Healing hands

WAIMEA — What do a doctor and a farmer have in common? Both work long hours and deal with a variety of ailments.

Kekela Farms owner Paul Johnston should know. He was a doctor long before he became a farmer 13 years ago. He took the leap, starting his on Mana Road while in his 50s after working as an obstetrician/gynecologist for 20 years in northern Utah and Waimea.

“I’m still a licensed MD, and still practice a little, so all in all, it has been about 30 years; about five of those years were here in Waimea. I did deliveries, surgeries and had an office practice,” Johnston said. “In the last 10 years, I have devoted most of my time to farming.”

Working by his side managing the operation is his partner, Betsy Sanderson, who still maintains her license as a lawyer.

For Johnston, having a solo practice and being on-call all the time was challenging, so he started to consider other career options.

“At one point, my family and I decided to take a look at farming, mostly as something to do in retirement. We had purchased 20 acres when we moved here, and thought that land might be persuaded to grow something,” he said. “One of the farmers I spoke to urged me to get my feet wet immediately, so I built three greenhouses and started the farm, supporting it with my medical income.”

Johnston didn’t give up his practice immediately.

“Shortly thereafter, I was offered an opportunity to work at Kaiser on Maui. I took that as a way to get out of the solo practice rut,” he said. “I would work for two weeks on Maui, then come back and work with the lettuce for two weeks. That went on for two years. Eventually, it became clear that I would have to make a decision, one career or the other. We held a family meeting, and we made the decision to farm.”

Although medicine doesn’t pay as highly in Hawaii as it does on the mainland, a farmer’s income can be much lower, according to Johnston.

“Farming and doctoring both require long hours, far more than the standard 40 per week. But one thing I’ll say for farming: no matter how sick it is, the lettuce doesn’t call you at 3 a.m.,” he said.

Johnston uses his expertise as a doctor on the farm.

“Farming is harder physically, and it is challenging intellectually, too,” he said. “There is always a new bug or disease to diagnose. We grow 30 to 40 different vegetables; they all get different ailments, and have different reactions to the climatic conditions.”

On the farm, some things are unpredictable.

“There is the uncontrollable weather element,” he said. “As a physician, I felt generally in control of most medical situations within my scope of training. In farming, there is no controlling the weather, and in Waimea that can, and does, deliver the occasional knockout punch. There’s another element in farming, too: selling. One has to sell one’s produce in order to survive. Good doctors don’t have to do much selling.”

Farming and medicine have one thing in common: helping others.

“I like to think that people enter both professions because they like to take care of people,” Johnston said. “Certainly, we all acknowledge that doctors do. But there is that old metaphor that ‘food is love,’ so I like to think that both those who grow food, and those who prepare it, are acting according to that principle. If you look at it that way, then the way doctors and farmers take care of people differs only in the mechanics, but the underlying motivation is the same.”

To motivate others to pursue a career in farming, and keep agriculture and farming successful on the Big Island in the future, he feels hired farm workers deserve to be paid justly.

“People will have to be willing to pay a fair price for the food they buy. Farming is hard work, and the people out there in the heat and the rain deserve to be remunerated in a way that provides a decent life for them and their families here in Hawaii,” he said. “Too many farm workers are paid under the table, many more don’t get the benefits that the law requires employers to pay. Cheating our farm workers has to stop because, if it doesn’t, farming will continue to look less and less attractive to young folks seeking career alternatives.”