The target area has rural communities strongly desiring to maintain the agricultural base of the region through diversified agriculture. Green tea enjoys great popularity resulting from its association with positive health benefits. A Hawaiian branded product has been shown to have positive marketability. Successful field production is now at the point where cooperative production agreements need to be devised in order to carry out systematic processing and marketing testing. The project's purpose is to test the feasibility of an upscale, gourmet niche market of Hawaiian grown green tea Hawaii, which would help organize ongoing and start up Hawaiian Green Tea production in rural communities, keep agricultural lands in active production, promote income and employment opportunities for rural residents, and in general, stimulate the development of new agricultural enterprises in rural communities. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this project is to advance research on Hawaiian grown green tea through organized production systems and field testing of processing and marketing strategies specific to a region of rural communities struggling to maintain the agricultural base established by 100 years of plantation sugar production. Successful small scale diversified farming will help sustain these rural communities, stabilize the region's economic base, and meet both community and agricultural research objectives. It will also build on the work of agricultural cooperative extension agents who started green tea plantings in the Hamakua region 5 years ago with plant material through partnerships with major green tea production centers in Asia. This area of the island of Hawaii has climatic conditions which most approximates the plant's home source. These plantings have produced a hardier and faster growing product. APPROACH: The approach to be taken on this project is 3-fold: (1) conduct a comparative analysis of different types of agricultural cooperatives to identify those organizational elements most suitable to maximizing efficiencies and profitablity for rural green tea growers (2) systematic field testing and processing of Hawaiian grown plant material based on desired outcomes in terms of pre-identified marketability preferences, e.g., flavor, aroma, shelf life, packaging, etc. (3) marketing and sales strategies will be tested by specialists in the field to help identify processing techniques and procedures to achieve the most marketable product
