One Week's Worth of Food

On a recent flight back from the mainland this summer, I sat next to a guy who was visiting Hawaii for the first time ever. He had a few ideas of what he wanted to do. He wanted to surf Waikiki Beach and he definitely wanted to have some “mac nuts”. In the course of our conversation, he asked if it was true that Hawaii had only one week’s worth of food at a time. I had read the statistic a couple times elsewhere but was surprised that a visitor with very little knowledge of the island would be aware of this.

It’s true. Despite that fact that Hawaii has plenty of sunshine and arable land, because of the high cost of real estate and labor in Hawaii, 80% of Hawaii’s food is shipped in. The resulting irony is that Hawaii--a land known for the finest foodstuffs in the world, has grocery stores carrying produce from far away that is generally poor in quality. The spinach at Safeway is often wilty at the point of purchase. The waxy tomatoes that we get here are picked green and ripen off the vine as they make their way here. Even the bananas (which have been genetically altered to be straighter for easier shipping) come from South America. Why? Because it’s cheaper.

Locals know that the best produce in Hawaii cannot be found in grocery stores. You have to buy Kahuku corn from the bed of a guy’s truck. The lychee and mango that we all love is not sold in any grocery store.

The only produce businesses can afford to grow in any abundance in Hawaii is the premium kind—macadamia nuts, coffee, vanilla that costs $11 for two pods, or chocolate. And these are not created for domestic consumption. They are created for export. The Hawaii-made version of all these, note, are more expensive than the same products you would get from Africa or South America. Food for daily eating? It’s just not economically feasible.

Hawaii has subscribed to the law that if you can get someone else to do your job more cheaply, have them do it--because you will be more productive (or profitable) as a result. And so it is that as a state we have allowed more and more of Hawaii’s land to go toward housing and development, Del Monte announced the closure of Hawaii’s last pineapple plantation, Oahu’s last dairy farm closed shop in January, and the Molokai Ranch, after years of struggling, finally closed in April (although the ranch's cattle operation is expected to be transferred to former livestock manager).

These closures come at an inauspicious time, however, because as the high price of gasoline pushes up the price of just about everything, it has become less practical for us to ship our food in from 2,500 miles away.

Several months ago, legislators passed SB2426, a bill that purported to encourage agricultural activity by giving large landowners taxpayer-funded incentives to promote agricultural uses and “allow[s] agricultural landowners to move up to 15 percent of their land to another classification”. That is, owners of land zoned “agricultural” (defined by law as “a single-family dwelling located on and used in connection with a farm”) would now have to devote less of their land to agriculture.

Glenn Teves, who farms at Hoolehua Homestead on Molokai, urged Lingle to veto the bill saying it would “accelerate the movement of land out of agriculture like no other law since the legislature approved golf courses on agricultural land.”

Still, some farmers including the farmers of the Maui County Farm Bureau, supported the bill saying that “the large landowners that are developing their lands tend to do so because that is the only way they can have income. They have a responsibility to their shareholders and vacant land does not bring in income.” Supporters of the bill also argued that the bill would help preserve local agricultural by limiting how much land could be taken out of an agricultural designation.

Coleen Hanabusa, a representative for Nanakuli-Makua, had the audacity to say, "I am not sure that, collectively, these bills rise to the level of concern." This was in reference to SB 2426 and the 51 other bills sitting on Lingle’s desk!

In the end, Lingle did not veto the bills, in effect allowing owners of agricultural land to use less of their land for agricultural purposes. I like Lingle. In retrospect, I wish I’d supported her efforts to decentralize the DOE. I liked her idea to have the state purchase the area around Turtle Bay and help keep the country country. However, reducing our agricultural land in Hawaii is the absolute opposite of what the state needs to be doing right now. (In fairness to Lingle, we should also remember that she was not the one who wrote the water-down concession to the state's agricultural landowners.)

Perhaps ultimately, the matter of her signing or not signing the bill was unimportant because, according to many (See http://honoluluweekly.com/cover/2008/06/agriculture-at-a-crossroads/), the zoning laws are not enforced anyway. According to one report, there were 128,839 acres of ag land and 100,730 acres of land zoned as urban on Oahu in 2005. Even with only 15% of the "ag land" actually being used for farming, this is very hard to believe if you take a look around.

In addition to the tax incentives and laxer rules extended to agricultural landowners (a change in law which many of us are unhappy with), the state needs to start enforcing its own zoning laws. If a landowner owns land that is designated for agricultural use, by golly, they need to put down some acreage and hire some people to work that land—or suffer consequences enough to actually serve as an incentive, perhaps even lose that land.

But a funny thing is happening in the grocery stores of Hawaii. As the price of the food shipped in from the mainland steadily inches its way up, locally grown food is actually competing in price with the formerly cheap mainland produce. Earlier this summer, I was shocked to see local grape tomatoes, priced at about $3, actually cheaper than the mainland cherry tomatoes. It might’ve been on the same visit that I saw Ke Lei eggs selling for cheaper than the California variety. I think I paid just over $5 for three dozen eggs, an extraordinary amount considering I used to get them (36 mainland eggs) on sale at Safeway just a couple years ago for like $3.89.

The issue of agricultural land in Hawaii is a quality of life issue. In Hawaii, our food—our most basic of needs—is largely poor in quality. And despite the state’s designated ag land, we have become dependent on the mainland to feed us (a fact which even the most naïve tourist to Hawaii is aware of). If something were to happen to break down the intricate supply chain feeding Hawaii, we would be screwed and Hawaii would look very stupid. The state, local businesses and consumers need to support our agricultural land before it’s too late. Otherwise, when we need it, it won’t be there for us.

The following articles were quoted:
http://homepage.mac.com/juanwilson/islandbreath/09-science/science03population.html
http://honoluluweekly.com/cover/story-continued/2007/04/land-of-plenty/
http://honoluluweekly.com/cover/2008/06/agriculture-at-a-crossroads/
http://ilind.net/2008/05/25/sundaytrees-cut-in-kaaawa-park-ag-bill-controversy-continues/ http://starbulletin.com/2008/06/24/news/story10.html

This week (Sept. 4-5), the Hawaii Farm Bureau, Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Leadership Foundation of Hawaii, and University of Hawaii at Manoa hosted a conference on agriculture at the Hawaii Convention Center. Although I wasn’t able to attend, those who did attend participated in round table discussions on “The Price of Food: How do we reframe the economics of an island food system?”, “Fuel to Food: What do higher energy costs mean for Hawaii producers?”, and “Important Ag Lands: How can we ensure current new legislation works?” The keynote speaker Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil and more recently The End of Food, spoke about “Local Advantage: A new paradigm for Hawaii agriculture”.

I got a chance to see Roberts speak on his book. It was a small audience of about two dozen local folks. Many appeared to be farmers who were attending the conference. One young couple were raw food aficionados. Another group—two women and a small child—spoke in Hawaiian. His latest book The End of Food about the industrialization of food was written before the current inflation in commodities prices yet the issue of price was still front and center. One woman who (I overheard) worked for the Young Brothers made the comment that she thought fuel and food has been too cheap for too long. “I’m appalled,” she said of those individuals who complain that oil and food prices are too high. Roberts agreed with the woman adding that the cost of oil and food—even at their inflated rates today--does not reflect the real costs and all that goes into protecting and subsidizing our resources. The group kind of came to a consensus that seems to be the general conclusion for all discussions on this topic that consumers need to start valuing their food more and be willing to pay more for their food.

After his presentation, I asked him if he thought the high cost of fuel would naturally lead to more local production of food, a question which he’s probably gotten many times before. He responded that he’s already seen some examples of that happening on the mainland, but that the change would happen in ways that we wouldn’t necessarily expect.