Hawaii has a long history of innovation in sustainable agriculture, horticulture, and aquaculture

Today's high production costs, small local consumer market and distance to larger markets make hawaii's agriculture uncompetitive in global markets and result in hawaii importing 85% of our food. Hawaii's governor has declared a goal to double hawaii food production in 5 years. To meet this goal, innovative solutions are needed. The future of hawaii agriculture will require technological innovation supported by a tech-friendly workforce with different skillsets than currently exists. To address these issues and seek solutions, we will convene the thrive hawaii agrifood summit. We focus on tropical agriculture as strategic positioning to differentiate our conference from other agtech conferences around the world. The tropics face many challenges in producing enough food for rapidly growing populations. Approximately 40% (55% of children) of global population live in the tropicswhich will reach 50% by 2050. Climate change is already having significant negative impacts on food crops in the tropics and is expected to get worse. Currently global hunger is most prevalent in the tropics.developing solutions that increase tropical agriculture productivity through agtech adoption in the tropics is necessary and potentially very profitable. Existing agtech modified for the tropics and new agtech IP developed in hawaii could be commercialized and exported throughout asia-pacific and the tropics. Like hawaii, tropical farming is dominated by small farms so we will focus on adapting agtech to small farm applications.goals for the conference are to:improve agriculture productivity to achieve higher profits (higher yields & margins) with higher paying jobs, younger workforce, and higher value cropsstimulate development of a local agtech ecosystem and a technology-enabled sustainable agricultural industryshowcase hawaii as the ideal location for adapting AG technologies to tropical environmentsattract investment to hawaii agriculturereverse the brain drain by keeping talented residents employed in hawaiistimulate economic development in rural hawaiigenerate sufficient enthusiasm for this conference to make IT an annual event.agtech includes a broad range of specialized fields. Since we intend to make the conference an annual event, each year we will vary our focus on specific themes and specialized topics. In this our second conference, we will focus on and feature selective breeding and genetics, drones & robotics and big data, and intellectual property (IP) and commercialization. The tropical agtech conference will focus on four main areas:why hawaii as the laboratory for tropical agtech IP developmentbreeding technologies in modern agriculturedigital technologies in agriculturecommercialization of agtechdeveloping solutions that increase tropical agriculture productivity using agtech is necessary and could be highly profitable. Currently glob, AL hunger is most concentrated in the tropics. Like hawaii, tropical farming is dominated by small farms so we will focus on adapting agtech to small farm applications. We will therefore position our agtech conference to focus on: technology for tropical agriculture, technology for smaller farms, technology for high-value crops.