Rod Ohira's People
Farmer cultivates fertile business

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Resigned to early retirement after being injured in three separate rear-end traffic collisions over a span of five years, Nanakuli pig farmer and former refrigeration business owner Harry I. Arakaki took up gardening at his Waipahu home in 1993.

Harry I. Arakaki sifts through ground "macadamia cake," an ingredient in his organic fertilizer mix. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

EM's photosynthetic bacteria, lactobacilli and yeast work in concert with solar energy absorbed by the soil to form antioxidants, amino acids and saccharides to promote plant growth. The product was field tested for 10 years with no known harmful effects to life or the environment, according to the Okinawa-based EM Research Organization.

Arakaki purchased a gallon of EM from Charles Iwakami, the local distributor, for $70 and used it as a soil amendment in his vegetable garden with incredible results. "I found everything grew faster and more plentiful," he said. "I could pick five pounds of string beans from one row every day. My lettuce grew so fast I had to give away a lot."

Intrigued by the potential of EM, Arakaki sought to learn more about it. From Iwakami, who has since retired as president of EM Hawaii, and Hiromichi Nago, who currently oversees the local office, Arakaki learned the technology and recipes for using EM to make a fermented fertilizer called "bokashi." It is made with organic waste — primarily wheat bran and bone meal — rather than sludge and manure.

Arakaki began manufacturing bokashi for commercial use in April 1999. The 63-year-old Hilo native and his wife, the former Eleanor Takushi, can produce by themselves five tons of bokashi per day at their relatively odorless Bokashi Hawaii processing plant at Campbell Industrial Park.

The company sells eight tons of bokashi per week— most of it to Watanabe Floral Inc. and Honolulu Poi Co. — which Arakaki says is "just the beginning."

To make his fertilizer, Arakaki is recycling waste products of other local companies. For example, he buys two tons of wheat bran per month from Hawaiian Flour Mill that would otherwise be shipped back to the Mainland, and a ton of bone and fish mill from Island Commodities Corp. In addition, Waialua-based Oils of Aloha gives him all its "macadamia cake," which is what remains of the nut after oil is squeezed out of it.

The organic waste products are combined with EM to make bokashi. The fermentation process accounts for two of the three weeks needed to produce the fertilizer.

"The EM in bokashi releases bonded nutrients into the soil," said Arakaki, who buys 330 gallons of EM every two months, accounting for 60 percent of the sales in Hawai'i. "Synthetic or chemical fertilizers are designed to force feed plants in one shot, so the soil gets depleted whereas the organic fertilizer enhances the soil."

Arakaki designed a hydraulic press and pulverizer for his business. Both machines were built by Jimmy Hamano in Hilo. The press squeezes out air and packs organic waste into a barrel, while the pulverizer grinds down difficult material such as the macadamia cake. "I'm trying now to develop a machine to take the bokashi out of the barrels," Arakaki said.

He's also planning to add kelp and saponin, a product of the yaka or "soap plant" that grows in the California desert, to improve his bokashi. "Saponin is a wetting agent that breaks down clay soil," he said.

Arakaki is a 1957 Hilo High graduate and a Vietnam veteran, who retired after 16 years in the Army as a second lieutenant. He opened a refrigeration business in 1972 called Environ Care of Hawaii, which he later renamed Aloha Restaurant Equipment Service. To learn about refrigeration repair, he took a correspondence course.

He sold the business in 1987 and became a hog farmer. "That was my childhood dream," said Arakaki, who went into pig farming with his sister-in-law, Yoshie Arakaki. "It was very profitable because we sold to individuals rather than markets. We were selling 30 to 40 hogs a week."

Arakaki, however, injured his back, neck and knee after being rear-ended in Nanakuli in 1989. Two years later, the injuries were aggravated when he was rear-ended in Pearl City. In 1993, he was rear-ended again in 'Aiea. "I've had two knee surgeries and surgeries on my back and neck," he said. "After the 1993 back surgery, I had a heart attack. I couldn't work on the farm anymore."

It was then that he took up gardening, and found a new endeavor. "I didn't want to be a TV couch person," he said, happy to be unretired.

Reach Rod Ohira at 535-8181 or rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Correction: Charles Iwakami's name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.