Canary in the Coal Mine

When it comes to the islands’ food supply, Richard told me, Hawai‘i is the nation’s “canary in the coal mines.”

It is widely agreed that in Hawai‘i, where we are so dependent on imported foodstuffs, we have just seven days’ worth of food in the state at any given time. Seven days!

Should there be a shipping interruption, Richard predicted, supermarket shelves would be bare within two days—because we know from experience that in emergencies here, many people panic and hoard.

This all came up when Richard testified Friday before the state’s Water, Land, Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs committee. That’s a committee chaired by Sen. Russell Kokobun that is working on issues related to the state’s sustainability to the year 2050.

It was Andy Hashimoto, dean of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, who brought up that we live in this precarious situation with only about seven days of food available and the rest in transit.

“He couldn’t have said it most starkly,” said Richard. “If something happened to us down here sitting in the middle of the ocean, the rest of the nation would have a wake-up call,” he said. “They wouldn’t starve to death; they’d have a wake-up call.”

Friday's testimony was informational, Richard said, to bring Senator Kokobun and his committee up to speed.

“I wanted to talk about something that is not usually voiced,” Richard said. “My objective was to say that we need to grow food wherever we can grow it. Dry side, wet side, high elevation, low elevation, geographically on every different island.” It’s the way Hawaiians used to work the land, and something that has changed drastically in modern-day Hawai‘i. “We shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket.”

“Normally,” he said, “you go to business school and you’re pushing volume. If you’re going to sell Vienna sausages, you need to sell millions of cans at a profit of two cents a can. If something goes wrong in the process, you’re sunk. That’s why you need to diversify every way you can.”

Others testified about different pieces of the “pie.”

Eric Enos, who runs Ka‘ala Farm in Wai‘anae, also talked about traditional Hawaiian agricultural ways. He talked about relating the taro lo‘i, and the traditional ahupua‘a (land division) system, to our modern-day life. This is a goal at Ka‘ala Farm, where they work the land educate students about people’s relationships to the ‘aina (land).

Dean Okimoto, president of the Hawai‘i Farm Bureau Federation, testified about designating certain highly productive lands as “important agricultural lands,” referring to legislation that the Farm Bureau introduced last year.

Sen. Clayton Hee brought up that this is a tough issue, though—pointing, for instance, to Campbell Estate’s plan to build 1100 houses at $500,000 each. Hee asked what types of incentives the legislature could offer landowners to keep land in agricultural production instead of development.

And Derek Kurisu, vice president of KTA Superstores, talked about his grocery store’s commitment to local farmers. He said once they commit to a farmer, they support him or her “through thick and thin.”

This is encouraging, Richard said, as it is hard for small farmers to weather ups and downs without such support.

He said there was a time where buying local produce was only price-driven, but that consumers are responding to KTA’s long-time support of local farmers. “People are starting to see that KTA has been successful with what they’ve been doing.”

“I saw it in action when we went with Chef Alan Wong to Hualalai Resort for a cooking presentation,” he said. “The audience was mostly people with two or more homes who were staying at the Hualalai Resort for the season. They let us know that they wanted to be contributing members of the Big Island community. They made it known that they shopped at KTA because they support the local economy.

“I took that to mean that KTA has been successful in spreading their message that shopping at KTA means supporting the local economy,” he said. “I was impressed.

“They’ve been supporting local for a long time and it’s evidently working. They have lots of customers and they’re full all the time.”

Looking at the big picture, Richard said that our dependence on large-scale, industrial agriculture is happening all over the nation.

“Industrial agriculture is dangerous,” he said, “because it can’t always support you. It’s only as strong as its weakest link. For instance, say you’ve got this one multinational brand and they have hundreds of farmers. If one farm is not doing something the way it’s supposed to be done, it jeopardizes the whole brand. People throughout the whole nation start wondering about the whole brand.”

Overall, though, Richard said he is optimistic.

“All this stuff—the slow food movement, chefs wanting local fresh food products—it’s all related and it’s all encouraging,” he said. “In the last few years, I feel it’s changed quite a bit. I don’t know how far it can go.

"On our side, we know the consumers want to support local. We want to give them value so there’s reinforcement for supporting local; so it’s worthwhile for them. We spend a lot of time trying to make sure we give value with our product.”

It's all food for thought. — posted by Leslie Lang

Comments

[alan]

This is such a crucial issue. The biggest problem seems to be, as you mentioned above, that land is too valuable. It's hard to convince people to farm for narrow profits when they can make a killing in real estate. The legislature can offer incentives, but I'm not confident those incentives would be large enough to tilt the balance sheet.

I think we can agree though, that the decision needs to be about more than just the balance sheet, so that if/when the next crisis hits we're not all dead canaries. Thank you for sharing your notes from the committee meeting.

[richard]

Alan, what I find encouraging is the support we are starting to see for locally grown produce. I have a feeling that more than a few people don't want to be dead canaries and so are supporting locally grown produce so farmers can make a living at it. Aloha and thanks for your comments. Richard