A new event aims to bring awareness of sustainability to a new generation

It’s been 25 years since the introduction of Hawaii Regional Cuisine and six years since Hawaii got its own food and wine festival. Both put a spotlight on locally produced food. All the while, farmers markets and home gardens abound. Yet Hawaii’s food production holds at just 15 percent — meaning we import 85 percent of what we consume. How do we effect change to become more sustainable?

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The Hawai‘i Agricultural Foundation is hoping to nudge the needle with “Eat Think Drink,” a program open to all but aimed at millennials and late-Generation Xers (20-somethings to 50-somethings). The inaugural event on Tuesday presents diverse viewpoints from the next generation of farmers, chefs, food buyers, community leaders and media. The program is a quarterly series to run through 2017.

“The younger Gen X crowd and millennials seek meaningful engagement, and we want Eat Think Drink to be for the next generation as told by the next generation,” said Denise Yamaguchi, the foundation’s executive director. “Most of the speakers are in their 30s and 40s. We want them to tell their stories.”

The speakers are James Beard Award-winning chef Michel Nischan, John Martin of Vice Munchies in New York, Wendi Akiyama of Armstrong Produce, Kahuku Farms’ Judah Lum, Aloun Farm general manager Alec Sou and state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz. The event includes tastings from five chefs and drinks from Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits.

Given the contentiousness that can surround food issues — think GMOs, conventional versus organic farming, small versus industrial farms — sharing is key, said Nischan, who promotes food access and sustainability through Wholesome Wave, a national organization he founded.

“Just opening the conversation, just genuine outreach” is how to begin, he said. “The younger generation seeks authenticity. It’s important to get a variety of credible stakeholders from every sector of food production and discuss all sides of what the tensions are.”

Nischan’s longtime work and firsthand experiences of the evolution of American farming inform his contributions to the discussion. His recollections of a U.S. shaken by World War II provide context and clarity.

“Large-scale farming was not born of evil intent,” he said. “After the war we were at a point when the nation was convinced that World War III was coming. We had been convinced World War I was the war to end all wars. The world had said we could never let it happen again.”

During World War II countries were crippled by lack of access to food, and the U.S. was determined that its citizens and soldiers would never go hungry when that next big war took place. Developing scaled food production supported by public policy and tax dollars became a national security issue.

“My parents were small-scale farmers pushed off their land after World War II. They were saddened that small-scale farming became nearly impossible, but they weren’t bitter,” Nischan recalled. “The thinking of the time was that large-scale farms were more efficient, and the shift made sense. What Americans didn’t know at the time were the environmental and human health impacts of such a scaled system. Nevertheless, this was going to become the premier agriculture production of the time. In a very short period of time, American farmland went from being held by hundreds of thousands of small and midsized businesses to a small number of large corporations.”

Today, to address feeding the world’s growing population, Nischan says we need all types of producers at the table. But big or small, they need to support one another and let go of anger.

“There was a period of time in my early life as a locavore chef when I was angry,” he said. “Then I became a chef for six hotels — and I had to purchase more than $100 million of food a year. I was faced with the impossibility at that time of finding enough food from small-scale producers. I learned what it meant to feed hundreds of thousands of people. As deeply as I’m in love with the locavore and farmers-market movement, it’s a long way from feeding so many more Americans.”

Billions would starve without large-scale food production, he said. What’s needed is to find a middle ground that allows sustainable, organic businesses to grow both in number and size, and investment in technologies that make larger-scale production more healthful and environmentally sustainable.

“The only way this can happen is if both sides of agriculture can change the dynamics of the conversation from destructive to constructive,” he said.

Nischan says he’s met large-scale producers who genuinely want to deliver better food but simply don’t know how. Historically, their business model involved convincing consumers of what they needed rather than responding to consumer demand. That’s where folks from the good-food movement can help.

“Their capacity and technology to feed the world is so big, if they got together with small businesses producing local and regional food, they could figure out how to get it done,” he said.

An example: Wal-Mart, which accepts 20 percent of all food stamps nationwide, now has big local-food aisles.

“Wal-Mart is not niche marketing,” Nischan said. “When they say local is important to them, that’s good news. What that tells us is more people want that than we know, than we can provide. So local farmers can learn from larger-scale producers.”

Working together, he says, can result in human, economic, societal and environmental health.

“If we don’t, it’s not going to happen. We’re all stakeholders.”