Tours Boost Waialua Community

Thanks to a turnout of more than 21,000 people over 12 days to view the sunflowers on Corteva Agriscience’s Wailua Farm, area nonprofit organizations raised more than $52,000 by facilitating parking and selling t-shirts, water and snacks. GoPro also donated six GoPro HERO6 cameras to the media program at Waialua High School.

The thousands of dollars raised this year will benefit Waialua Elementary, Oahu Resource Conservation and Development Council, GoFarm Hawaii, Waialua Little League, Waialua High School softball team, and the Waialua Pop Warner Bullpups Football.

Members of the above organizations volunteered along with West Oahu Soil and Water Conservation District and the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources Gene-ius Day Program.

The tours at the Corteva Agriscience farm in Waialua took place between Wednesday, Nov. 8 and Monday, Nov. 20. Last year’s tours attracted 4,000 people and raised more than $9,000 for community nonprofits. The sunflower fields have since been plowed to make way for a new round of corn crops.

The sunflower is just one of several commercial crops Corteva Agriscience grows on Oahu’s North Shore. Corteva Agriscience has been working collaboratively with a local farmer for more than a decade to plant and grow sunflowers at its Waialua farm, where the flowers typically bloom from October to mid-December.

Each sunflower on the Corteva Agriscience Farm in Waialua produces up to a half cup of cooking oil. Once harvested, the seeds produced by Corteva are prized for their high content of oil, which is used for cooking dishes from breakfast to dinner.

The Corteva Agriscience Farm in Waialua is home to an estimated 400 acres of locally grown food. Ka‘ala Ranch, J. Ludovico Farms, Mokuleia Farms, Twin Bridge Farms and Aloun Farms make up the five contract growers on the Corteva Agriscience farm in Waialua, where they are producing food that can be found in local markets and grocery stores. Helping local farmers like these is critical to statewide efforts to double local food production by 2020.