Here is the single most important need facing Hawaii today: cheaper electricity. Everything else radiates from it:

It can be done. Recently the Big Island Community Coalition, along with others, helped stop some fairly significant electricity rate hikes from showing up on people’s electric bills. And we are very lucky to have resources here, such as geothermal, that we can use to generate much-cheaper electricity.

Here’s why this is so important:

We need enough food to eat, and we need to grow it here, instead of relying on it coming from somewhere else.

Food security — having enough food to eat, right here where we live — is truly the bottom line. We live in the middle of an ocean, we import more than 80 percent of what we eat, and sometimes there are disasters and shipping disruptions. This makes a lot of us a little nervous.

To grow our food here, we need for our farmers to make a decent living: If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm.

The price of oil, and of petroleum byproducts such as fertilizers and other farming products, keep going up, which raises farmers’ costs. They cannot pass on all these higher costs, and they lose money.

We use oil for 70 percent of our electricity in Hawaii, whereas on the mainland, oil is used for only 2 percent. So when the oil cost increases, anything here that requires electricity to produce is less competitive.

Also, Hawaii farmers pay four times as much for electricity than their mainland competition, putting them at an even bigger competitive disadvantage. Fewer young people are going into farming and this will affect our food security even further.

Hawaii Electric Light Co. needs to be a major driver in reducing the cost of electricity. We believe that HELCO is fully capable of providing us with reliable and less-costly power, and ask that the state Public Utilities Commission reviews its directives to, and agreements with, HELCO.

Its directives should now be that HELCO’s primary objective be to significantly reduce the cost of reliable electric power to Hawaii island residents.

At the same time, we ask that HELCO be given the power to break out of its current planning mode in order to find the most practicable means of achieving this end.

We would support a long-range plan that drives down prices to ensure the viability of local businesses and the survivability of our families.

All considerations should be on the table, including power sources (i.e., oil, natural gas, geothermal, solar, biomass, etc.), changes in transmission policy, including standby charges, and retaining currently operating power plants.

This is not "us" versus "them." We are all responsible for creating the political will to get it done.

Rising electricity costs act like a giant regressive tax: The people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder get hurt first, and the hardest. If our energy costs are lower — and we can absolutely make that happen — our farmers can keep their prices down, food will be cheaper, and consumers will have more money left over at month’s end. This is good for our people, and for our economy.

We have good resources here — geothermal and other options — and we need to maximize them. We also have the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center and others that help our farmers.

To learn more about achieving cheaper electricity rates, the Big Island Community Coalition (bigisland- communitycoalition.com) sends out occasional emails on what’s being done to get electricity costs down and how people can help.

Remember the bottom line: Every one of us needs to call for cheaper electricity, and this will directly and positively affect our food security.