Ige sets new target date of 2030 for doubling food production

Gov. David Ige has pushed back by a decade his campaign pledge of doubling local food production in Hawaii by 2020.

As the 2020 date approaches, Scott Enright, director of the state Department of Agriculture, acknowledged that there has yet to be any significant increase in local food production, though noting that plans to increase local egg, dairy and beef production are in the works.

Complicating matters, the state doesn’t accurately know how much food is being produced locally versus what’s imported — making the goal elusive given the lack of a firm baseline.

Ige mentioned the new 2030 target date for doubling local food production in remarks last week during the IUCN World Conservation Congress, an environmental convention here that attracted an estimated 9,100 people, including government officials, scientists, nonprofits, business leaders and policymakers.

Ige’s office didn’t respond to questions about why the governor had pushed back the target date, but Enright called 2030 “far more realistic.”

Ige isn’t the first governor to try to increase local food production, which “buy local” proponents have argued is important for safeguarding the state against the loss of food imports if there is a disaster that disrupts shipping, in addition to supporting local farmers and stimulating the local economy.

Former Gov. Neil Abercrombie in 2014 signed on to a commitment known as the Aloha-plus Challenge, which includes the goal of doubling local food production by 2030, with a target of 20 percent to 30 percent of the food consumed in Hawaii being grown locally.

Asked whether the state has made any progress in recent years in moving the needle on local food production, Enright said that the “short answer is no, but it is starting to move.”

In the 1970s, Hawaii was self-sufficient when it came to eggs and milk, with 240 egg farms and 120 milk operations, according to a 2012 report from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. The number of egg farms since plummeted to about 100, at the time of the report, and Hawaii currently has only two dairies. There have also been significant declines in livestock.

Replacing 10 percent of the food Hawaii imports could generate $313 million within the local economy, including millions in added revenue for farmers and vendors, while creating more than 2,300 jobs, according to the report.

Enright noted that several projects in the works in Hawaii could make a significant impact on local food production. California’s Hidden Villa Ranch and Indiana’s Rose Acre Farms are planning an egg farm in Wahiawa with as many as 1 million hens.

Honolulu’s Ulupono Initiative is also working to develop a dairy on Kauai and the state has been approached by mainland investors interested in developing another dairy in the state, Enright said.

There are also efforts underway to stimulate the grass-fed beef industry on both Hawaii island and Maui.

Enright said that one of the biggest challenges for the state in producing food locally is cultivating a new generation of agriculturalists. He noted that the average age of a farmer in Hawaii is 60.

To this end, he said the state needs to invest more in supporting ag startups for people who want to farm but don’t have a track record, making it difficult to secure private loans.

This past session, Enright said he asked the Legislature for $4 million for the department’s ag loan portfolio, hoping to increase available funding by a third. However, the Legislature didn’t provide the funding. He said this coming session he will ask for $5 million annually for the next two years.

A more rudimentary problem to Ige’s goal of doubling local food production is that the state doesn’t have exact figures on how much food is being produced locally versus what is being imported.

It’s often estimated that Hawaii imports between 85 percent and 90 percent of its food, but the figure isn’t based on firm statistics, said PingSun Leung, an agricultural economist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.

“People just throw out numbers at this point, but the truth is nobody knows,” he said.

Perhaps the best analysis in the state has been done by Leung and his colleague Matthew Loke. In a 2010 report, they estimated that about 88 percent of Hawaii’s food comes from imports.

The figure “is truly based on the best information that we could get, but there is a lot of missing information,” Leung said.

He said that one of the biggest data gaps involves imports from the mainland.

Leung said that an easier target would be to double local produce, which is the bulk of what Hawaii grows for the local market. The Agriculture Department used to keep precise figures on produce imports until much of its staff that tracked these numbers was laid off following the 2008 financial meltdown. Enright has struggled to reconstitute the division.

The Agriculture Department has also been working with a group called Sustain Hawaii to come up with a statewide food metrics platform that it hopes will give policymakers a much clearer picture of food imports and exports, helping them better define sustainability goals.

Honolulu’s Ulupono Initiative has provided $160,000 in funding for the project, according to Amy Hennessey, a spokeswoman for the investment firm specializing in environmental sustainability.

However, the complexity of the project appears to have delayed its rollout, which Enright had hoped would be early this year. He now says that he hopes it will be available in the next 60 days.

Enright said he wasn’t sure when Ige decided to forgo the goal of doubling local food production by 2020, but said it was likely around the time of the World Conservation Congress.

As of January of this year, the governor was apparently still holding on to the campaign pledge, which became the subject of skepticism among some lawmakers during a January budget briefing for the Agriculture Department.

Rep. Richard Onishi, vice chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, questioned Enright at the time as to how the governor intended to meet the expedited target date given that the state still lacked data on food production.

“So the governor was told we don’t really know how much is being produced, but we are going to support you in doubling what we don’t know?” Onishi asked.

“I wouldn’t really state it that way,” Enright replied. “But I will give you a yes on that, representative.”