We are also exploring together with them ways to reduce food waste which is produced right here on the island and which can become a source of methane. They use food waste, from the guests at Sunrise Center farm research center guests and the staff on occasion of some of the people working at the center. We are feeding our soldier fly larvae and sometimes our chickens with our mostly organic food waste.
Both Malama Aina and Sunrise Center Research Farm are seeking to get down to spending very little on any animal food that we import from the mainland by growing high protein plants, like Moringa, Duck weed, Katuk and Hawaiian Hibiscus (Bele) These high protein plants are appreciated and purchased by the people staying at Sunrise Center Farm Research center as guests. We both are educating them about their value. These high protein foods are also very appreciated by the fish, ducks, chickens and goats!
Moringa and bele planted in two rows
A close-up of bele and Hawaiian hibiscus
Picture of Katuk, an important high-protein green food
We are also working together with Sunrise Center Research farm to raise and breed black soldier flies to feed our ducks, chickens, and fish. Black soldier flies are endemic in many parts of the world. Many third-world countries are using them for their poultry and in some cases their fish.
All of the animals are healthy and thriving. The chickens and ducks are producing substantially more eggs with feeding them the soldier fly larvae. We are also feeding them some moringa flakes from the farm together with the soldier fly larvae.
A brood of hens at our farm
A flock of ducks with the newly born ducklings
Fish at our fish farm
Additionally, we are feeding our fish soldier fly larvae. They seem to be growing much faster and are making many babies. We grow our fish both in our tanks and in our ponds. They are growing very quickly and reproducing heavily. We are also feeding them duckweed and some moringa to give them a healthy balance of green foods with their diet.
Raising and breeding black soldier flies successfully requires some education. We are hoping for some sufficient funding to teach small farmers learn how to grow black soldier flies to greatly reduce their costs for poultry feed.
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Below is the soldier fly larvae breeding and nursery tent
The soldier fly larvae building and the breeding area
Soldier fly larvae we feed to our chickes, ducks and fish
Each white dot in the cardboard has 500 baby larvae
We want to research the relative purity with respect to pesticides, glyphosate and toxic metals.
We expect a very low load of pesticides in our fish. With respect to taste our tilapia also won two blind-folded tests with people two years apart when compared with commercial tilapia from Costco and Whole foods. Our chicken eggs tested the same way.
We appear to be close to doing that but as with all research projects, further research and study is needed. We are currently testing our fish, soldier fly larvae, commercial tilapia, commercial soldier fly larvae and ahi tuna for pesticides, toxic metals and glyphosate at www.HRIlabs.org an excellent research lab in Iowa. If our chickens and our fish test out as extremely low in pesticides, toxic metals and glyphosate we will have still another reason to teach our unusual methods of raising animals on island. We hope even more to receive a grant to be able to teach our methodology with both our high protein plants and our soldier flies to others. In farming our fish, we are also explaining that fish farming, especially healthy fish farming is a way of driving demand away from the ocean and reducing the damaging effect of overfishing on our ocean. This is elucidated in the membership section of Sunrise Center farm research.
We have written our curriculum guides to our aquaponics and aquaculture programs, our high protein plant production and our soldier fly program. Additionally, Launa I’O eco-education center has been a are also a certified organic farm and have been this way since 2007. We like teaching organic farming as well and have used the CCOF curriculum guide to teach for a number of years.
We hope to get some grant support to be able to teach this sustainable system, as well as organic farming to students of all ages and walks of life here on the island.
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Join the movement!
Malama Aina Eco-education Center is located in Haiku, Maui. We are doing some major research here! First, we are exploring raising high-protein food on the island like moringa, duckweed, and Hawaiian hibiscus with over 40% protein for all of the chickens, ducks, fish, and goats we have here. Our goal is to grow healthy, organic pesticide and herbicide-free food for them and potentially for people so that we will not have to depend on large agricultural corporations sending food to the islands by ship and plane.