Hawaii Papaya Industry Association
Annual Grower and Member Meeting
Friday, November 18, 2022 via Zoom
The meeting was held but there weren’t enough members present to make a quorum. The by-laws required 10% of the membership to be present to hold a vote for the Board of Directors. The by-laws specify that the current directors shall continue to serve until they can be replaced.
Nomination of Directors
HPIA is seeking interested members to serve on the Board of Directors. We currently only have 4 directors and would like to have a full board of seven.
The commitment is to attend four meetings per year, one each in February, May, July and November. You must have paid your dues in 2022.
Please email your nominations to “hawaiipapayaindustryassn@gmail.com” or text to Eric at 808-896-2610. Volunteers who qualify may be appointed by the President and approved by the Board at any time to fill vacant positions.
Hawaii Papaya Industry Association PO Box 6959 Hilo, HI 96760
Presidents Message
2022 was a year of belt tightening for HPIA. We closed our office on Kamehameha Ave. and let our office staff go. The result of these measures is that HPIA is now financially stable. Our annual income from dues is sufficient to cover our costs. This is a good thing for the long term viability of the organization.
I am encouraging growers to become Board members to help the organization better service the needs of growers. Grower participation is needed to expand our activities. For now, our organization is there, basically on hold, in case there is an emergency need. Having a recognized organization in place enables State and Federal agencies to support the papaya industry, obtaining assistance in times of need to help our growers.
Our website: www.HawaiiPapaya.com, is our primary source of information distribution.
Seeds
The HPIA sold all of its Rainbow Seed it had in inventory to its members in 2022. The HPIA has no plans to make any Rainbow seeds at the current time. We have held workshops on how to correctly produce Rainbow seeds and will continue to help growers produce their own seed.
The University of Hawaii also provided seed to HPIA members at $90 per ounce. They will produce Rainbow seeds again in 2023. They are currently working on an agreement with HPIA to allow us to be the exclusive distributor of that seed to our growers. Our plan is to sell this at cost to our growers.
Finances
The HPIA has adopted annual dues of $100 for growers, $250 for handlers, and $350 for support organizations. We have a healthy balance sheet with approximately $70K in cash at this time. We do not have any outstanding liabilities. Our major expenses are maintaining our website, our contribution to SHAC and the CPA fee to file our annual tax return.
SHAC
HPIA has participated with the Synergistic Hawaii Agricultural Commodities with a 10 to 1 dollar match to participate in marketing Hawaii papaya to Japan and Canada. Our contribution to SHAC in 2022 was $7,500. Several promotional programs are to be completed by the end of this year. The papaya representatives to SHAC are now open as the previous representatives resigned. It is likely that HPIA will not participate with SHAC in 2023 unless a representative from HPIA would like to serve in that position. As a bonus for working with SHAC we now have a professionally produced photography library that can be used by any member for marketing Hawaii papaya. Just make a request to hawaiipapayaindustryassn@gmail.com and we will share the link.