The Big Web Farm

Farm Location: Hōnaunau, Hawaiʻi Island
Farm Established: 2016
HUC Member Since: 2017
Practices Used: Multiple-cropping systems, agroforestry
Farming Philosophy: Learn from natural systems, start with kilo (observation), then design for health, resilience, and connection.

Meet Howard Ling of The Big Web Farm, a South Kona farmer building an agroforestry system that’s designed to function like a living community: diverse species working together, supporting the land and each other, all while producing nutrient-dense food for people.

Howard established The Big Web Farm in 2016, and his approach is grounded in a simple (but demanding) starting point: observe first. On the farm’s website, Howard shares that “the backbone to our farming starts with observation,” and that their mission is “to increase health for ourselves, our community, and the world” through food grown with strong nutrition and mineral balance.

Howard’s farming path began as a personal search for health. After growing up in the suburbs with fast food, convenience meals, and little connection to where food came from – he had a turning point: eating directly from a farm changed how he felt in his body. Symptoms he’d accepted as “normal” started to resolve when his diet shifted to fresh, farm-grown foods.

That experience lit a fire. Howard dove into learning, first through apprenticeship-style experiences on the mainland, including time connected to the Green String Farm Institute in California, where he encountered influential ideas about soil biology, mineral balance, and growing for health, not just yield.

Eventually, that thread led him to Hawaiʻi Island for an apprenticeship with a farmer he’d been learning from long before they met in person.

Howard describes The Big Web Farm as an agroforestry system with multiple cropping zones and intentional interspecies plantings. He’s inspired by the way natural systems stack functions: shade, mulch, erosion control, habitat, food, and fertility—woven together in a way that gets stronger over time.

Rather than forcing one crop everywhere, Howard watches what each microclimate wants to do—and then builds around those truths. In some places, that has meant transitioning away from crops that struggle in the heat and dryness at his elevation (around 700 feet), especially where irrigation isn’t present.

Howard’s top crops today reflect that observation-first evolution: Macadamia nuts (highest volume), Sugarcane (kō)—both for personal use (fresh cane juice) and increasingly as a multi-purpose farm ally, Coffee (a legacy crop on parts of the property, though it struggles in hotter, drier zones without shade/irrigation), ʻUlu (rapidly expanding as planted trees begin to produce).

One of the most exciting pieces of Howard’s system-building has been how he’s integrating kō throughout the macadamia orchard, especially in areas needing erosion control. What started as a personal desire (fresh sugarcane juice) quickly became something bigger, as Howard learned more about kō’s deep cultural roots in Hawaiʻi and its practical role in resilient agroforestry design. Pro tip: you can enjoy Howard’s kō at the Keauhou Farmers Market every Saturday in Kailua-Kona.

“The Big Web” is reflective of a bigger vision. Howard and his partner, Kerry, founded the Big Web Institute to strengthen connections between people, place, and purpose: a hub for workdays, collaboration, and education, with a strong emphasis on inspiring keiki.

Howard already supports school garden programs and enjoys bringing young people into the world of farming through hands-on experiences, planting “little seeds” of curiosity that may grow into something later.

Over the next decade, Howard’s vision is clear: more food crops, more symbiotic relationships on-farm, and more “webbing” within the community—so more people can feel what’s possible when food, land stewardship, and health are treated as one connected system.

As Howard puts it on the farm’s site: what’s good for nature is good for humans, and happy plants help raise happy humans.