Food bank aims to wipe out island hunger

NAWILIWILI — Not long ago on Kaua’i, residents grew and fished for all the food they required to support a population much larger than the 58,000 recorded by last year’s Census.

Today, 90 percent of the food consumed on the island is barged or flown in, while at the same time an estimated 5,000 people receive food from the Kaua’i Food Bank’s distribution system each month, and 20 percent of the Kaua’i population is considered “food insecure” based on a 1999 state Department of Health assessment.

A person is considered to have food insecurity “whenever the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways is limited or uncertain,” according to the DOH study.

Like the rest of the state, Kauai’s elderly and children are most at-risk of going hungry, as are single-parent households. Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians and Filipinos were affected most often, according to the DOH study based on telephone interviews.

Today, it is the Native Hawaiians who once made this island self-sufficient who are (along with African-Americans) most likely to live in households experiencing hunger among children.

Judy Lenthall, executive director of the Kaua’i Food Bank, feels it is possible to once again make the island food-secure, or grow enough food to sustain the island’s population.

Toward that end, nearly 50 people recently graduated from a farming training course at the Kaua’i Community College farm site. And, where the food bank’s own farm had been three acres in Anahola, it is now 40 acres at KCC in Puhi.

Last month, 88 people attended the organizational meeting of the Food Policy Council, which has a purpose of figuring out how to eliminate hunger on Kaua’i, said Lenthall. The council meets again next month.

Armed with a federal grant of nearly $500,000, the food bank is buying fresh produce and other food to help ensure the island’s elderly population is eliminated from the ranks of the hungry. To do that, the non-profit agency needs to raise another $20,000 to reach the $58,000 price tag for a new delivery truck complete with refrigerated compartment.

Federal funds are restricted and can only be used to buy fresh food for the island’s senior citizens, Lenthall explained.

In order to get fresh produce and other chilled foods and drinks into the hands and mouths of senior citizens from Kekaha to Ha’ena, a new truck to replace an aging “reefer truck” is needed, said Lenthall and John Sydney Yamane, food bank board president.

An insert in today’s edition of The Garden Island contains a postage-paid envelope for check contributions to the food bank, which is also in the middle of its seventh annual spring food drive. Food can be dropped off at any Kaua’i County Fire Department station now through April 14.

The food bank hunger awareness program is funded by the McInerny Foundation.

Byproducts of the journey to island food self-sufficiency are more farms, acreage in agriculture, jobs on farms and income for local farmers, as the food bank and others look locally before searching off-island for fresh fruits and vegetables, said Lenthall.

Volunteers and others have also picked up valuable and marketable clerical, warehousing and other skills through association with the food bank, she continued.

The long-range goal – and something that used to be royal law during Native Hawaiian rule of the island – is to eliminate hunger before it gets a chance to start. That would move the food bank from an agency providing food and meals to one putting the first foot down toward stamping out hunger. The plan would “keep Kaua’i green and rural, and feed ourselves,” Lenthall said.

The ko’owalu law, enacted by High Chief Kuali’i, stated simply that if anyone said they were hungry or wanted food, you were obligated to feed them.

“Hunger in this community is unacceptable,” Yamane said.

Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).