LIHU‘E — A food movement that prizes locally grown grinds over shipped sustenance and imported edibles is picking up steam, but may not reach critical mass before a “food crisis” hits Hawai‘i, said Glenn Hontz, director of the Food and
LIHU‘E — A food movement that prizes locally grown grinds over shipped sustenance and imported edibles is picking up steam, but may not reach critical mass before a “food crisis” hits Hawai‘i, said Glenn Hontz, director of the Food and Agriculture Career Pathways program at Kaua‘i Community College.
“Interest is growing and rising” among individuals and organizations, including the Rotary Club of Kapa‘a, which awarded Hontz’s KCC program a Kaua‘i Green Innovation Award consisting of a $900 donation Wednesday evening for adopting what it considers to be an innovative, green practice.
The monies will help fund ongoing research on soil “amendments,” Hontz said.
“Soils in Hawai‘i are not conducive to vegetable and organic farming, unless they are augmented with supplements and nutrients,” he said Thursday. This is partly a natural phenomenon, but is also a factor of depleted soils from plantation crops.
To “no fault of their own,” plantations “fumigated the soil to destroy anything not beneficial to the crop,” Hontz said. “The land left behind did not have organic quality for good food crop production.”
Regardless of the condition of soil, individuals have still been inspired to take courses offered by the Food and Agriculture Program, like The Growing Food Seminar Series that helps teach students how to enrich soils. Since the weekly course’s inception about 18 months ago, some 200 students have already completed the course, bringing together small commercial farmers, home and community gardeners in learning how to cultivate their own food.
The intention of the program is to “create a higher level of food self-sufficiency, instead of relying on imported foods,” Hontz said.
“The program is really an important step toward sustainability of the island,” KCC Chancellor Helen Cox said Thursday. “I don’t know that we necessarily need to be 100 percent sustainable, but I do think we are losing huge amounts of money and we’re eating less healthy and more expensive food by not growing our own.”
If Hawai‘i doubled its food production, around $120 million in imports would be reestablished as well as more than 3,000 jobs, according to Hontz, who based his numbers on a study conducted by the University of Hawai‘i Research Office.
“We import much of our food and it’s often said, we have about two weeks of food to feed the island on our store shelves,” Office of Economic Development Director George Costa wrote in an e-mail last month. “Should the price and availability of oil diminish, we would not have enough food to sustain our existence, yet Kaua‘i is blessed with the resources necessary to not only feed ourselves, but make it a viable industry and create job opportunities.”
The state Department of Agriculture has reported that some 90 percent of Hawai‘i’s food is imported and “it’s getting harder to track” because staff who previously kept up-to-date with those statistics — the state Department of Agriculture’s Market Analysis and News Branch — have been cut, Hontz said.
Food is increasing in price and since around 65 percent of our fresh food is acquired from California, which is currently experiencing drought conditions, it leaves us as a susceptible target for a crisis, he added.
The attraction toward growing our own food is increasing, but is moving at “such a slow rate, I’m not sure we’ll be able to avoid a food crisis,” Hontz said.
Food and agriculture are among the most important industries in which the county is striving to create economic opportunities, Costa said.
“We are currently working on programs to brand and market produce and livestock grown locally and support our farmers,” he said.
KCC is also working with the Farm Bureau to provide a farmer’s market from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday on campus, Cox said. Because “if we can’t make it profitable” to grow our own food, then “nobody will want to do it.”
For more information on the program, contact Hontz at 246-4859 or hontz@hawaii.edu.
