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David Thompson

Photo: David Croxford

Suppose the containerships that bring food to Hawaii stopped coming. It's an improbable dystopian fantasy, for sure. But what if?

There's no hard data on precisely how much food Hawaii imports, but estimates range from about 80 to 90 percent. If we were cut off, do we have the capacity to feed all 1.4 million* of us? At least in theory?

We put the question to Bruce Mathews, interim dean of the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resource Management at UH Hilo.

"Theoretically, yes," Mathews says. "But it would be really challenging."

To feed one person a diet made up of 30 percent animal products, it takes about 16,000 square feet of land in farm production-roughly three NBA basketball courts. Hawaii has more than enough potentially farmable land to meet that requirement, Mathews says, although we're currently at about 3,700 square feet per capita, and much of that is planted in seed, coffee and other nutritionally unimportant crops.

Putting that potential farmland to use would be a monumental undertaking, one requiring a complete reinvention of the agricultural system. "There would be extreme food stress until we figured it out," he says.

Nutrient management, for starters, would become a critical issue, as the same boats that stopped bringing the food would stop bringing the fertilizer, as well. The nutrient-rich valleys and wetlands where the ancient Hawaiians farmed would probably need to be put back into food production. We would also have to radically rethink the way we handle human and household organic waste. In other words, everybody would need to compost, and our poop would have to go back into the fields to help grow more food.

The nature of our diets would fundamentally change. Root crops, which don't require imported nitrogen and phosphorus, would take off. Sweet potato, cassava, kalo would be in, while corn and everything made with wheat would be out. Locally grown rice would probably make a big comeback. The good news for carnivores is that pork, chicken and grass-fed beef could be important sources of protein.

Some anthropologists who have thought about this question have said that if an island culture isn't producing 70 percent of its own carbohydrates at the time it's cut off from outside food shipments, its prospects for survival are dim. But Mathews is more optimistic. He thinks Hawaii might be in a better position than most island cultures because it has large herds of cattle that could be employed as emergency rations. "We would probably be eating a lot of livestock until we got our cropping system going," he says.

In any case, society would undergo a radical transformation, with most of us becoming, out of necessity, farm laborers. Whether or not democracy would survive such a shift isn't certain. "We might have to bring back the old Hawaiian Kingdom to have the ruling authority to pull it off," Mathews speculates.

*We're not counting tourists. If the food stops coming, we assume they've stopped coming too.

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David Thompson Photo: David Croxford Suppose the containerships that bring food to Hawaii stopped coming. It's an improbable dystopian fantasy, for sure. But what if? There's no hard data on precisely how much food Hawaii imports, but estimates range from about 80 to 90 percent.

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Story by Teya Penniman | Illustrations by Matt Foster

Sweet papayas turn gold just outside the window of my north shore home. Kabocha squash hide among dark vines along the drive, while bursts of red chili peppers inflame the bush in the middle of our garden. Flattened stalks of last season's turmeric and ginger tell tale of pungent roots below. But it's the breadfruit tree I'm keeping my eye on.

Despite a mild climate and year-round growing season, Hawai'i imports an estimated 90 percent of its food. Our geographic isolation in the middle of the Pacific leaves us vulnerable to shocks in our food distribution system. A natural disaster could destroy harbors or airports, while crop diseases or a distant political event could interrupt shipments, quickly depleting the Islands' cupboards. No one knows for sure, but urban lore says that if the ships and planes stopped coming, our food supplies might last a few weeks. During peak visitor seasons, fresh lettuce, eggs, and meats would fly off the shelves even more quickly. A few banana bunches or liliko'i ice cubes couldn't breach a major gap.

Hawai'i is renowned for its efforts to reduce dependence on imported energy sources, but not so much for food security. Island history shows it doesn't have to be this way. Before the Europeans arrived, a mauka-to- makai (mountain-to-sea) land-management system provided enough food for all, with the population estimated at close to today's numbers. While ancient Hawaiians weren't immune to droughts or other weather woes, the fertile lands, healthy streams and rich seas generally meant the masses weren't a fortnight away from a major food fight.

The transition to an import-dependent food economy probably started with the Great Māhele-the redistribution of land by King Kamehameha III enacted in 1848-which eventually resulted in non-Hawaiians owning nearly one third of all private land. Private land ownership ushered in the plantation era, which further transformed traditional farming and fishing practices, as mono-crops dominated the landscape. With tourism, the Islands became more connected to the rest of the world; more frequent arrivals of planes and ships increased accessibility to food grown elsewhere, at lower prices. The lure of tropical living fueled subdivisions of agricultural land into two-acre "gentlemen's estates," helping to drive up local real-estate values and placing homes and farms out of reach for many residents.

Today, export crops account for nearly 80 percent of farmed land, with sugar, seed production, macadamia nuts, commercial forestry and coffee playing lead roles, crops not likely to satisfy a local food shortage. Previous government-funded efforts to help transition old plantations to diversified agriculture have been minimally successful. Farming in Hawai'i presents unique challenges, especially to aspiring farmers. What are the key impediments to growing our own, and what we doing about it?

"The cost of land is astronomical," says Dale Bonar, former executive director of the Hawai'i Island Land Trust, who's become involved in food-sustainability issues. Absent the ability to own land, farmers can only lease, making them reluctant to invest in needed infrastructure. "If you lose the lease, you lose your equity," he says. Maui County's 445-acre Kula Agricultural Park supports twenty-six farmers, offering long-term tenure with reasonable rent, but more affordable land is needed, and Bonar is adamant about the importance of having on-site housing. "You need to have eyes on the land," he says, to protect against theft, vandalism, crop-munching deer and other pests. Bonar's brainchild? The Affordable Farming Land Trust Maui. He explains that landowners could make tax-deductible donations of land or easements to the trust, which would provide long-term leases to farmers. Investments the farmer makes in the land, such as farm dwellings or irrigation improvements, could be passed on to the kids or sold at affordable levels to new farmers. The concept has garnered support from a broad range of agricultural leaders on Maui, but has yet to clear legal hurdles at the county level.

Existing government policies, such as reduced property taxes and lower water rates for agricultural use, are designed to support the industry, but farmers aren't feeling the love. The Maui County Council has been trying to change tax rates to weed out faux farms, but one proposed system could have pushed legitimate operations out of business, says Maui County Agricultural Specialist Kenneth Yamamura. Especially problematic were provisions that required owners to dedicate their land to farming for the next twenty years to avoid paying thousands more in taxes. An older farmer would have to choose between a shorter term of dedication and higher taxes, or selling off. Yamamura says that some properties have dozens of heirs; trying to get seventy people to commit the land to decades of farming would have meant the demise of agriculture for that parcel. After dozens of meetings and hours of impassioned testimony, the bill returned to the drawing table, but left lingering questions about how to prune the system without killing the tree.

At the state level, acreage designated by each county as "Important Agricultural Lands" can qualify for valuable tax credits or loan guaranties, thanks to a 1978 initiative designed to preserve large, contiguous blocks of agricultural land. But according to Maui Planning Director Will Spence, State funding to determine which lands qualify has never materialized. Spence lauds the affordable-farming concept proposed by Bonar, adding that the ability to cluster houses or other infrastructure would create larger contiguous pieces for farming. His department is seeking to expedite farming applications, which currently require navigating three different departments-a daunting process for those who want to add revenue with farm tours or farm-to-table dinners.

The announcement in late 2015 that the state's last sugar plantation was shutting down added a giant question mark to Maui's landscape. While some envision repurposing both the water and land for more diversified operations (albeit in the absence of a clear nod in that direction from landowner Alexander & Baldwin), others predict economic hits to smaller farms that will no longer be able to piggyback on large-scale purchases and shipments from the mainland. At a minimum, the county will lose some 650 jobs in agriculture. Simon Russell, vice chair for the Hawai'i Farmers Union United (HFUU) and a member of the Hawai'i Board of Agriculture, says, "We need to have a well-thought-out, polite conversation" to prevent transforming 36,000 acres of Central Maui into a desert.

Meanwhile, the backs aren't getting any younger: on average, farmers in the state are sixty years old. But there are bright spots. Efforts to grow more farmers, expand local expertise and develop new marketing options seem to be taking root with an abundance of partnerships and programs. The HFUU has a Farm Apprentice Mentoring program that has paired young farmers with experienced elders who share their mana'o (knowledge) and commitment.

The Maui County Farm Bureau's Agriculture in the Classroom project combines field trips, school visits and career-opportunity days to raise awareness about where the corn, kale and burgers on our plates come from. The Bureau also hosts the annual Maui County Agricultural Festival, highlighting the role of agriculture in the community, providing a venue for small-scale growers, and linking farmers and top chefs in cooking demonstrations. Statewide, the new legislatively created Farm-to-School project advocates buying food locally for public schools to help leverage taxpayers' dollars in support of food self-sufficiency; the program coordinator lives on Maui.

The local nonprofit Grow Some Good has been hugely successful: forty-two school gardens across Maui County's three populated islands are getting keiki hands in the soil, lo'i (taro paddies) and compost, while helping them discover the joys of harvesting their own veggies or capturing honey from beehives. Many of the schools integrate lessons from the gardens into the curriculum.

For the backyard gardener and commercial producers alike, the Sustainable Living Institute of Maui at UH-Maui College offers a variety of workshops, from composting, to building a shed, to arborist certification. The college's new Food Innovation Center provides training in food safety, manufacturing practices and marketing. The center also has a certified commercial test kitchen.

On the east end of the island, Hāna Ranch has embraced the challenge of self-sufficiency, pledging to "produce for Maui first," according to Operations Manager Brian McGinness, who says, "Growing calves and selling them to the mainland doesn't contribute to food security." The ranch's "stacked enterprise" approach includes developing new markets to sell its products; its Pā'ia restaurant, Hāna Ranch Provisions, features Hāna-grown produce and 'ono (delicious) beef. McGinnis says they are an experiment in progress; focusing on what grows well here will require fewer inputs like water, fertilizer or pest control.

Besides complying with the annual hurricane-season advice to stock up on batteries, canned fish and rice, what can the rest of us do to simultaneously help avoid and prepare for a run on local food supplies? Maybe start with that breadfruit tree.

Breadfruit, or 'ulu in Hawaiian, is a canoe plant-carried with the Polynesians wherever they journeyed across the Pacific. The fruit is packed full of calories and nutrients; a single tree can drop 450 pounds each season, and it grows to a majestic, productive tree in fewer than ten years. You just need to learn how to cook it; to the uninitiated, 'ulu tastes quite bland. Maui has the most extensive collection of breadfruit species and varieties in the world. The folks at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hāna are happy to share their knowledge and recipes with you.

As happens in Hawai'i, sometimes a passerby or neighbor asks to harvest from the bounty of our yard. Over the years we've happily shared our fat round 'ulu. But if those ships stop coming. . . .

Got an appetite to learn more?

While you're waiting for your 'ulu tree to start dropping fruit, check these resources:

How prepared are you?

1. Do you have a garden with year-round fruits and vegetables, including leafy greens, citrus, papaya or bananas, avocado, taro or breadfruit-and know how to cook them?

2. If your garden produces more than you consume, do you have a sharing network?

3. If you can't have a garden, do you own shares in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) network? (You can share the risks and benefits of supporting a local farmer.)

4. Do you patronize farmers' markets, verifying that the products offered are locally grown?

5. Do you choose local food first, both in your purchases and by asking vendors and restaurants whether they buy local?

6. Do you educate yourself about political and policy issues important to local producers?

7. Do you support one or more of the organizations mentioned in this story?

8. Have you thanked a farmer or rancher recently? No farmer, no food!

How many "yes" answers did you have?

7-8 You and your 'ohana (family) should be fine. You might want to invest in a locked pantry.
4-6 You probably won't starve, but you might consider taking up fishing.
1-3 You could be knee-deep in compost if the ships stop coming. Find a community garden or CSA network to increase your food-security score!

By the Numbers

Since 1970, the state's dairy industry dropped from 120 operations to a lonely 2 on the Big Island, and Hawai'i's ranches now provide just 6 percent of meat consumed locally, down from 30 percent.

Since 1980, total acres farmed diminished 57 percent. By the end of 2016, the state's last sugar plantation will shut down; the fate of those 36,000 acres on Maui is unknown.

Ranchers have seen a 31 percent decrease in pasturelands since 1980; some lie fallow or now grow houses.
Cropland statistics are from the Statewide Agricultural Land Use Baseline 2015, prepared by Jeffrey Melrose, Ryan Perroy and Sylvana Cares at UH-Hilo for the Hawai'i Department of Agriculture.

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Food on Hawaii | Food Security | Sustainable Food Hawaii

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Story by Teya Penniman | Illustrations by Matt Foster Sweet papayas turn gold just outside the window of my north shore home. Kabocha squash hide among dark vines along the drive, while bursts of red chili peppers inflame the bush in the middle of our garden.

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Richard Ha and I climb into the cab of his big pickup and drive up the mountain.

I've come to Hamakua Springs, Ha's 600-acre farm in Pepeekeo on the Big Island, to help see the future of Hawaii agriculture. Ha is a resourceful and outspoken farmer, and I want to hear his views on the increasingly fashionable notion that Hawaii could grow most of its own food. The issue, known variously as food security, food sustainability and food sovereignty, hinges on a few key questions: Can the land and water once devoted to the big sugar and pineapple plantations now support diversified agriculture? What investments and resources are necessary to make Hawaii agriculture more efficient? Finally, can the state's growing welter of small farmers - most with much smaller operations than Hamakua Springs - ever compete with cheap imports from the mainland and the world? With a few important caveats, Ha says he's optimistic about the future, and he wants to show me why.

We drive slowly uphill, traversing the length of the farm. The truck rumbles past packing sheds and outbuildings, past dozens of greenhouses bursting with tomatoes, past neat rows of banana trees and fields of taro, and, higher up, past fallow fields thick with weeds. Finally, in the topmost corner of the farm, we stop near a grove of trees that runs along the edge of a gulch.

Here, a finger of Ha's farm reaches out and touches the Waiaama River. This land, he says, was thrown in almost as an afterthought when he bought the property. The idea was to ensure he would always have access to water. Today, this trickle of water represents the future of the farm - not just for irrigation, but as the centerpiece of Ha's evolving ambitions: hydroelectric power.

Running along the high bank of the gulch is an old concrete irrigation flume, a relic of the defunct Pepeekeo Plantation. A shallow stream chuckles down the flume before spilling into a new concrete diverter.

"I think the general term for this is a headworks," Ha says.

He shows me how, as the water is shunted to the right, it riffles briefly over a fine grate. The grate allows some water to pass over it and sluice back into the Waiaama; the rest, now filtered of debris, falls through the grate into a 22-inch pipe. This buried pipeline is called the millrace. It runs more than a kilometer down the hill to a 20-foot container that houses Ha's new hydro plant. There, the surging water powers a turbine-driven, 115-kilowatt Lincoln generator before tumbling out the spillway into an irrigation ditch.

Ha says this system, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and will likely take years to amortize, can generate nearly twice the 50 kilowatts the farm currently consumes. Although HELCO, the local power company, won't buy his excess power, Ha isn't worried. He plans to use the surplus to transform the way Hamakua Springs does business.

Driving Down the Cost of Energy

Like most farmers, Richard Ha understands how the high cost of energy in Hawaii hampers agriculture. Energy runs your trucks and tractors and, in many cases, the pumps that irrigate your fields or water your cows. Electricity keeps your processing plant humming, cools your chiller and powers your milking barn. Energy runs a farm like it runs any business.

Hawaii farmers are at a particular disadvantage because of the state's reliance on petroleum - a dependence that their farming competitors on the mainland and around the world rarely share.

"More than 70 percent of Hawaii's electricity is generated from oil," Ha says. "On the mainland, it's only 1 percent. That's why we can't compete with anything manufactured on the mainland when it has electricity costs embedded in it." That's why he invested in hydro and why he supports geothermal and other renewable energy sources.

"If we were able to figure out a way to get cheaper electricity, over time, we could get an advantage, and then we could start doing other things."

Ha is still trying to figure out what those "other things" are for his farm. He envisions Hamakua Springs as an agricultural hub that provides space and services to other farmers, such as a certified kitchen, fertilizer manufacturing and a packing plant. All those become possible when energy is cheap, and all affect the price of food.

"In the final analysis," Ha says, "it's all about costs. The customers will go to where it's cheapest. So if our electricity was cheaper, the people would buy the stuff made here."

Raising Cattle in Hawaii or Shipping 'Em Out?

Energy poses a special problem for ranchers. Although more and more people are turning to grass-fed beef - for both health and ethical reasons - most Americans still prefer the marbled meat that comes from grain-finished beef. For the most part, that means a Hawaii rancher who wanted to sell beef here would either have to ship in feed for finishing or grow his own. Shipping grain isn't economical - it takes seven pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef - but growing your own is also impractical. It would require you to ship in fertilizer and pesticide, and it might require irrigation, another energy hog.

So, for the most part, Hawaii ranchers quit finishing their cows here in 1990, after the last feedlot closed on Oahu. "Most ranchers here are cow/calf operators now," says Jason Van Tassell, livestock manager for Parker Ranch. In other words, they keep just enough cows - "stockers" - to breed a herd of calves to sell. "Hawaii's great for that, because we have good grass here. The model has been: You have a calf, and when you wean the calf, it goes to the mainland, where it's grown out and marketed. Then, all that beef gets shipped back for local consumers."

Ranchers were surprised to find they actually made more money this way than finishing the cows themselves. At least for a while.

"That model worked for a couple of years," Van Tassell says, "because the shipping costs were low. But, later, the shipping costs got more expensive. And, remember, it's shipping two ways. It's shipping the calf there, and then shipping the food product back." Those costs cut into ranchers' margins.

Not surprisingly, many of them now are looking at the trend toward grass-fed beef as an option. In fact, many ranches have always retained a few stockers for local finishing. But now, well-known operations, such as Kualoa Ranch and Kuahiwi Ranch, are actively marketing a grass-fed product. And last March, Parker Ranch, the largest ranch in the state, launched the Paniolo Cattle Co., a joint venture with the Ulupono Initiative, Pierre Omidyar's impact-investing arm in Hawaii, to develop a statewide grass-fed beef industry. This is precisely the sort of partnership that will be necessary for local ranchers to meet a significant percentage of the state's protein demand. But it won't be easy.

Van Tassell points out that managing a herd for grass-fed beef is a different operation.

"With a cow/calf operation, you take a cow and she can survive on pretty marginal land. She can raise a calf pretty efficiently. But when we take the calf from the cow, it becomes our job to make sure it has the right nutrition in its diet. The quality of forage has to improve in the stocker stage, which is between 450 pounds and 800 pounds. That's when it needs to be on its very best forage. The plan of nutrition for that animal needs to be on a steady upward incline. We have to be allocating our resources to put the right animal on the right acreage at the right time. That's really what we're striving to do with Paniolo Cattle Co."

Even in such operations, Hawaii is at a disadvantage with ranchers in temperate climates, Van Tassell says.

"On this island, we grow an abundance of grass. But we're in a subtropical area, so the types of grasses that grow here are warm-season grasses. They have a high moisture content, and cattle aren't as efficient on that type of grass." The difference isn't negligible. Range-fed beef in Hawaii gain about a pound a day. In temperate grasses on the mainland they would double that. At a mainland feedlot, they would gain nearly four pounds a day.

"One advantage we do have, though," Van Tassell says, "is our grass grows 12 months out of the year. That makes it economical, from a business point of view, so we're able to graze these cattle here."

But Parker Ranch's Paniolo Cattle Co. is still in its early stages. It has only about 1,400 stockers in the grass-fed beef program, out of the ranch's herd of about 40,000 animals. If market demand materializes, the company plans to increase that to 4,000 head or so - still only 10 percent of the total operation.

To understand why ranchers are reluctant to go all in on grass finishing, look at the numbers. Jill Andrade-Mattos, president of Hawaii Big Island Beef, sketches those numbers out from the perspective of both a rancher and a processer.

"These weaners, they come in at 400 to 550 pounds," she says. "Then, the rancher keeps them another six months and sends them off to the mainland. So, he makes $780 to $1000 per animal in just six months. But you've got to hold grass-finished animals for close to a year and a half before they're ready to go to the processor." When the rancher does the math, the numbers don't add up.

Jason Moniz, a state veterinarian and owner of KK Ranch, tallies the figures for a hypothetical 700-pound steer at the current price of $1.65 a pound.

"They're making $1,155 on a grass-finished animal, if they keep it another year and a half. But, in that time, you could have raised another calf and a half. So, you can take the $780 for a calf and multiply by two and a half. That's $1,950." In other words, the rancher loses almost $800 of potential income on one hypothetical 700-pound steer. It's not hard to see why grass finishing remains a hard sell for most ranchers.

That's not to say there isn't some reason for optimism in the grass-fed beef industry. First, the demand, while still small as a percentage of the total market, is real. Whole Foods Market sometimes pays as much as $2.00 a pound, which is more than ranchers get for calves.

There are also promising developments for processors. For example, Hawaii Big Island Beef, which runs the Hawaii Beef Slaughterhouse, has worked with partners such as Ulupono and landlord Kamehameha Schools to improve the neighboring pastures using irrigation, fertilizer and new forms of forage. The idea is that ranchers can sell their weaners to the processor for finishing.
All that is critical for the state's limited number of processors, most of which, like Hawaii Beef Slaughterhouse, are underused.

"I have fixed costs in the plant," says Andrade-Mattos. "My refrigeration, my pumping and my well - those are all fixed costs, so, no matter what I do, those costs are there. In order to lower the cost per animal, I have to increase throughput. If I have that throughput, I can pass along more money to the ranchers."

Technology Is Crucial to Sustainability

Closely tied to the energy challenge is the issue of technology. Most of the increases in productivity (and reductions in cost) in agriculture over the last century have been because of advancements in technology. That's just as true in Hawaii as anywhere else.

John Cross, the land manager for Olson Trust and, before that, for the Big Five company C. Brewer, likes to chart the role technology has played here. "There's no farmer on this earth that's smarter at growing tropical crops than the Hawaiian farmer," he says. "We have an agricultural college. We're affluent. We know what we're doing. We're smart. We can take a crop from the 19th century and turn it into a 21st century crop within a couple of years. With the university and the Department of Agriculture and the tenacity and willpower of the Hawaiian agriculturalist, we are world leaders. The problem is that the rest of the world comes over here and copies us and takes that knowledge back to Taiwan or the Philippines or Thailand, and now we're battling against our own knowledge being used against us in a Third-World country."

He gives examples, such as phaelianopsis orchids, sugar cane and even macadamia nuts, for which Hawaii farmers developed the varieties of crops and methods of growing, only to be out-competed by copycat farmers in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.

Nevertheless, he says, technology is still our edge.

The problem is that today's technology is often too capital intensive for Hawaii's small farmers. It's also often not efficient on a small scale.

Dean Okimoto, owner of Nalo Farms in Waimanalo, gives an example. "About seven years ago, I went to see the Dole Fresh processing facility in Salinas, Calif. The facility is 6 acres under roof. It has 24 wash lines, with each line producing 55 bags of greens a minute. So, how can small guys compete?"

A local example is Larry Jefts, who came to Hawaii from the mainland 40 years ago and brought some mainland economies of scale with him. With thousands of acres in production on multiple islands, his Sugarland Farms is probably the largest farm in Hawaii. Because of that scale, he can use technology like GPS-guided combines that would make no sense on the average 5-acre farm. That way, he's able to drive down his costs and, for some crops, even compete with mainland producers on price.

But agricultural technology is about more than machinery, Jefts says. "Here, we find academics working on things important to us and we partner with them. We provide the infrastructure for their research trials, and we get to use the technology they develop." That allows Jefts to introduce new crops or improved processes.

Jefts points to the Big Island Dairy on the Hamakua Coast as another example of capitalizing on technology. It's another mainland company that made a big investment because it saw opportunity in Hawaii. It reportedly spent $14 million to buy the old Island Dairy and then added more investments. According to Jefts, it also built a big, modern milking barn. Each cow there has a chip implanted in its ear so sensors can track its productivity. That technology made the Hamakua operation plausible: The company realized Hawaii's dairy cows were under-producing and thought it could do better.

Maybe you see a trend here: big mainland farmers using the advantages of technology and scale to make farming in Hawaii work. Jimmy Nakatani, executive director of the state's Agribusiness Development Corp., gives another example: Stephen Pianowski, a mainland farmer who set up a bean operation on Kauai.

"The other farmers were skeptical," Nakatani says. "The first question they asked him was: 'Who's going to pick your beans?' And he said, 'Don't worry, I have machines to do that.' "

If Hawaii is really going to grow its agricultural base, Jefts says, it's going to be because of people like himself - people with the capital to invest in technology and large-scale operations. "We're not going to build that kind of agriculture with 800 small farmers," he says. "It's going to be commercial operations with state-of-the-art agriculture. This is not a popular position, but we have to be efficient at what we're going to do or we're not going to be competitive."

Jason Van Tassell, from Parker Ranch, puts it another way: "When the general public thinks of sustainable farming, I think they see a guy out in a field hand-picking vegetables and hoeing weeds. But I think sustainability means using every bit of technology that's out there, putting it to use to improve productivity. We've been around since 1845. That seems sustainable to me."

Plenty of Land, But Not ENOUGH Farming Infrastructure

Of course, the issues of energy and technology are moot if we don't have enough land and water to feed ourselves. But, first, what do we mean when we say "feed ourselves?" By some estimates, we import 90 percent of our food and export 80 percent of our agricultural production. How can we make a dent in those numbers?

"Step inside a Safeway and see what a supermarket really sells," says Richard Ha. "Most of it is some sort of processed food. It's dried or frozen, made or manufactured somewhere else. If you look at the produce department as a percentage of the entire store, it's not very large." Most of what's in that supermarket will never be replaced by Hawaii products, even the basic food stuffs. No one expects that Hawaii farmers will ever produce the wheat, corn and rice that make up so much of our locally consumed calories. So, as Ha suggests, when we speak of "feeding ourselves," what we really mean is fresh produce and a few value-added products. That's a smaller nut to crack; we already produce relatively high percentages of the fruits and vegetables we consume here.

With that limitation, let's ask the question again: Do we have enough land to feed ourselves? Most experts think so. Giorgio Caldarone, regional asset manager for Kamehameha Schools, the largest agricultural landholder in the state, says, "We've heard there's more than enough land here to feed ourselves if we wanted to."

Sydney Keliipuleole, operations director for the land assets division at Kamehameha, goes even further.

"I think we have enough acres just on Oahu," he says. "People estimate it would take between 3,000 acres and 30,000 acres to do it. There's all that state land in the central part of Oahu. If we were to replace all of that with commodity-level farms, we could get pretty close. Not including beef. Hawaii Island is the key to beef."

The problem with much of the best land in the state, Caldarone says, isn't quantity, it's neglect.

"As the plantation era sort of came to a close, with the end of sugar and pineapple, large landscapes reverted back to the landowners in various states of disrepair. And, for those last 20 or 30 years, the writing was on the wall, so the plantations weren't making investments in things like irrigation systems. By the time we got the properties back, a lot of the systems were in pretty bad shape," says Caldarone.

Since then, Kamehameha has invested heavily in that infrastructure on Oahu. It has spent millions of dollars on the irrigation systems and roads for its properties on the North Shore and in Punaluu. It has also been investing in farmers, trying hard to identify and support people who can work all that land.

That's not to say Kamehameha Schools is overconfident. Keliipuleole points out that a lot of the non-farm infrastructure necessary for food self-sufficiency is missing.

"That's the processing, the value-added services, the delivery, the market connections." All that infrastructure, he says, has to be in place before we can address the food-security question. On the whole, though, Kamehameha seems confident that its investment in agriculture will pay dividends.

Ulupono's Kyle Datta is also confident. "Do we have enough land to feed ourselves? The answer is unequivocally 'yes.' Of the food we eat that is fresh food, outside of the grains and the oils that go with the grains, a significant portion can be locally grown at prices affordable to everybody." But Datta adds a pair of provisos: "We have enough land and water to achieve that - if we use some best practices in terms of agricultural productivity, and if we honor and respect how land is zoned."

Ulupono is focused on both those caveats. On the issue of best practices, for example, Ulupono plans to borrow grass-fed-dairy technology from New Zealand for its own dairy operation on Kauai. Similarly, it has worked with University of Texas researchers to study how to best use Hawaii's water resources. And, as we've seen, it has done market studies to assess the demand for homegrown food in Hawaii, an issue important to any local farmer.

On the issue of zoning, the most famous controversies, of course, surround urban development of agricultural lands - places like Hoopili and Koa Ridge on Oahu. Advocacy groups, like the Sierra Club and the Hawaii Food Policy Council, view the loss of these important agricultural lands (a descriptive term that sometimes overlaps with the legal classification, Important Agricultural Lands) as catastrophic. Even if the agriculture system is able to weather the loss of agricultural hot spots, like Hoopili, the controversy highlights some of the inherent conflicts between agriculture and development. For example, if landowners believe they may one day be able to convert their inexpensive farmlands into valuable subdivisions, they're unlikely to offer long-term leases to tenant farmers. Absent long-term leases, farmers are reluctant to invest in infrastructure and often unable to get loans. Many of Hawaii's small farmers are on year-to-year, even month-to-month, leases - hardly encouraging for a young farmer.

The encroachment of development on agricultural lands creates other problems. When Ulupono tried to help revive the state's moribund dairy industry with a startup, 583-acre, grass-fed dairy on Kauai, its Mahaulepu neighbors, including the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort, balked at the idea. Even though the property was zoned agricultural, and most neighbors were required to get variances to build in the area, they objected to some of the nuisances of being next door to a working dairy. Ulupono relented, announcing it would reduce the initial size of the herd from 1,800 cows to fewer than 700.

The same kind of scenario has played itself out in the GMO debates and the pesticide fights. Whatever side you take in these arguments, it's clear that farming and development don't mix. As suburban sprawl moves people closer to agricultural areas, conflict is inevitable. So, while we may have plenty of farmland available, the people of Hawaii are less and less likely to want large-scale farming in their neighborhoods. That makes the question, "Do we have enough land?" something of a red herring.

Economics Suggests Hawaii Should Specialize

Maybe the question isn't, "Can we feed ourselves?" but "Should we feed ourselves?"

According to modern, liberal economic theory, maybe not. As pointed out by Peter Garrod, an agricultural economist and the former vice chancellor for research at UH, individuals, companies and even countries reach their greatest efficiency when they specialize.

"Most of your readers, I suspect, are specialized. They do one thing quite well, and they use their earnings from that to buy lots of other goods. If they tried to produce everything they wanted, they probably couldn't do everything very well." The same is true for countries and states. The argument is quite simple: If we can buy cheaper food elsewhere, we should focus our efforts on more profitable activities.

It's not that Garrod thinks we should give up on agriculture; we should just be realistic about our goals.

"Can we feed ourselves?" Garrod says. "If all we did was produce food for ourselves, we would be able to come close. But we would become an agrarian society. On the other hand, could we feed ourselves more than we do now? Absolutely. But even that probably involves a change in consumer values, which I think is already occurring. Buy local, fresh foods, farmers markets, grass-fed beef - these are all trends that allow us to produce more of our own food. But, what proportion of our food should we produce? Well, we're going to have a hard time if we want wheat and rice and all those other things we enjoy eating. I don't think we're going to produce those here."

Economics does suggest what kinds of agriculture, other than the obvious export crops, make the most sense in Hawaii.

"Transportation costs do make the transaction costs higher for importers," Garrod says. "This aids local producers. If we had essentially free trade with the mainland, a lot of our local producers would have a hard time competing. We have expensive land, expensive water, expensive labor. But we don't have free trade; we have a pretty substantial transportation cost. That gives local producers a sort of tariff protection. Goods come here with the cost of transportation added on. We don't have to pay the transportation cost, so we can compete with that. Our products can be fresher."

For Larry Jefts, that calculus is an explicit part of his decision on what crops to grow: If the shipping costs for mainland producers exceed the added cost of growing that product in Hawaii, it's a potentially profitable crop. For instance, that's why Jefts grows a lot of watermelons.

Anthony Aalto, secretary of the Sierra Club's Oahu Group, points out there are other economic advantages to the grow local movement. For example, it allows us to capitalize on the Hawaii brand for export or for sale to tourists.

"We have the ability," Aalto says, "to grow things that can then be processed to generate added value. If we grow cacao then we could then turn it into chocolate. And because Hawaii in and of itself is such a unique brand and has such an image attached to it, organic chocolate grown in Hawaii is instantly going to have a cachet and a brand and a value attached to it that can generate huge amount of income to bring back to the state."

Even the food grown for local consumption has important economic impacts at home, Aalto says. "When you talk about import replacement, you're talking about dollars that are going out to the mainland, or to Asia or somewhere, that could stay here. Every dollar spent on a food item that's grown in Hawaii is a dollar that doesn't go to California and it stays to boost the local economy."

Yet, most economists believe the benefits from specialization and trade outweigh the costs.

"The basic issue," Garrod says, "is that we could become more sustainable if we were willing to decrease our lifestyle. 'Decrease' is probably the wrong word, but it helps to remember that trade increases total social wealth. The more sustainable we became, the less time we would have to make money doing something else."

Government's Role, Though Diminished, Remains Crucial

If the idea is to increase Hawaii's production of food, what role does government play in that process? Well, for one thing, it's shrinking.

"Do you know what the percentage of the state budget the Department of Agriculture gets?" says Dean Okimoto. "It's 0.7 percent - not even 1 percent. Somebody recently told me that, in the 1960s and 1970s, it was about 15 percent." To Okimoto, this decline reflects similar changes in the Legislature.

"Did you know, in the 1960s, the majority of our legislators were farmers. So they understood agriculture and could help agriculture." Today, Okimoto says, only one or two legislators are true farmers. "So, it's difficult for these guys to understand the issues. And even if they do understand, if there's a vocal minority out there, they will kowtow to the vocal minority."

Others are more upbeat about the role of government. On the Hamakua Coast, ranchers such as Jason Moniz praise the state government for allowing ranchers to buy discounted water from the Hamakua Ditch. Starting in January, they'll pay 25 cents per thousand gallons. That's still higher than the 10 cents they were seeking, but it's low enough to start using pasture irrigation in a few key areas.

John Cross, at Olsen Trust, highlights another important point about government's role. "We have a department that's run by one of us," he says. "Who gets appointed to head the Department of Agriculture? It's not a politician; it's a farmer. The current guy, Scott Enright, used to grow guava and, before that, sugar."

Similarly, Jimmy Nakatani, the director of the Agribusiness Development Corp., the other key agency promoting diversified agriculture in the state, is a former farmer and former chair of the state Department of Agriculture. At least, the bureaucrats are technically savvy.

That's especially important at the ADC, which was created in 1994 to help Hawaii agriculture find its way after the demise of sugar and pineapple. Its primary mission is to acquire and manage key agricultural infrastructure - irrigation systems and high-grade lands - that were once the purview of the big plantations. Nakatani, who took over as executive director in 2011, gives a few examples of how the agency works.

"One of the first projects ADC started with was the Waiahole Ditch," he says. This was the controversial case over the diversion of water from Windward Oahu to the big sugar plantations on the Leeward side. With the demise of Big Sugar, communities like Waiahole and Waikane wanted that water to remain on the Windward Side and flow through their valleys. Although cultural and environmental advocates prevailed in getting more water for loi and higher stream flow, Waiahole Ditch still delivers water to some of the largest farms in the state in Leeward Oahu.

"I think that went very well," Nakatani says, "if you look at the number of jobs that are there because the ditch is there. I always look at it as 1,500 to 2,000 jobs, or $150 million worth of business for the state. It doesn't seem like that because it's kind of an innocent-looking ditch - plus an amazing tunnel - running from one side of the island to another. But it services the prison. It services Mililani mortuary. It services Mililani Golf Course. And, of course, it services a lot of farms. I'm not sure how many farms, but it includes Larry Jefts and Aloun Farms, of course Monsanto and Syngenta, and then there are a lot of small farms at Mililani Agricultural Park. It's quite an amazing system."

ADC also oversees a large and somewhat controversial project on Kauai. "In Kekaha," Nakatani says, "in the Mana plains, we've got approximately 4,000 to 5,000 acres of good land. Most of the land is currently occupied by the seed corn companies, who came in and took care of the infrastructure. We got criticism for that, but you have to have transition. You have to have resources to help you."

Now, a couple of large vegetable farms have subleased land from the seed-corn companies. It's a symbiotic relationship, Nakatani says. Because of the way seed corn is grown, with extensive buffer zones and long fallow periods, as much as 80 percent of the Kekaha land is unused at any given time. Nakatani hopes to eventually see 500 or 1,000 acres of diversified agriculture there on the Mana plains.

A Model for the Future

The jewel in the ADC crown is probably the Whitmore Project in Central Oahu. Like many plantation towns, Wahiawa went through a precipitous economic decline when the Dole Plantation closed in 1991. The Whitmore Project, the dream child of state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, is an ambitious attempt to take the old, derelict pieces of the pineapple era and use them to create a thriving diversified-agricultural hub. It's had a promising start.

At the core of the Whitmore Project is the 1,700-acre Galbraith Estate, which was purchased in 2012 with funds from the state, the City and County of Honolulu, the U.S. Army, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and D.R. Horton Schuler Division. This acquisition gave the ADC 1,200 acres of long-fallow land (OHA received the other 500), which it has already begun to clear and lease to farmers. ADC is also planning and developing the necessary irrigation systems.

The Whitmore Project isn't just another way for the state to lease agricultural lands. The state also authorized the purchase of an additional 24-acre parcel to serve as an "Ag-Tech" hub, as well as an old industrial warehouse in downtown Wahiawa to be used for packing and processing. In addition, ADC has partnered with the Hawaii Housing Finance Development Corp. to acquire a small parcel of urban land near Schofield Barracks. Dela Cruz envisions this property, adjacent to the area's only high-rise, as the site of high-density workforce housing. There's more in the works, including the imminent purchase of 20,000 acres from Dole Food for $175 million.

All these acquisitions surround downtown Wahiawa and Whitmore Village, the former plantation town across the gulch. Dela Cruz believes that, by clustering all these agricultural services, ADC can create the right environment for diversified agriculture to thrive. It certainly seems to solve many of the most persistent problems for farmers: short-term leases, distance from market, access to processing and packing, even capital.

Dela Cruz cites the example of Ho Farms.

"They have 50 acres, more or less, in Kahuku, and they were selling their produce to Costco. But, when Costco started to implement new food-safety rules, almost overnight 80 percent of their production was lost. But, because they're on a short-term lease at Kahuku, they cannot get a loan to build a food safety facility. As part of the Whitmore Project, though, they can get a long-term lease from ADC." That gives them land, access to capital and proximity to their major markets.

The Ho family is also leasing an old warehouse in the Ag-Tech Hub and refurbishing it as a modern food-safety facility. This project will likely cost more than $1 million, which the Hos will fund using rent credits from ADC. In other words, their rent is reduced for a certain time to help defray the cost of the build-out.

The beauty of this approach, Dela Cruz says, is there are no out-of-pocket costs to ADC. "By using rent/lease credits, ADC doesn't have to subsidize anything." In fact, ADC has a comparatively small operating budget, generating most of its own income from rents and fees. (Acquisitions, though, are usually paid for with state capital spending or general-purpose bonds.)

The most remarkable feature of the Whitmore Project is that so much of it has either already happened, or the funds have already been appropriated. That's largely due to Dela Cruz's work, both as a state senator and, before that, as a city councilman.

Aware of the politics involved, Dela Cruz has scrupulously cultivated partnerships with the agencies and people that can impact the project's success. He has conducted over 70 site visits and tours for the board members and key leaders of these organizations - not to mention press tours and community outreach. Now, each of these organizations has a role to play in the Whitmore Project: The Hawaii Public Housing Authority and HHFDC will help with workforce housing; the Department of Education will help with workforce readiness; the UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources will help with research and development and extension services; the High Technology Development Corp. will help with food-safety applications. At least 12 agencies have a stake in the project's success.

In short, building a diversified agriculture hub takes a lot of footwork and coordination.

Not everyone is happy, of course. ADC director Jimmy Nakatani says some people have complained that the ADC favors larger farms, which don't need the help as much as the small ones.

"When somebody asks, 'What about the new farmers?' I say, 'New farmers are the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture.' That's just the way it goes. ADC is about development. I don't want anybody who doesn't have any experience, because the likelihood of them succeeding is not very good."

Some farmers have also complained the project is too focused on one area. But Dela Cruz views the Whitmore Project as a template for other regions to apply according to their own circumstances. Nakatani agrees.
"If you look at Wailua (on Oahu's North Shore), there's an industrial area; there's agricultural land surrounding it. And it's probably better off than Whitmore because Wailua was sugar, so it had better irrigation."

"I can also see it in Pahala, on the Big Island," he says. "It's far away from anything. In fact, that's even a better template. There is infrastructure over there. There's development with agricultural land surrounding it. There's a hub for marshaling, so if you have to go sell your produce to Hilo, you just load up in one central area and one guy makes the run, not 20 of them."

Of course, what these communities need might not be more agricultural resources, but a resourceful and energetic politician like Dela Cruz.

If all of these elements - energy, technology, coordination and more - come together, they probably won't be enough to make Hawaii completely self-sufficient in food - something we haven't seen since the days of the Hawaiian kingdom. But that doesn't mean we can't rejigger the system to make local farming more productive and enable it to grab a bigger share of locally eaten fruit, vegetables and other foods. Sometimes, that may mean building a Whitmore Project or farmers coming together in a cooperative. It could be an organization like Ulupono or Kamehameha Schools absorbing some of the costs of research or infrastructure. Ultimately, whatever it is, it has to make farming more profitable if we're going to grow significantly more food in Hawaii.

"That's something I learned a long time ago," Richard Ha likes to say. "Food security has to do with farming. If the farmers can make money, farmers will farm."

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Richard Ha and I climb into the cab of his big pickup and drive up the mountain. I've come to Hamakua Springs, Ha's 600-acre farm in Pepeekeo on the Big Island, to help see the future of Hawaii agriculture.

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HONOLULU-When my Airbus touched down at Honolulu International Airport, I was one of 30,843 people to arrive in Hawaii on a June day. As a crush of tourists mobbed rental car counters and taxi stands, massive container ships steamed into the Port of Honolulu just across the harbor, carrying some of the 6 million pounds of food shipped to Hawaii every day to feed the state's 1.4 million residents and 8 million annual visitors. On nearby runways, cargo planes landed packed with fresh fruit and other perishable items that wouldn't survive the 2,500-mile ocean voyage. The world's most isolated chain of islands, Hawaii imports nearly 90 percent of its food at a cost of more than $3 billion a year.

There's a high environmental price to be paid for relying on a 747 or 40,000-ton ship as your food truck. The largest cargo vessels can emit as much pollution as 50 million cars in a year, according to a 2009 study, and shipping accounts for about 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Just consider the carbon footprint of putting a Hawaiian steak on local plates: Tens of thousands of calves are raised on the Big Island of Hawaii every year and then loaded on barges to the mainland. There they're fattened, slaughtered, shrink-wrapped, and shipped back across the Pacific to the islands. Meanwhile, pests and parasites that hitch a ride on this nonstop caravan of cargo ships are decimating Hawaiian wildlife, forests, and farm fields at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

But if the status quo is bad, what happens if the ships stop coming could be far worse.

"I think there's a sense here in Hawaii that if we have a hurricane or a tsunami, how long could we last with our food supply?" said Jenai Wall, chief executive of Foodland, Hawaii's largest supermarket chain, which relies on imports for about 80 percent of its sales. She paused. "Not very long."

Probably less than a week, actually.

"If something catastrophic happened on the mainland, we'd have about three days of food in the stores," said Una Greenaway, a farmer on the Big Island. "We're very, very food insecure here, but we don't have to be."

Greenaway, who grows coffee, cacao, apples, bananas, and pineapples on a five-acre farm, is part of a burgeoning local food movement in Hawaii that's attempting to reverse decades of deepening dependence on imports. In recent years, there's been a flowering of farms, farmers markets, and eat-local campaigns across the islands. Not all that different, in other words, from what's going on in the crunchier parts of the mainland. But this is no foodie fad. It's state policy. As globalization and climate change upend worldwide food production, Hawaii is moving to foster homegrown agriculture in a way that could be a model for others. One key: kicking the state's severe addiction to another carbon-intensive import-oil.
The Sustainable Past
The first food imported to Hawaii arrived in the canoes of ancient Polynesians, who began to colonize the uninhabited islands between 500 and 700 C.E. Onboard were the starchy staple taro, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, coconuts, breadfruit, bananas, pigs, and chickens. Those crops and others became the staples that, by the time of European contact in 1778, supported a population historians estimate was between 150,000 and 1 million. Without access to draft animals, wheels, or metal tools, the ancient Hawaiians developed the ahupua'a, a sophisticated and sustainable agricultural system that ran from the ocean to upland valleys. The Hawaiians harvested the bounty of the sea and grew taro and other crops on irrigated inland fields. The ahupua'a produced enough food to leave even commoners the leisure time to surf.

Diseases introduced by Europeans decimated the native Hawaiians, and by the mid-19th century the ahupua'a had been supplanted by vast American-owned sugarcane and pineapple plantations and cattle ranches, a trend accelerated by the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and annexation of the islands in the 1890s. By 1936, only 37 percent of Hawaii's food supply was locally grown, according to University of Hawaii researchers.

Food imports soared in the '60s when the advent of jet travel triggered a tourism boom that would become the mainstay of the Hawaiian economy. Between 1960 and 2005, Hawaii lost half its farmland as Big Ag began to abandon sugarcane and pineapple plantations, unable to compete against growers elsewhere. "Although the decline in farm acreage to present has not yet reached the 'critical point' where Hawaii's food security would be threatened, the trend is a warning sign for Hawaii's future food security," said a 2007 report issued by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

By 2010, Hawaii was producing only 30.1 percent of the fresh vegetables, 38.1 percent of the fresh fruits, and 9.3 percent of the protein consumed on the islands, according to a 2013 study by University of Hawaii researchers PingSun Leung and Matthew Loke. Local dairies supplied all of Hawaii's milk in the early 1980s; by 2010, most were out of business after a federal court ordered the state to allow imports. Today, 86 percent of milk on store shelves comes from the mainland. Seafood has sustained Hawaiians for millennia, and people here consume nearly twice as much fish per capita as those on the mainland. Yet, Hawaii flies in about half of its seafood, mainly from overseas.

Even taro is imported.

A staple food of the ancient Hawaiians, the starchy tuber played a central role in their creation myths and spirituality. "The latest data we have for taro is that we're consuming 332,000 pounds of fresh taro a year but are only producing 100,000 pounds, so we import the rest," said Leung.
Powered by Water
So why doesn't Hawaii grow more of its own food? For one thing, huge swaths of agricultural land remain locked up in now-defunct plantations or are controlled by companies that grow genetically engineered seeds, one of the state's largest exports-the pineapple of the 21st century. What farmland is available comes with hard-to-get and high-priced leases. Farmworkers are also difficult to find and command higher wages than on the mainland, according to Leung, who studies the economics of Hawaiian agriculture and food imports. And just about everything else used in farming-energy, fertilizer-costs more here and must be imported. Globalization and free trade agreements, meanwhile, have made some imported food cheaper than homegrown, even if it does have to be shipped across the world.

You can see those challenges-and the future of local agriculture-on the Big Island of Hawaii, the cradle of ancient Hawaiian civilization. The ahupua'a fed Hawaiians for more than a thousand years, but sugarcane's reign lasted fewer than 150. The last of the single-crop plantations that dominated this island for much of the 19th and 20th centuries shut down in 1994.

A cornucopia of crops has blossomed on the Big Island since the collapse of big sugar. As I drove through a vast former plantation north of Hilo, the main town on the wet east side of the island, I passed fields planted with cucumbers, bell peppers, taro, and other fruits and vegetables. Off a one-lane road is Hamakua Springs Country Farms, where Richard Ha and three generations of his family grow bananas on 600 acres carved from the plantation. When oil prices skyrocketed in the summer of 2008 before the global financial crash, Ha said he realized it would be impossible to foster sustainable agriculture without sustainable energy.

Hawaii burns imported oil to generate 70 percent of its electricity, which is not only a dirty way to produce power but also makes the state-and farmers-extremely vulnerable to wild swings in energy costs. "Electricity prices were scary," said Ha, dressed in shorts and a rumpled polo as we stood in the open-air packinghouse at Hamakua where workers clean and package bananas. "Fertilizer prices went up, and my workers were asking to borrow money for gas so they could get to work. Anything we can do to lower our cost by moving away from oil is going to start to give us more of an advantage in agriculture."

I think there's a sense here in Hawaii that if we have a hurricane or a tsunami, how long could we last with our food supply? Not very long.

Jenai Wall, chief executive of Foodland supermarkets

He gestured across the floor toward a forklift and a pile of pallets. "Even moving a pallet around the farm is based on diesel."

These days, though, the power lies in Ha's hands. From his iPhone he controls a small hydroelectric power plant that he installed on the farm last year. We climbed into Ha's pickup and drove up a red dirt road that winds up the windward slopes of Mauna Kea. Past fallow fields at the top of the farm lies a tributary of a river that flows down the volcano. Back in plantation days, a flume carried harvested sugarcane down the mountain to a mill. The flume is still here but now channels water to an underground pipe that flows into a small building where the constant stream powers a turbine that generates 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

That's enough energy to run the entire farm, including power-hogging refrigerated storage rooms, with 60 kilowatt-hours left over. "Our electricity bill used to be $12,000 a month," Ha said. "The payment on the hydro is only $6,000."

With all that extra carbon-free electricity on tap, Ha said he's considering how to expand his farm, perhaps to raise tilapia, mushrooms, and more. He argues that if the Big Island made more use of its geothermal resources-the world's largest active volcano, Mauna Loa, sits to the southwest-that would result in lower agricultural costs and encourage more people to farm.

"Things are changing," Ha said. "We were at an Italian restaurant yesterday, and it was all sourced locally. It makes you so happy to see that."

Indeed, before meeting Ha, I stopped for a late lunch at the Sweet Cane Café in Hilo, where the ingredients come straight from the owners' organic farm. There was a line out the door as surfers, soldiers, and security guards queued up for taro burgers and blueberry-coconut-sugarcane smoothies.

At the Hamakua packinghouse, bunches of newly picked bananas hung from a conveyor built from parts salvaged from a slaughterhouse that shut down as ranchers began to ship their calves to the mainland for processing. "It sounds unreasonable, but it's more profitable from the ranchers' point of view," Leung said of the long trip "local" beef has to make.

That's because Hawaii's climate is not hospitable to growing hay and corn for cattle, and importing cow chow is actually more expensive then exporting cows. But the Big Island's pasture does grow year-round, and one of the state's biggest ranches has launched a joint venture to raise grass-fed cattle, no barge required.

The growing taste for homegrown food could help alleviate environmental disasters spawned by Hawaii's dependency on imports. As we drove across the upper reaches of the farm, Ha pointed out stands of dead Ohia trees. The native trees, which shelter birds and other wildlife and are a keystone of the Hawaiian ecosystem, have been dying in droves from what scientists have identified as a fungal disease. "Although we can't be 100 percent certain that the strain is nonnative, all evidence currently suggests that it must be a nonnative introduction to Hawaii," Flint Hughes, an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Hilo, said in an email. Reducing food imports could lower the risk of such epidemics, he continued, though he noted that pests could also arrive on the island in a shipment of nonfood plants and soil.
A Silicon Valley for Ag
The day before I arrived in Hawaii, Gov. David Ige signed legislation committing the state, which pays the nation's highest electricity rates, to obtain 100 percent of its energy from solar, wind, and other renewable sources by 2045. That target dovetails with another state policy to promote independence by expanding and diversifying local agriculture and reducing the islands' reliance on imported food.

Some 20 miles north of Honolulu, the government is attempting to create a Silicon Valley of agriculture by buying up abandoned pineapple plantations and transforming the former company town of Wahiawa into an ag-tech hub for central Oahu.

"When I was a kid, this place was bustling," said state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, 41, as he piloted his gray Toyota pickup around the town of 18,000 where his grandfather worked as a truck driver for the Dole pineapple plantation after emigrating from the Philippines.

The agricultural estate began withering away decades ago, and the last big plantation shut down in the early 1990s. For the past several years, Dela Cruz has been the driving force behind what is called the Whitmore Project, named after a former plantation workers' camp on the outskirts of town. State and local agencies pitched in $25 million to buy 1,700 acres of former pineapple land bordering Wahiawa that will be subdivided and leased to Oahu farmers. The state also bought 24 acres in Whitmore Village, the former workers' camp, and a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Wahiawa that will be retrofitted for food packing and processing.

"The industry to revitalize the economy is ag," said Dela Cruz, who wears shorts and a T-shirt and talks a mile a minute as we pull into Whitmore Village. "The idea here is to have this be a hub for all the packing and processing you need, as well as to be a retail hub. If you're a farmer who leases the ag land we're starting to buy, your operations would be here, and there would be no need to build new infrastructure."

One of the first tenants at Whitmore Village is Bullit Hatcheries. On the day we visited, Austin Kanamu, son of owner Alex Kanamu, was tending large white tanks of tilapia. Other tanks were overflowing with hydroponically grown watercress and strawberries. Blueberries grow elsewhere on the property. A warehouse next to the tilapia farm is set to become a processing plant, which would allow Bullit to sell packaged fish to supermarkets and government agencies. "One reason we came here is that right now there's no place that has processing for fish," said Austin.

Dela Cruz's vision is to create more earning potential for Hawaiian agriculture by encouraging farmers to produce value-added products, such as the juices, jams, and syrups that are now almost entirely imported. Dole, for instance, grows 40 acres of cacao nearby but ships the beans to the mainland to be processed into chocolate.

"It's all about the margin," he said as we stopped by an area coffee grower's retail outlet that sits surrounded by vacant farmland. The place was packed with tourists sipping Hawaiian-grown and -roasted coffee while shopping for souvenirs. "When you do this, you help to start to help other industries," Dela Cruz said as he picked up a small blue-glazed coffee mug handmade by a local artisan. "It's $25! Oh my god." He spied a jar of jam. "Look at that-fifteen bucks," he said. "A police officer in Whitmore Village makes this in his spare time. They can't keep it in stock. You can't get that kind of margin at a farmers market."
Grown Here, Not Flown Here
One thing Hawaiian farmers don't have to worry about is demand for local food. "We try to source everything we can local, and if we can't find it here, then we bring it in from the mainland," Wall, Foodland's chief executive, said at the supermarket chain's Honolulu headquarters. "Our produce team has worked with a lot of local farmers, even asking them to grow things for us that we have historically had to buy from mainland sources."

More than 20 percent of the items on Foodland store shelves are locally grown or made. At the company's Aina Haina store in Honolulu, a banner that reads "Locally Grown in Hawaii" flies over a produce section featuring taro, cassava, peppers, okra, turnip, string beans, red cabbage, and asparagus. An orange tag tells shoppers that the luau leaves, for instance, came from Twin Bridge Farms on Oahu, while the long beans were grown on the North Shore at Ho Farms, which plans to start farming at Whitmore. Throughout the store, orange tags identify every Hawaiian product, from soy sauce and bread to chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. More than 200,000 people have pledged to eat homegrown food one day a week as part of Foodland's "Eat Local Tuesday" campaign.

"It's good for the economy," said Wall, "and we also feel that Hawaii depends so much on food from elsewhere that the more we can get here, the more sustainable we'll help our community to be."

How self-sufficient can Hawaii become? The University of Hawaii's Leung said the state now produces about 80 percent of its tomatoes and all of its watercress, and other homegrown vegetables are cost-competitive with mainland varieties.

"I think we're doing quite well, because there's a lot of momentum and people are aware of local food and are willing to support that," he said. "But when people talk about being 100 percent food self-sufficient, that's pie in the sky. There has to be a balance in reality. Hawaii is part of a country, and we don't set import rules."

"Some food we're never going to grow, like wheat and rice," he added.

Who needs wheat and rice, asks Greenaway, who has been farming on the Big Island for nearly 40 years. (Disclosure: Greenaway's daughter is a contributor to TakePart.) Taro and breadfruit, which sustained the ancient Hawaiians, can serve as locally grown substitutes, she argued.

"We can grow all our food here, but we need to teach people how to grow food for themselves and also how to eat it," she said.

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Food Independence Could Be a Matter of Survival for the U.S.' Most Isolated State

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HONOLULU-When my Airbus touched down at Honolulu International Airport, I was one of 30,843 people to arrive in Hawaii on a June day. As a crush of tourists mobbed rental car counters and taxi stands, massive container ships steamed into the Port of Honolulu just across the harbor, carrying some of the 6 million pounds of food shipped to Hawaii every day to feed the state's 1.4 million residents and 8 million annual visitors.

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Good for current sustainability

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Research & Economic Analysis | Hawaii Rankings and Comparisons

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A "thrifty food plan" in Hawaii for a family of four costs $1,161 a month, some $520 more than what the same food plan would cost on the mainland on average, according to newly-released calculations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The food cost figures are used to help calculate how much low-income families are allotted in food stamps. (The average monthly food stamp benefit per person in Hawaii was $227 in June.)

But they also help shed light on the high cost of living in the islands, and how consumer prices for groceries are rising.

The USDA figures show that a "thrifty food plan" for two adults and two children cost $268 a week in Hawaii during the first half of 2016.

The cost for the food plan has increased by about $34 a week over the last five years, the USDA figures show.

That means a family of four on a "thrifty" plan is spending about $1,768 more per year on food than they were in 2011.

The new figures come as the USDA seeks to toughen up rules for where food stamp benefits are spent.

The federal government is proposing to require that food stamp grocers carry a wide variety of healthy choices. Critics of the plan say it would hurt small neighborhood grocers and their low-income customers.

In July, some 143,000 Hawaii residents participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps. That's down about 6 percent from the same month last year.

Hawaii's thrifty food plan is even pricier than Alaska's, where a family of four would spend $176.60 a week.

On the mainland, the same food plan for a couple and two children would cost $147.60 weekly.

The thrifty food plan is based on dietary guidelines, and represents a "nutritious, minimal-cost" diet, the USDA says.

According to the USDA figures, the monthly cost of a "thrifty food plan" for a single adult woman in Hawaii is $297.80. The monthly cost for a single adult man: $329.50.

On the mainland, meanwhile, an adult woman would spend $163 for the same food plan. A man would spend $185.
Copyright 2016 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

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New federal figures underscore high price for food in the islands

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A "thrifty food plan" in Hawaii for a family of four costs $1,161 a month, some $520 more than what the same food plan would cost on the mainland on average, according to newly-released calculations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The food cost figures are used to help calculate how much low-income families are allotted in food stamps.

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Fresh fruits and vegetables offset high grocery prices in Hawaii. (Photo: papaya image by Jens Klingebiel from Fotolia.com )

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With an active city, awesome surf and a living rainforest, Hawaii truly is paradise--but it comes at a cost. Most food items in Hawaii are shipped in from the mainland, and the cost of shipping those items across the ocean is reflected in the high price of groceries. However, Hawaii does have an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables that are grown locally and can offset the price of standard grocery items to a certain extent.

Supermarkets

In Hawaii, nearly 90 percent of the grocery items come from the mainland. From cereal to deli meats to pasta sauce, everything that you buy off of a grocery store shelf has been on a long journey across the Pacific Ocean. The cost to ship food across the ocean in time for it to be fresh at the point of sale makes the grocery bill in Hawaii 66 percent higher than that of a family on the mainland, according to Alternative Hawaii, a travel Web site.

Warehouse Stores

The arrival of stores such as Costco, Sam's Club and Wal-Mart has offered shoppers in Hawaii lower grocery costs for buying items in bulk.

Farmer's Markets

As a result of the temperate, tropical climate, Hawaii has an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables that are available year-round. Local families save money on groceries is by shopping at the various farmer's markets. The weekly farmer's market held at Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu is particularly popular. Local farmers offer organic papaya, mango, local lettuces, tomatoes, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as local favorites, at prices that are far lower than grocery store prices.

Casual Dining

Eating out in Hawaii doesn't have to be expensive. The culture thrives on casual dining, offering a huge variety of foods at reasonable prices. In tourist-filled areas such as Waikiki, chain restaurants and fast food joints charge more than the same places on the mainland. Venture outside of the tourist traps, though, and you are overwhelmed by the choices. "Plate lunch" is a specialty in Hawaii, generally consisting of rice, one or two types of meat, and macaroni salad. These plates are huge, easily enough for two, and usually cost less than $10.

Fine Dining

Fine dining prices are in the same price bracket as their counterparts on the continent. If you have the budget to squeeze in one meal at a fine-dining establishment such as Roy's, Alan Wong's, or Sam Choy's, you are in for a treat. Hawaii shines for it's down-home food as a result of the combination of cultures that came out of the pineapple and sugarcane plantations. Chefs in Hawaii present those foods in a refined manner while letting the flavors shine. Dinner for two at a fine-dining establishment in Hawaii can range from $35 per meal to more than $100 for multiple course meals.

About the Author

Joy Uyeno has been writing about travel, food, fashion, culture and finance since 2005. For three years she wrote a column for the "Honolulu Star-Bulletin" aimed at young and first-time travelers. Her writing has appeared in several local and national publications, including the 2008 anthology "Honolulu Stories." She holds a Master of Arts in writing and publishing from Emerson College.

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August 17, 2015 | AJ Hughes

Hawaii, known for its beaches and lavish resorts, has become a hotspot for local food and agriculture in recent years.

Hawaii was No. 8 on the 2015 Locavore Index , a list that ranks every state in its commitment to local foods. The list is compiled by Vermont-based local food advocacy organization Strolling of the Heifers .

"The purpose of the index is to stimulate efforts across the country to use more local food in homes, restaurants, schools and institutions," says Orly Munzing, founder and executive director of Strolling of the Heifers.

The index takes into account the number of food hubs, farmers' markets and CSAs, as well as farm-to-school efforts and per capita direct food sales.

Hawaii has a significant and diverse agricultural history, according to Catarina Zaragoza-Dodge, co-owner of The Locavore Store in Hilo. But today, Hawaii imports 90 percent of its food-much of it from the mainland United States.

"Twenty years ago, this was not the case," Zaragoza-Dodge says. "Hawaii used to have lots of local dairies, wheat, meat and rice. We have the capacity."

"Egg farms have closed, pig farms have closed, there are not many dairies left," says Nancy Redfeather, program director at The Kohala Center , an independent center in Hawaii focused on community, conservation and education.

Zaragoza-Dodge points out the fact that cargo vessels ship cattle to the mainland to be finished, and then they are shipped back to Hawaii for consumption.

"We pay a lot extra for groceries," she says.

"Cost drives things, the market drives things," says Redfeather. "It's cheaper to import food from the mainland. Government policies could help remedy the situation, but we don't have that."

Redfeather says that even though Hawaii has an ample water supply, a hindrance to local food and agriculture is the high expense of land-$100,000 per acre.

"But farmers need land," says Redfeather. "If we can figure out the land use piece, we already have sun, water and energy."

Procuring farm labor is also an obstacle, she says, as field workers are brought in from other countries.

But even though "big agriculture" in Hawaii is by many measures not sustainable, Redfeather feels that Hawaii residents can go around the system by growing their food. She has 65 fruit, nut and spice trees, and 100 coffee trees that grow 12 varieties of coffee.

"Most people can grow food right in their backyards-this is the best way," she says. "But policymakers don't get that because it's outside the economic system."

Many Hawaiians feel inspired to source their food locally, says Zaragoza-Dodge. That is one reason she and her husband, Arthur Zaragoza-Dodge, founded The Locavore Store in 2010.

"It's really a small food hub-we just didn't realize it at the time," she says. "There was such a big need for it. Our idea evolved; it responded to a neighborhood need."

Now, The Locavore Store works with 90 farmers and sells a wide variety of products, including grass-fed beef, papayas and eggs.

Zaragoza-Dodge believes that more local foods consumption in Hawaii will also help the state's economy, which can be fragile because Hawaii is so isolated.

"Grocery stores only have three days' worth of groceries on their shelves at any time," she says.

Consequently, if dock workers strike, this leaves Hawaii at risk of not having enough food for its residents.

Many school-age children in Hawaii are taught the importance of local foods, as the Hawaii Farm to School and School Garden Hui has members from school garden networks on the islands of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Maui/Lanai and Hawaii.

Every year, farm-to-school experts in the state convene at the School Learning Garden Symposium.

Almost 80 percent of K-12 public schools in Hawaii have school gardens, the vast majority of which are used for instruction purposes, according to the Hawaii Department of Health.

"We want to teach kids how to eat healthily," says Redfeather. "This will help drive the local economy when these kids grow up."

The "Buy Local, It Matters" campaign, a joint project of the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation, encourages residents of Hawaii to purchase local produce.

Even though Hawaii only has a population of 1,419,561, it boasts 101 farmers' markets and 23 CSAs, according to data released by Strolling of the Heifers.

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Hawaii Imports Most of Its Food, Ranks High on Locavore Index?

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August 17, 2015 | AJ Hughes Hawaii, known for its beaches and lavish resorts, has become a hotspot for local food and agriculture in recent years. Hawaii was No. 8 on the 2015 Locavore Index , a list that ranks every state in its commitment to local foods.