We need a comprehensive food system plan to help us to eliminate food insecurity, ensure public health, reduce inequality, build climate resilience and sustain our aina and economy.

During the peak of COVID-19, 48% of Hawaii families with keiki were food insecure. About 41% of Hawaii’s agricultural land currently sits uncultivated, according to the Hawaii Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission, while the Hawaii Agribusiness Development Corp (ADC) has yet to successfully promote diversified agriculture. We spend billions annually on imported food, and if the port of Honolulu closes, we’ll run out of food in five to seven days.

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are three times more likely to die of diet-related chronic illness such as heart disease, stroke, cancer or diabetes than the state average.

We need a roadmap. The people of Hawaii can and must do better than this.

While there is no quick or easy fix, a comprehensive food systems plan is a necessary step toward producing innovative, meaningful and lasting solutions. Piecemeal policy interventions, however well-intentioned, are inadequate to address the complex and urgent issues we face when it comes to figuring out how we will nourish and sustain ourselves, now and into the future.

Food systems planning would define a set of common goods for all. Planning would develop policies for food production, processing, distribution, consumption and waste disposal that align with ecological, social, cultural, and economic goals.

House Bill 308, which continues to advance in the Legislature, proposes just that. By creating a formal working group of policymakers, food producers, state agency leads, social service providers, and others invested in local food and resilience, HB 308 provides a tangible example of how transformation can occur when we take a holistic and systemic approach to the interrelated challenges we face.

Food system planning is a priority for many across Hawaii.

At the 2023 Hawai‘i Food Systems Summit, more than 100 diverse food systems stakeholders, from farmers to service providers, gathered at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu campus to discuss policy initiatives and concrete ways of making change. State-level food system planning legislation emerged as the summit participants’ No. 1 collective priority, leading to the introduction of companion bills in the 2023 legislative session by state Sen. Mike Gabbard and state Rep. Cedric Gates, chairmen of the Senate and House Agriculture and Food Systems committees.

Eighteen U.S. states already have an active food system plan or charter, with an additional eleven states having a plan in development. Considering Hawaii is the most isolated food import-dependent place in the world, the time is now to get serious about making a plan to address long-standing issues and chart a path toward realizing Hawaii’s commitment to the Aloha+ Challenge, U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, 2050 Sustainability Plan, City and County of Honolulu Climate Action Plan, Hawaii Community Foundation Change Framework, Kamehameha Schools Food System Initiative, HIR Food System Initiative and Aina Aloha Economic Futures, among international initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Eat Lancet Commission and U.N. Food System Summit.

If you eat and live in Hawaii, this is your issue. That includes all our legislators who are now considering HB 308. To show support for the development of a food systems plan that ensures all people of Hawaii have access not only to adequate, healthy food but also to health equity, economic opportunity, biocultural restoration, resilience and responsibly managed natural resources, please testify in support of HB 308 and contact your area representatives so they know this matters to all of us.

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Learn more at:

www.transformingHawaiifoodsystem.org or www.foodpluspolicy.com.