UH program combines culture, science to teach sustainable food systems

More and more across the globe, farming has gone beyond simply planting seeds and growing food. It has come to involve values tied to ecology, food sustainability and the well-being of the community. In Hawaii that perspective has manifested in a new program at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu, one that holds fast to traditional knowledge while keeping a steady eye toward the future.

The school’s Sustainable Community Food Systems program, a four-year program toward a Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree, offers a food and agriculture curriculum that crosses disciplines with coursework in natural and social sciences and the humanities. It includes classes on managing Hawaiian natural resources such as ahupuaa and traditional fishponds, hands-on garden work and internships. Students who graduate from the program can go on to work or do graduate study in fields from agriculture and food policy to education, food processing, social enterprise and more.

“The mantra we’ve used here is ‘The food system is a catalyst for transformative change in the community.’ It helps us develop kuleana to place,” said West-Oahu Chancellor Maenette Benham.

John Canner, a UH-Manoa graduate student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, graduated from the program interested in supporting food systems in urban areas.

“In a city environment, the food system could be integrated into the urban setting with something like rooftop farming,” he said. “A building itself could be designed in innovative ways so that its angles could store sunlight for renewable energy. It’s all about increasing resiliency.”

Fundamental to the design of the program is West Oahu assistant professor Albie Miles, considered a leader nationally in sustainable food-system education.

“The objective of this program is to teach a new generation to think critically and systemically about the food system, and to do change work toward advancing long-term sustainability and social equity,” Miles said.

Miles’ perspective was shaped by nearly 10 years at the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The 50-year-old center researches, develops and advances food systems.

West-Oahu’s multidisciplinary curriculum is reflected in course names such as “Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture,” “Politics of Food” and “Cross-Cultural Environmental Ethics.”

Coursework by default requires students to take a position on what they’re learning. The “Agriculture, Food and Human Values” class discusses global hunger, climate change, animal welfare, food sovereignty, agricultural labor and biotechnology. It is at its core an ethics class, said Miles.

“When you’re dealing with issues of sustainability, there are values implicit in that. There are a range of ethical issues we face in the contemporary food system. I want students to engage in the process of ethical discernment and cultivate their own ethical compass,” he said.

There is detailed discussion about pineapple and sugar in Hawaii, and how those monocrops altered the foodways of Native Hawaiians, and with it their health and the health of the environment. The course puts Hawaii’s history in a global context, illustrating parallels with other indigenous societies.

“We talk about how this had much to do with colonial occupation and the loss of control of ancestral land,” he said. “There is an important moral question at the heart of the history of agriculture in Hawaii.”

Armed with knowledge and a personal value system, students get out in the community to work and learn about food systems firsthand while building a resume.

Silvan Shawe held an internship at the Hawaii Center for Food Safety, an organization that does policy work and community outreach. She now works in Oregon for the Gorge Grown Food Network helping needy families in rural communities access food. She is finishing her degree online.

“This program is so current and relevant and hands-on. I have friends getting M.A.’s at big-name schools, and they don’t have anything like this,” she said.

While students like Shawe take their knowledge beyond Hawaii, the program sprang from the desire to address the needs and interest of the Leeward Oahu community, of which the school is a part. With the creation of the permanent West-Oahu campus, former Chancellor Gene Awakuni sought to develop a new food agriculture program. He called on Ma‘o Organic Farm to help.

The Waianae farm, which focuses heavily on social enterprise, employs students from the community and pays for their study in agriculture. Until the West Oahu program launched, students attended Leeward Community College to earn a two-year associates degree. A long trek to Manoa made further study prohibitive for many.

Ma‘o joined a West-Oahu team dedicated to researching ideas for the new program. The team paid a visit to the same center where Miles had cut his teeth, the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, considered the nation’s premier program.

“They are the university agriculture model that literally everyone that wants to do sustainable agriculture wants to replicate,” said Ma‘o owner Gary Maunakea-Forth.

In 2013 Kamehameha Schools committed more than $300,000 to get the program off the ground, and Miles was hired to design and run the curriculum. Last year the program became part of the UH budget.

Kamuela Enos, director of social enterprise at Ma‘o, was a member of the team. He thinks the program contributes on multiple fronts.

“I’m excited because it serves all communities,” he said. “It’s a justice issue: Without a degree, how do you make a living in Hawaii? Traditionally, high school agriculture teachers have taken students who have trouble in the classroom but do well outside. This is a credible pathway for those students.”

Most of all, he says, the program goes to the core of Hawaiian cultural identity.

“This is not just an organic farming curriculum that addresses political and climate issues. It sees traditional practices and values as the basis for all this work, as the precedent from where innovation is rooted. This is important because students who come from Waianae can see their ancestry (tied to) the height of innovation — and that’s part of the narrative of who they are.”

Kahiau Kauluwehi, a junior in the program who grew up in Waianae, said that while raising her two sons, she worried a lot about their futures.

“I didn’t realize the food we ate was more than 85 percent imported. When I found out I worried about hurricanes. I didn’t know how to fix it,” she said. “But when I reconnected with the culture, I realized they had hurricanes in ancient times, too, so why not go back to indigenous knowledge?”