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3 productive farm lands. There is need for water works in South Kona; land which is excellent ' for the production of avocados and coffee. Fanners in that area are threatened with going out 'A'=f of production do to extended years of severe drought conditions. Many agriculturally zoned sr areas in Ka'u and Puna remain without available water. ¦ Money to development local marketing networks to facilitate local product moving into the most high-valued markets throughout the state for the purpose of import substitution. Supplying product to local markets for import substitution is hampered by the high costs of ' transportation facing individual S~rowers. Through the use of huffs and informal coops, some of the transaction costs (transportation and networking) can be reduced and more effective matching of supply and demand in the local fresh foods markets can take place. ¦ Investments in energy crops should be encouraged. We need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels both in the production of electricity and in liquid fuels. Besides utilizing appropriate technologies involving waste treatment, we could y~ r~ be making use of the existing infrastructure for plantation agriculture to grow enerbry crops. ¦ Implement sustainable forestry practices. "a There is great potential for producing tropical lumber crops using sustainable practices rather than short-term, quick profit schemes such as the pulp wood project. ¦ Rebates to organic farmers to offset the cost of certification as a result of federal requirements. When the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA) takes effect later this year (its out for 60 days of public review and expected to be signed off by late summer), organizations offering certification will need to pay the feds in order to become accredited. This will cost a considerable amount ($5-10,000). This cost needs to be supported or it will have to be passed on to the growers. I recommend that the county subsidize certification costs. Precedent was already set in Kauai in 1994. There are an estimated 75 certified organic operations in the state with an untold amount of uncertified production which will soon become illegal under OFPA. This is a high growth industry (Snowing by greater than 20% annually for each of the last 6 years) and should be encouraged, not disadvantaged through the addition of a bureaucratic layer of costs. ¦ Money to hold a workshop to train existing pool of inspectors, as well as additional new inspectors in processing, livestock certification, and honey production. We are beginning to get requests for this type of organic production (processing and livestock) which require different inspection procedures from crops. We need trained inspectors to meet this demand. The current pool of inspectors are trained in ground crops only. l5