(light music) - So, you know, I grew up always wanting to be around horses and cattle.

I started working for ranches in high school and out of high school, kind of, just a goal of just to learn how to become a cowboy.

Most of us growing up on the Big Island always wondered what it'd be like to work for Parker Ranch, and so eventually, I got my chance.

- Wawona Ranch, Wawona Orchards was really what Dad capitalized on as the fresh operation.

So he trademarked the name Wawona Ranch because that ranch was called Wawona.

And the story goes that as the Indians come down to get their fire and water, you know, that's the Jones' Ranch, that was the Barber Ranch.

Well, because of the palm trees, tall trees whispering winds means wawona in the dialect.

And so, that was just natural to trademark that name, Wawona.

(airplane roaring) - We're here at Kona Airport.

We are flying cattle to California today, and all of these will eventually end up in Texas.

Hawai'i Ranchers were very limited.

One of our biggest challenges is transportation.

- My job is, you know, making sure that everybody has their spot on the plane.

And you know, if a rancher calls me and says, "Hey, I need to get some cattle in the mainland," I ask them when they want to go.

And when people call and they need a horse going to any of the islands, they call us and they call me and I try and fit them onto the plane.

- This all used to be Peach Country out here, Yamamoto, Shimadzu, Takahashi, Wawonas, which were feeding our fresh operation.

And Tokyo Yamamoto's sons didn't want to carry on the farming anymore, or the Kubotas didn't want to do it.

So peach trees were going out, my supply of tree fruit was coming down, so I needed a new hurrah.

- The diversity that we have with the land, you know, we go from sea level to over 7,000 foot.

We get a little bit of frost on top.

We get some salt water down below.

The cowboys, they're a very unique bunch.

We have Portuguese, Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, Howley, and we all come together.

The cattle is what brings us all together to basically provide a good livelihood for everybody, not only for ourselves, but for the community as well.

- So that following winter, after Mom learned how to run a few peaches, Dad and my brother decided to start a frozen food plant, went downtown Fresno across the street from a commercial cold storage and rented a, it was an old potato chip company, so it had a boiler in it.

And we put a small light peeler in it, and three slicers, and about 50 women, and we were in the frozen food business.

We were the 15th in 1962 or '63 in the nation of freezing peaches.

And today, we're the only ones around of those 15.

(light music) - [Presenter] Production funding for American Grown, my job depends on AG.

Provided by James G. Parker Insurance Associates, ensuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By GAR Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts.

More yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt, professional agriculture, proudly discovering, manufacturing, and supplying the Ag input that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By unWired Broadband, today's internet for rural Central California.

Keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Inc., battery storage systems.

Would you rather invest in PG&E's infrastructure or your own?

By Harrison Co., providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M&A and financial decisions.

By Sierra Valley Almonds, dedicated to sustainable agriculture and water efficiency for a brighter farming future.

By Cal-Pacific Supply, providing agriculture the field supplies needed to keep field operations on track.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family-owned for over 50 years dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.

(light music) - So in 1963 is when we built the facility on alluvial.

All, again, a 10,000-square foot coal storage that can get converted down to zero with blast tunnels and everything and a 10,000-steel Butlerbuilt building.

There wasn't much concrete 'cause concrete was expensive, and so we had a lot of oil and dirt.

The only place where we had concrete was where a forklift had to go from building to building, otherwise it was oil and dirt.

And so when the trucks come in from the field with the picking boxes, you know, forklifts and the dirt don't work too good, but, it's a fun fact, few pallets fell on the dirt.

So you'd get out there and shake off the dirt and get them back running.

And then all the pitting equipment that were pretty archaic, but unique.

And every year, we tried to improve on how to convey peaches, taking a really, a field run number one fruit, not a call, although we can use sort-outs, we call them today.

But I think the interesting thing was that we were always looking to do a little bit better than all the other competitors.

The other competitors say today we're gonna be running for company X and whether the fruit was green or ripe or whatever, would go in to then a 30-pound tin can or a 55-gallon drum.

So everybody thought we were in a cannery business, but none of those peaches touched any heat with the exception of going through the light peeler.

So it's a fresh frozen fruit that then goes into a big blast tunnel at 35 below zero and frozen.

And so, what we figured out, really Mom and Dad, was to segregate the fruit.

So when the soft fruit came down, we knew that needed to go to the ice cream manufacturer.

It wasn't rocket science, it was just a discipline that we had to teach our employees and the team how to put it away.

And so, that's how we grew.

But as we grew, I can remember there's 15 of us across the nation, and we're the smallest probably at that time.

But the East Coast would have weather issues and some of those freezers wouldn't freeze peaches because the fresh market was better.

And so, we made a commitment, Earl made a commitment to our customers, my Dad, that you give us a contract and we'll make sure that you have your peaches.

If we have to take the high market fresh peaches to give you your contract, we'll do that.

And East Coast wouldn't do that.

They'd just say, they'd call it on Mother Nature and say, "Yeah, sorry, we're not gonna give you all your fruit."

- It was probably my 12 to 13-year-old summer, probably going into junior high or eighth grade, something like that, and my Dad's like, "Hey, you're not just gonna sleep in all summer.

You're either gonna go get a job or you're gonna work for me."

And I mean, I was like, okay, well, maybe I'll take the easy road out.

I was doing sports, basketball, tennis, so I thought, "Ah, I'll work for my Dad."

Gets more leniency that way.

Well, that, you know, that never worked out.

- Throughout the years of working with Dad, I was, I'm very mechanically-inclined.

So when he needs something done, he can count on me to get it done.

I was kind of his gofer or runner, "Hey, I need you to do this.

I need you to go do that and got it done."

And then kind of got to the age that I was ready to have a set position, not all the above.

And I was never one to, like, to sit in front of a computer all day.

I was always a people person.

And so, when he gave me the opportunity to get into sales of the school side of things, I took it and ran with it.

- My Dad and I are very similar and we have similar personalities.

So me being ready to come and work for the company, you know, after I graduated from Fresno State, I told my dad, I was like, "I'm ready to come work for you."

You know, Blake is there, Brad is there.

We all took our different paths to get there, and I was ready."

And he said, "Nope, I'm gonna need you to go take some time for yourself and go experience the world before I kind of lock you in here."

And at first, I was a little shocked.

I said, "No, like, I'm ready to be a part of the family business."

But what he was doing was really helping me grow and develop this, you know, a different sense of professionalism and just kind of working outside of the family business so I could bring a different perspective to the company.

(light music) (tense suspenseful music) - Well, I was really lucky in that I had some really good mentors as I was younger that told me that if I really wanted to learn to be a good rancher, I needed to go to college and get my education.

So I did, I went off, and came back and I got an assistant management job for another ranch, working for S C Ranch, fellow by the name of Dutchie Schuman.

Eventually, ran that ranch for about 10 years for him, and then Parker Ranch hired me to work for them.

So I've been there as their livestock operations manager for 20 years.

It really is an amazing story.

You know, it was John Palmer Parker that came from Newton, Massachusetts, and he was here in the early 1800s.

He was actually a merchant and part of a shipping company and he decided that he wanted to stay in Hawai'i.

And so, he was down in the Kona Coast just kind of surviving off the fish ponds and maintaining the fish ponds.

And for whatever reason, King Kamehameha told the people, "Just leave him alone," and kind of took a liking to him and they struck up a friendship.

He eventually heard about the problems with the wild cattle.

He was pretty good with the musket.

So he came up and hunted wild cattle basically for hides and tallow and salt meat, and continued with his friendship with the King and ends up marrying one of the King's granddaughters.

So back in 1793, Captain George Vancouver brought cattle over as a gift to the King, And the King really wasn't sure what to do with him, so he basically put a kapu on him, which meant that nobody could take him.

And they built this huge stonewall fence to keep the cattle in.

Eventually, the cattle multiplied over time and got out.

And there must have been other imports of cattle as well because the numbers grew pretty fast over the years.

But like I said, in 1847, there was already a problem with cattle just roaming all around in the gardens and never being handled or anything.

They were pretty much wild cattle.

So back in the '90s, the ranch really went through a major transition where they were no longer feeding cattle in the state of Hawai'i and they started shipping them to the mainland.

Because of the volume that they had to ship, they chartered a foreign livestock ship, and because it was a foreign ship, it had to go into foreign ports.

So we went to Canada.

So for quite a few years, we shipped cattle to Canada.

And so, we were basically exporting our calves to the mainland, finishing them out over there, and then we just became pretty much a cow-calf producer.

Since then, the ranch has evolved in its marketing strategy and we do a couple of things.

One of them is we raise about half of our calf crop for the local grass-fed markets over here.

And so, we're producing more beef for our cattle for the people right here in Hawai'i.

But since we don't have any grains, it's all a pasture-raised, grass-fed product.

We also ship the other half of our calves to the mainland and they go into the Country Natural Beef program up there in the northwest.

(airplane roaring) - We are here at Kona Airport.

We are flying cattle to California today, and all of these will eventually end up in Texas.

- [Interviewer] I don't think a lot of people know that we ship cattle from the Big Island by aircraft.

I mean, I think everybody thinks boat.

Why is the airplane better?

- For one, like today, we're shipping some bulls, so we can have taller animals, but it's also just a really nice way for them to travel.

It's really, it's very fast.

They're in Texas within a day.

The shrinks are about the same as if they go on the boat, but it's just much faster.

The boat is one week-long.

They do really well on the boat too, but the airplane is just, it's really fast and it's just another option for us.

You know, Hawai'i Ranchers were very limited.

One of our biggest challenges is transportation.

(light music) - [Interviewer] How did you first get associated with the Parker Ranch on the Big Island?

- Well, I came to work in Clovis 1973 for Bill Verdugo, who did a lot of the shipping and he was one of the founders of Pacific Airlift.

Actually, in those days, it was called Beef Air Pacific.

Bill had a very good reputation in Hawai'i.

He bought a lot of bulls, a lot of horses for the ranches.

In those days, you know, in the '60s, before we started flying, everything went by boat and it was, you know, it was a big deal to get to the mainland from Hawai'i.

Now, I mean, you jump on a plane, you're here in five hours, you know?

Then, I think it was seven or eight hours on one of those old prop planes and, or you went by boat, you know, which was five or six days.

So Bill bought, he bought a lot of the horses and bulls for the different ranches, and Parker Ranch was one of them.

And the people that owned Parker Ranch, you know, Bill got to know them.

And so, that's, we've had a good relationship with him for, you know, myself for almost 40 years and, of course, Bill would've been probably 20 years before that.

- When I was a kid, you know, I worked on the ranch when I was really young and I helped him out all the time.

And I mean, I still do every once in a while.

But I learned my high school years and right after high school, I learned that I had other talents to make money.

And so, I started doing that.

But part of my other talents was technology and computers, and so I started helping the business with the computer side of it.

At some point in 2017 or '18, I started taking over and doing the actual operations of it.

Gotta get you in there too, buddy.

- We started out with DC-8, which were the last airplane that were cabled.

They had the cables in them, you know?

They weren't hydraulic.

They were all cable.

And we had, that's the...

When I came on board, the first flight I ever went on was 1971.

I was still at Cal Poly and I went just on a fluke, you know?

It wasn't, "Oh yeah, I'll go.

Yeah, I'd love to go to Hawai'i," you know?

Well, we ended up going on one of the shipments and I just, I really liked it and I got along good with Bill.

And so, after I got out of school, you know, he said, "Why don't you come over here and work for a couple months until you find a job," and that was in 1973.

And like he said, he should've never fed me because I never left.

(airplane humming) - You don't realize all the hard work and all the things that brings us together day in and day out in the community.

All of the employees, I think, are the key to what we have created this success with our family.

I call our employees our family.

And so, it's a great honor for us to be able to succeed, being the last one of those 15 processors that started back in 1963 to create and continue to create nutritious good food that many of those school kids out there eat every day.

- And I think it's really kind of humbling and I think we don't think about it enough, but that our kids are carrying on what his Dad started and even our grandkids working in our fruit stand and they love what we do and they're proud of the products that we make, and it's, you know, you're full of pride.

And to see our kids in the community out there doing good and promoting what Bill's family started and what we've grown, and it's, it makes our hearts full.

- Yeah, we're full.

(Linda laughs) - We're full.

(laughing continues) That's funny.

- Another unique thing about ranching in Hawai'i is that we do have pretty much a year-round growing season, slows down a little bit in the winter when it gets cold, but most of the forages that you see are tropical grasses.

And the predominant forage is Kikuyu grass, which was originally from Africa, and it's a real hearty forage.

It handles grazing pressure really well.

You know, none of the grasses in Hawai'i evolved with grazers like in North America.

So when the cattle came, a lot of the native grasses just couldn't compete with that grazing pressure.

So there was a lot of grasses introduced.

Parker Ranch had its own agronomy department at one time to seed the grasses and make it more productive.

So air freight has always been the preferred method of moving cattle.

A lot of cattle were brought into Hawai'i, bulls and things like that, breeding stock on air freight, but more recently, it's been a back haul for other freight that's coming over.

So whenever there is space available, they can ship about 100,000 pounds out at a time on a 747.

And that works pretty well.

You know, they're in L.A., which is not the best place for a cow to be, so they leave L.A. right away.

But we get them to L.A. in about six hours or so, and then we can truck them wherever we need to go.

- [Interviewer] Does someone in flight, like, check with the cows or hang out?

- As soon as we get past 10,000 feet, they come down and check on the horses and the cattle, make sure everybody's riding good.

- [Interviewer] Right on.

And how many head of cattle?

Like, I guess it would vary.

- It depends on weight.

- [Interviewer] Okay, it's all about weight.

- We get sometimes up to 200, a little more.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- 180 to 200.

- [Interviewer] And you've got horses on this trip going too?

- Yup, we have five horses going back.

We just brought three to Honolulu and three here.

- My job is to protect animal industry.

And so as animals are coming in livestock, I'll inspect, you know, pigs, horses, cattle, alpacas, sheep, goats, whatever that comes into the state to make sure they're not bringing in any foreign ticks or any other disease.

So yeah, I do the inspections.

Just like people do for dogs and cats, I do this for livestock.

- Keoki has worked for other ranches on the Big Island and he used to come over here too, and I knew him as I was a kid too.

Yeah, no, I've known in Parker Ranch, you know, I mean, that's one of those ranches you hear about, kind of like King Ranch almost.

It's historical and it's huge and it's been, you know, a lot of people, especially people that like to go to Hawai'i are always talking about asking me about the Parker Ranch.

And you know, I don't know as much as a lot of people do, but at the same time, I know the history and I mean, it's a big part of the whole island.

- We have a special place for Valley Children's Hospital.

So every year, we have a campaign for our employees to give where we will match the employee gift.

And I think we've been doing it for over 20 years and it's accumulated a little bit over $700,000 that we've given to Valley Children's Hospital while in the name of the Wawona employees.

♪ Rainy days don't seem so wet ♪ ♪ Stormy nights don't stay ♪ - Of course, I see the future and I see where we've come from.

I've seen the legacy that my grandfather and father have paved before me.

I kind of like to think the community is like the soil of what our peach trees are growing in, right?

So like Wawona is kind of the tree and we can harvest and we can grow perfect fruit and harvest that and sell it, but without the soil, which is our community, and our employees, we can't be anything.

I know the next 60 years will be something my Dad will be proud of.

♪ We watched the sun as it slowly crept ♪ ♪ From the horizon to the place we met ♪ - If there wasn't cattle in Hawai'i, they'd be overgrown.

The whole island would be overgrown, you know, and it'd be a mess.

The cattle can utilize ground that only probably goats could utilize otherwise, you know?

So these ranchers over there, and they are very good stewards of the land, I've been to a lot of their annual meetings, they always have a big annual meeting in November, and I mean, you listen to these guys talk and you can tell they have a love for the land and they have a love for their business.

And it's really important to them that people see them as stewards of the land and caretakers of the cattle because they are.

They're some of the best in the world.

They really are.

(light music) - [Presenter] Production funding for American Grown, my job depends on AG.

Provided by James G. Parker Insurance Associates, ensuring and protecting agribusiness for over 40 years.

By GAR Bennett, the Central Valley's growing experts.

More yield, less water, proven results.

We help growers feed the world.

By Brandt, professional agriculture, proudly discovering, manufacturing, and supplying the Ag input that support the heroes who work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By unWired Broadband, today's internet for rural Central California.

Keeping valley agriculture connected since 2003.

By Hodges Inc., battery storage systems.

Would you rather invest in PG&E's infrastructure or your own?

By Harrison Co., providing family farms with the insights they need to make the best possible strategic M&A and financial decisions.

By Sierra Valley Almonds, dedicated to sustainable agriculture and water efficiency for a brighter farming future.

By Cal-Pacific Supply, providing agriculture the field supplies needed to keep field operations on track.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family-owned for over 50 years dedicated to supporting agriculture and the families that grow food for a nation.

(light music)