When South Kona farmer Clarence Medeiros planted huli (taro stems) around Thanksgiving of 2020, he never thought one of them would become the largest taro he'd ever grown—or that anyone had ever grown. Fifteen months later it towered above the eight-foot-tall white ginger. Its Jurassic-size leaves were big enough for the 5'6" farmer to wrap himself in. Clarence suspected the corm, or tuber, would be a "big boy." On February 21, 2022, Clarence, wife Nellie, their grandson Lincoln and Hawaii Ulu Cooperative facility manager Holokai Brown harvested the mighty corm. It took Clarence and Lincoln twenty minutes to dig it out.
To weigh it they drove to the Hawaii Ulu Cooperative's Honalo facility, where more than 150 farmers bring their harvest—staples like ulu (breadfruit), kalo (taro), uala (sweet potato), palaai (squash)—to be processed and sold. While twenty-pounders weren't unusual for Clarence, this kalo tipped the scale at a whopping fifty pounds.
Clarence, 72, comes from a long line of farmers. He's the fifth great-grandson of Don Francisco de Paula Marin, who planted Hawaii's first vineyard (after which Vineyard Street is named) and introduced coffee, pineapple, mango and many other plants to the Islands. Clarence has been growing kalo that's been passed down through the generations since he was a kid. His father had a poi factory; his dad and great-uncles taught him to farm in arid, sun-blasted Kona. "We use the morning dew, the black dirt and whatever rains we're lucky to get—and hopefully Maunaloa and Kilauea no erupt and don't make vog and acid rain," he says.
The "big boy" kalo is a South Kona variety called lehua pake, also called iliuaua ("tough hide"). Its thick rind is impenetrable to insects, and its soft pulp makes it ideal for palu (fish bait). Clarence used to trade it with traditional opelu (mackerel scad) fishermen, who would mash it with pumpkin to feed the opelu in their fishing grounds. For a few months of the year, opelu fishing was kapu (restricted) so the fish could fatten up. Clarence's grandfather, a kalo farmer and fisherman, was the konohiki (resource manager) at Honaunau, where he lived. "My mom told me that if someone broke the kapu," Clarence says, "he was waiting on the beach to literally enforce the kapu with dirty lickings."
In September 2023, Guinness World Records certified that the giant corm the Medeiroses harvested was officially the world's heaviest taro, weighing in at 49.97 pounds. The previous record holder was a measly seven-pounder from China. "We've traveled to Europe and Asia, China and Portugal. I've seen taro all over this world. They have taro in Kansas City and Florida," Clarence says. "This one is the biggest. It's good for America, good for Hawaii, good for Kona."
What became of the big boy? Clarence handed it over to the co-op, which processed 287,000 pounds of locally grown food last year. "Somebody ate the world's biggest taro," Clarence laughs, "and didn't even know it."
