(This was originally posted on 10/09/2007 with videos embedded. This time, to lighten up the page loading I’m just linking to where they can be viewed.)

Hawaii currently imports more than 85% of its food. Imagine this….  If starting tomorrow – and this is by no means far-fetched as a possibility – ships and airplanes full of  mainland supplies stopped coming to the Hawaiian Islands, what would happen?  The average estimates say that all the food in stock will be eaten in about 15  days. Then what? In order to envision ways to prevent such a disaster from happening, this last weekend the Hawaii Island Food Summit was convened.

Since I see food security as one of the most essential conditions for human survival, I made a point of attending. The beautiful opening ceremony set the reverent, energetic and passionate tone for the day.

The lineup of speakers was impressive and included leading local and national experts: farmers, distributors, policy-makers, scientists, educators and more.The first speaker to address Saturday’s gathering  was Dr. Manu Meyer, Professor of Education at UH Hilo. Tying into her thought system of Hawaiian Epistemology, she emphasized the importance of knowing in addition to knowledge, the knowing being more in the traditional and doing side of things. The primary thing I walked away with from this talk was the powerful reminder that “responsibility is something you’re drawn to doing because it’s your destiny.” It could very well be Hawaii’s responsibility to show the rest of the world the way to sustainable and secure food supply systems.

Next up was Dr. Bill Steiner, Dean of UH-Hilo’s College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resource Management, who has worked relentlessly for decades to promote sustainability in those fields.

This was followed by a report by Lionel Bony and Laura Schewel from the Rocky Mountain Institute on their research into the existing food system on Hawai’i Island and ways to move that system toward self-sufficiency. One notable and somewhat surprising finding in their report is the fact that tourism accounts for only 11% of local food consumption, meaning that the dominant market for food on the island consists of its residents. This indicates that there is a lot of room for a partial shift in focus toward commodity food production for local consumption. One of the challenges in achieving this is the current lack of efficient processing plants on the island.
Regarding further development of the visitor-oriented production, agro-tourism holds a lot of potential because many visitors express a desire to be educated about the foods they are buying.

Then the mike was passed on to the keynote speaker of the day, Claire Hope Cummings, a widely known environmental lawyer and food & farming journalist. She shared her experiences in the development of a strong local food system through land trusts, farmers markets and local labels in Marin County, California. I’d like to highlight some very poignant data provided in this talk: Industrial agriculture is the world’s greatest source of pollution and uses 70% of all available fresh water on earth and 20% of all energy produced. Another thing Cummings strongly empahsized is the message that the true leadership comes from the people who are actually working the land.

The rest of the day was filled with panel sessions on the following topics:

• Why Sustainable Agriculture?
• Traditional and Modern Practices
• Land And Policy
• Challenges  and Opportunities for Marketing and Distribution of Food on Hawai’i Island
• Home Production: Food Security Begins at Home
• Agricultural Education Opportunities from Keiki to Kupuna
• Producers on the Edge: Dairy, Egg, Cattle, Honey,and Ocean Resources

In the middle of the day we paused to recharge our batteries and process the overwhelming amount of high-quality, actionable information over a scrumptuous lunch especially prepared from local ingredients. For more  details on the panels, plus  full  video coverage, you can go to the official media page of the Food Summit.

As if the conference by itself wouldn’t have been enough to make any food lover’s day, the Summit was followed by a local food producers exposition that was open to the public at no cost. The turnout was absolutely phenomenal, the place was overflowing with many hundreds of people taking the opportunity to sample a wide variety of local produce and build relationships with the people producing it. All in all, the massive energy of this day leaves no doubt that many, many valuable connections were made and that the meme of local, sustainable and secure food systems is spreading like wildfire.

Mahalo,

Nicole