With the onset of the COVID era, food security is once again front and center.

It’s nothing new.

Back in 2008, PingSun Leung and Matthew Loke published “Economic Impacts of Increasing Hawai‘i’s Food Self-Sufficiency” in the December 2008 publication of CTAHR’s Economic Issues. The authors reckoned that food self-sufficiency is probably not in the cards but that the Aloha State can do a helluva lot better.

That was 13 years ago and it’s still true.

The good news is that organizations such as Ke Kula Nui o Waimanalo, a Native Hawaiian community-based group whose mission is “self-sustainability,” have teamed up with the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources’ (CTAHR) Waimanalo Learning Center to create an agroforestry food security “proof of concept” pilot project.

The project, titled “Ulu Pono Mahi‘Aina” and led by Ilima Ho-Lastimosa and Meghan Leialoha Au, is based at the Waimanalo Research Station for teaching and demonstration, with about 20 families participating in the training. Many of the families will soon be planting agroforestry gardens at their homes based on the project curriculum. The first demonstration agroforestry site was established and is now tended to by students from Malama Honua Public Charter School, where the participants learn the cultural significance of “growing your own” native plants and traditional crops.

One of the project’s mentors is Craig Elevitch, an agroforestry educator based on Hawaii island. Elevitch said that “agroforestry is a new word but an old concept.” Essentially, it means growing trees together with other agricultural crops and animals in a dense, forestlike fashion.

“Even though the word is new, agroforestry has been practiced for thousands of years to sustainably provide food, medicine and materials” to indigenous communities, Elevitch said.

“It is a tremendous honor to be working on this project with so many people who have a deep and profound connection to Hawaiian agroforestry,” Elevitch added.

In other words, it’s nothing new to Hawaiians, Samoans, Fijians, Tongans and other Pacific islanders.

What is new is heightened awareness that agroforestry techniques can be utilized by everyone from home gardeners to put food on the table, to commercial operations to grow coffee and cacao in tandem with other crops such as citrus, banana, breadfruit, coconuts, etc.

A typical plot, such as what I observed in Waima­nalo, had several rows of mostly fruit and vegetable plants packed cheek to jowl with long-term crops such as mango, avocado, papaya and sugar cane. In between the rows was a roughly 2- to 3-foot corridor used for irrigation and fertilization.

Typical crops include papaya, bele (edible hibiscus), avocado, citrus, coconut, chaya and numerous other items. Nitrogen- producing species such as acacia or medicinal plants such as neem, or plants used for building such as pandanus, also can be part of the mix.

The advantage of having this dense mix is biodiversity, which creates a synergistic environment whereby the plants share the water, optimize the sunlight and enrich the soil.

How to get started?

Elevitch, who has been an agroforestry practitioner and educator for over 30 years and runs his own consulting firm (Agrofor estry.com), suggests scrutinizing Agroforestry.org, where there’s a plethora of free material ranging from publications that describe how to plan a Pacific island agroforest to a primer on growing koa.

What to grow?

If you’re a home gardener, the plants you choose will depend on your microclimate. Typical species include avocado, banana, papaya, collard greens, edible hibiscus, taro, etc., but the variety on Agroforestry.org is lengthy. You can obtain fruit trees at Oahu nurseries such as Frankie’s in Waimanalo, but getting cuttings for plants such as edible hibiscus or nitrogen-fixing plants depends on who you know.

There’s a lot to learn, and Elevitch is planning a series of workshops for homeowners, community gardeners and commercial farmers via Zoom. He suggests checking Agroforestry.org for future dates.

Rob Kay, a Honolulu-based writer, covers technology and sustainability for Tech View and is the creator of fijiguide.com. He can be reached at Robertfredkay@gmail.com.