There aren’t many people who can call themselves a first responder, big-wave surfer, scholar, and farmer. But Joey Cadiz is all of that. On any given day on Oahu’s North Shore, you can find Cadiz saving lives while on duty as a lifeguard, riding big waves on his lunch breaks, and now, using knowledge from his Master’s degree in public health to feed his community through his taro farm.
His many responsibilities – combined with life as a family man with a wife and two daughters – leave him little time for anything else.
“I have zero time, I don’t sleep at all,” Cadiz chuckled. I caught up with the former University of Hawaii football player as he was driving to the Oahu farm.
“I’m up before work to go to the farm to tend to things, and then I’m sometimes at the farm after work to feed animals or whatever needs to be tended to,” he said. “My days off are completely spent at the farm. My wife is very supportive of our venture. We’re making progress.”
Cadiz says that taro once made up 80 percent of the traditional Hawaiian diet. It’s a tropical root vegetable, cultivated for its starchy, nutritious corms (roots) and edible leaves. It has a potato-ish texture with a semi-nutty, sweet flavor when cooked and is high in fiber, carbs, vitamins, and minerals. But its role has faded, replaced by more convenient and less nutritious foods. As a result, health across the islands has suffered.
During the pandemic, when people were out of work and afraid to visit grocery stores, those issues intensified.
“People were often left eating things in their pantry, canned goods, unhealthy things with lots of preservatives, which could lead to higher rates of obesity and diabetes,” said Cadiz. “I was privileged to have a job. So with some money, I put together some laulau (nutrient-rich taro leaves stuffed with various fixings), and posted it on my Instagram to give to people that were living nearby.”
The laulau operation quickly grew. First he made 65 servings. Then 200. Soon, he was making 500 a week on his days off via donations and volunteers from the community.
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A few years later, when the opportunity arose to take over a family friend’s overgrown farm, Cadiz jumped on it. With the help of volunteers, he revived the land and founded Laulau Solutions, a non-profit taro farm aimed at promoting cultural heritage, traditional agriculture, and healthy living.
Cadiz estimates they’ve given away roughly 2,000 pounds of taro so far. He even donated 100 pounds to the opening ceremony of the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational – an event for which he’s on the official invite list for the first time.
“The honor of being invited and hopefully getting to surf in (the Eddie) means a lot to me, so I’m just really happy about that,” Cadiz said.
Past Eddie champion and fellow lifeguard Luke Shepardson has become a regular volunteer on the farm, often showing up with his family.
The farm, Cadiz emphasizes, has become far more than a food-growing operation. It’s a gathering place for the community, a place to mentor youth, a setting for people to reconnect with Hawaiian culture, a mental-health outlet, and a source of physical exercise.
“We’ve had at-risk youth groups come and this is a way for them to learn about work in a different, more traditional sense, an avenue of release for whatever is going on in their lives,” Cadiz said. “So there’s the mental side, there’s the nutrition side, and the physical labor. People come here for a workout too, because it’s not easy.”
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Running the farm hasn’t been easy either. It’s still costing him money, and the property – located on a floodplain necessary to cultivate taro – has seen equipment lost to flooding. He recently put $10,000 into a proper access road so volunteers can reach the farm during rainy periods.
But Cadiz leans on lessons from the ocean to push through challenges.
“You go and put everything into it,” he said. “That’s how I’ve done everything in my life, the taro farming too. I’ve been all in like as if I were to paddle into a wave.”
Cadiz says he would love to win the Eddie, but he’s already fulfilled by the life he’s building — saving lives at the beach and creating a place for locals to connect and care for their community.
“I would love for the (farming) style and the curriculum that I’ve developed to be a starting point for people, no matter where they’re at, to be able to get involved and know that this is a safe place for them to come.”
You can donate to help the Laulau Solutions mission, here.
