Some Say Hawaii Farm Too Big To Fail After Farmers Convicted of Human Trafficking

AP

April 5, 2006: Mike Sou, who runs Alou Farms in Ewa, with his brother Alec, displays a pumpkin rotted by the heavy rains in Honolulu. Sou and his brother Alex will be sentenced in federal court on human trafficking charges. They pled guilty but two former state governors, community groups, fellow farmers and other supporters are trying to keep them out of prison.

HONOLULU Two prominent, popular brothers who operate the second-largest vegetable farm in Hawaii will be sentenced in federal court this week on human trafficking charges -- they pleaded guilty -- but two former state governors, community groups, fellow farmers and other supporters are trying to keep them out of prison.

The brothers were convicted of shipping 44 laborers from Thailand and forcing them to work on their farm, part of a pipeline to the United States that allegedly cornered foreign field hands into low-paying jobs with few rights.

Aloun Farms may be too important to fail in an island state that once relied on pineapples and sugar cane but grows less than 15 percent of the food it consumes, according to supporters of defendants Alec and Mike Sou.

"The incarceration of Alec and Mike Sou would threaten our food security and could endanger our future sustainability on Oahu," wrote Kioni Dudley, president of the community group Friends of Makakilo, in a letter asking U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway for leniency. "Find some method of punishment which allows them to stay in their positions at Aloun Farms."

The Sou brothers are asking for a light sentence with little or no jail time based in part on the idea that their farm is too valuable to the islands' food supply to let it go untended. The plea deal they agreed to in January called for up to five years imprisonment.

Prosecutors accuse them of manipulating the Thai workers by promising at least a year's employment at pay of $9.42 an hour, but instead delivering only a few months of work for little pay.

If the workers complained, Mike Sou threatened to send them home without any way to repay recruitment fees exceeding $30,000 that they borrowed from Thai money lenders to pay for their jobs, federal authorities claim.

The workers were trapped on the farm, forced to choose between long hours with low wages and an unpromising future in Thailand, said former farm worker Somporn Khanja, who arrived at the farm in 2004.

"I'd been lied to, but I couldn't do anything about it," the 45-year-old Khanja said through his wife, acting as an interpreter. "I hope justice is being done. I believe in American law. It takes so long, but it's good. In America, we have to wait."

In about 120 letters to the judge supporting the Sou brothers, community members praise their importance to Hawaii's agriculture industry, their ability to provide up to 200 jobs at a time and their character.

Former Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano called the Sou family's immigration from Laos and creation of a farm a "remarkable success story." Former Democratic Gov. John Waihee commended the Sous' skill in transforming sugar fields into diversified farming.

Others who offered support to the brothers include the former head of the state Land Board, the state Department of Agriculture, the Hawaii Foodbank, competing farms, two banks who are owed money from the farms and former Aloun employees.

The Kapolei-based company grows a variety of foods including cantaloupe, lettuce, zucchini, apples, bananas, parsley, onions, watermelon, beans, eggplant, cabbage and pumpkin. Alec Sou is the farm's president and general manager, and Ms of Los Angeles-based labor recruiting company Global Horizons Manpower Inc., which the FBI says is the largest human trafficking case ever charged in U.S. history.

Global Horizons is accused of enticing 400 workers from Thailand to U.S. farms based on false promises of lucrative jobs. Instead, recruiters allegedly confiscated the workers' passports, disregarded employment contracts and threatened deportation -- claims similar to those in the Aloun Farms case.

Nationwide, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked to the United States annually, according to an estimate by HumanTrafficking.org, which is managed by the Washington-based Academy for Educational Development, which works to improve global education, health and social and economic development.

The brothers have steadily grown in prominence since their parents started the farm in 1977. After starting with a small 5-acre plot of land, the Sous have since extended their growing capacity and crops.

Today, the farm's 3,000 acres are the most productive in the islands. In Hawaii's mild climate, they grow crops year-round.

The Sou family also has made political contributions, and Alec Sou sits on boards for homeless advocates and for the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.

Some hospitals open ERs just for graying patients

WASHINGTON Moccia says people feel better when they can stay upright. Nonskid floors guard against falls. Forms are printed in larger type, to help patients read their care instructions when it's time to go home. Pharmacists automatically check if patients' routine medications could cause dangerous interactions. A geriatric social worker is on hand to arrange for Meals on Wheels or other resources.

"In the senior unit, they're just a lot more gentle," says Betty Barry, 87, of White Lake, Mich., who recently went to another of Trinity's senior ERs while suffering debilitating hip pain.

But Moccia says the real change comes because nurses and doctors undergo training to dig deeper into patients' lives. While they're awaiting test results or treatments, every senior gets checked for signs of depression, dementia or delirium.

An example: A diabetic was treated for low blood sugar in a regular ER. A few weeks later she was back, but the newly opened senior ER uncovered that dementia was making her mess up her insulin dose, repeatedly triggering the problem, says Dr. Bill Thomas, a geriatrician at the University of Maryland Baltimore County who is advising Trinity Health Novi's senior ER program.

It doesn't take opening a separate ER to improve older patients' care, says New Jersey's Rosenberg, who calls better overall geriatric awareness and training the real key. Still, he says his center saw a 15 percent rise in patients last year.

"Those hospitals that have the money and space and the luxury to do something like that are going to get a definite advantage down the road," predicts John at the American College of Emergency Physicians, who says his own Boston hospital didn't have the money to try it.

Boat made of 12,500 plastic bottles arrives in Sydney after 4-month journey across Pacific

SYDNEY A sailboat largely constructed from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles has completed a 4-month journey across the Pacific Ocean meant to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste.

The Plastiki, a 60-foot (18-meter) catamaran, and its six crew weathered fierce ocean storms during its 8,000 nautical miles at sea. It left San Francisco on March 20, stopping along the way at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa. It docked Monday in Sydney Harbour.

"This is the hardest part of the journey so far getting it in!" expedition leader David de Rothschild yelled from the boat as the crew struggled to maneuver the notoriously tough-to-steer vessel into port outside the Australian National Maritime Museum.

A crowd of about 100 erupted into cheers after the Plastiki finally docked. De Rothschild a descendant of the well-known British banking family exchanged high fives and hugs with his crew, pumping his fists into the air in victory.

"It has been an extraordinary adventure," he said.

De Rothschild, 31, said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a United Nations report in 2006 that said pollution and particularly plastic waste was seriously threatening the world's oceans.

He figured a good way to prove that trash can be effectively reused was to use some of it to build a boat. The Plastiki named after the 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed across the Pacific by explorer Thor Heyerdahl is fully recyclable and gets its power from solar panels and windmills.

The boat is almost entirely made up of bottles, which are held together with an organic glue made of sugar cane and cashews, but includes other materials too. The mast, for instance, is recycled aluminum irrigation pipe.

"The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph," said Jeffrey Bleich, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, who greeted the team after they docked.

During their 128-day journey, the six crew lived in a cabin of just 20 feet by 15 feet (6 meters by 4.5 meters), took saltwater showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, supplemented with the occasional vegetable from their small on-board garden.

Along the way, they fought giant ocean swells, 62-knot (70 mile-an-hour) winds, temperatures up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) and torn sails. The crew briefly stopped in Queensland state last week, after battling a brutal storm off the Australian coast.

Skipper Jo Royle also had the particular challenge of being the only woman on board.

"I'm definitely looking forward to a glass of wine and a giggle with my girlfriends," she said.

Vern Moen, the Plastiki's filmmaker, missed the birth of his first child though he managed to watch the delivery on a grainy Skype connection. He met his son for the first time after docking in Sydney.

"It was very, very surreal to show up on a dock and it's like, 'here's your kid," he said with a laugh.

Although the team had originally hoped to recycle the Plastiki, de Rothschild said they are now thinking of keeping it intact, and using it as a way of enlightening people to the power of recycling.

"There were many times when people looked at us and said, 'you're crazy,'" de Rothschild said. "I think it drove us on to say, 'Anything's possible.'"

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Online:

http://www.theplastiki.com

Helicopters used to save Fla. crop from rare chill

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. Dozens of helicopters are whirring above Florida's valuable and sensitive veggie crops, an unusual approach by farmers worried that an uncommon freeze could wipe out their harvests.

The choppers hover low over green bean and sweet corn fields, moving back and forth in the early morning hours to push warmer air closer to the plants and, the farmers hope, save the plants from a deadly frost.

Farmers are especially nervous because an 11-day freeze in January wiped out many crops, from corn to kumquats. Florida is the largest winter producer of sweet corn in the U.S. the kind people eat.

John Hundley, a corn, bean and sugar cane farmer in Palm Beach County, said that if winds are too high as they were expected to be early Tuesday he won't be able to hire the helicopters. When asked what he will do to protect his crops, Hundley sighed.

"I can get on my knees and pray right now," he said. "It looks like it's pretty much out of our hands."

The stakes are high: in 2009, the value of production of sweet corn from Florida was $227 million.

"They have hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in crops," said Paul Allen, president of the Florida Sweet Corn Exchange.

The helicopters may be the last line of defense if temperatures dip below freezing as expected Tuesday night, though it's an expensive technique. It costs about $2,500 an hour to fly one helicopter over the crops, and the length of flights depends on a mix of temperatures and wind conditions.

Here's how it works: The air 50 feet above the crops is warmer than the air near the plants. The helicopter blades push the warm air down and the temperature goes up, said David Sui, a University of Florida expert on vegetables and tropical fruits. The warmer air prevents cold and frost from settling on the plants.

"Even if it raises the temperature a couple of degrees it may save the crops," he said.

The technique isn't a new one, as farmers have long hired helicopters to keep their crops from freezing. And growers in California also have used helicopters. But it's still dangerous.

Last week, three helicopters crashed within a matter of hours in South Florida during missions to protect crops from the cold. All three pilots survived.

One helicopter went down shortly after midnight last Wednesday near a rural airport in Palm Beach County. A second helicopter crashed before dawn when the pilot made an emergency landing after a tail rotor broke. He suffered minor injuries. A third pilot was seriously hurt when his helicopter crashed in a field a few hours later.

Green beans and sweet corn are cultivated in the nutrient-rich muck soil located near the Florida Everglades, though farmers in other parts of the state are also scrambling to protect their fruits and vegetables, many of which are near harvest.

Strawberry farmers are spraying water on the plants, so the heat lost from the crop to the surrounding air is replaced with the heat released as water changes to ice. Citrus farmers are using ground-level heaters to warm the air near tree trunks. And tropical fish farmers are moving their fish or covering the outdoor tanks.

January's cold snap damaged large swaths of Florida's crops, including strawberries and tomatoes. Nearly all of the kumquat crop died.

When Florida's crops die, shoppers pay more at the grocery store because replacement produce is usually imported from outside the U.S.

Already this year, several hundred acres of green beans have been lost.

Gov. Charlie Crist on Sunday declared a state of emergency because of the threat of severe crop damage. That news prompted orange juice futures to rise over concerns the weather would damage this year's crop.

It's unusual for temperatures to be this cold this early in the season, said Lisa Lochridge, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association.

Temperatures are expected to dip into the teens in north Florida, and in the high 20s in central and South Florida though temperatures between 60 to 78 degrees are more common this time of year.

"When you're talking about temperatures as cold as those predicted, virtually everything is in peril," she said.