Part of the empire of the New Deal was finding sustainable businesses to run in the US territories. Hawaiʻi grew lots of taro (kalo); why not find a market for it? The Department of the Interior ordered taro flour and a drink called Taroco in quantity, to be served in the department’s cafeteria.1
Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes was photographed drinking Taroco and eating taro-flour biscuits in March 1938. Sadly, it was only about seven months before the project’s promoters reported to director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions that “Taro products are having a hard time getting started.”2 Before long the company gave up and sold its assets to another firm that made similar products for local manufacture.3
For what it’s worth, we’ve had taro-flour biscuits; they were pretty tasty. Never had chocolate taro milk though.
Footnotes
“U.S. Officials Like Taro; Gruening, Ickes Order It,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 19, 1938.↩︎
Entry for October 18, 1938, (diary), Ernest Gruening papers, Arctic and Polar Regions Collections, University of Alaska, Fairbanks.↩︎
Edward L. Rada, “Mainland Market for Taro Products: A Preliminary Study” (University of Hawaii, College of Agriculture, December 1952), 2.↩︎