Later this month, the Hawaiʻi Convention Center will house a gathering of venture capitalists and startups in aquaculture and agriculture.
THRIVE Hawaiʻi Agrifood Summit will take place Sept. 26 and 27.
Jason Ueki works with the Hawaiʻi Island Business Plan Competition, also known as HIplan. His ties to aquaculture began with his family’s business with brood shrimp farming and a North Shore fishpond.
He said they turned an idle pond into a "viable fish farm" using modern and some traditional techniques for production and harvesting.
"I'm going to say 'viable' loosely because it was a lot of hard work, they worked really, really hard... but it barely paid the bills," he said.
His stepdad, James Wyban, was the principal investor on a shrimp project with Hawaiʻi Pacific University’s Oceanic Institute and co-authored a manual over 30 years ago on intensive shrimp production that is widely used today.
Ueki said Hawaiʻi can be a global leader in producing more of these types of technologies that help food production around the world.
"What we're trying to do at the conference is to motivate our local innovators to take a look at our problems, because if they can solve them, it's not just here, there's over 500 million small farms in the world that could use the same solution," he said.
While last year's conference was in Hilo, Ueki said they have rebranded to the THRIVE Hawaiʻi Food Summit after partnering with SVG Ventures, which is a global platform for agrifood tech investment.
"With their help, we have more global presence. It's a great partnership," he said.
For more information about the conference and to register, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Sept. 11, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
