I am a student representing Leeward Community College Waianae Moku as well as our Student Advocates for Environmentalism club, an organization created to vocalize the issues of environmental concern experienced by students in the Waianae Moku campus location. Through my attendance here, my peers and I have observed a higher reliance on our school’s food bank in this campus location in comparison to Leeward Community College’s main location.

In our club, we have been tracking the levels of student reliance on each of our Leeward Community College locations’ food banks (Puuloa and Waianae Moku) and have found that the Waianae education center has around 36% of its students reliant on our food banks’ resources, in comparison to our Puuloa campus at around 1%.

During this 2024 legislative session, Senate Bill 2414 relating to sustainable food systems, and House Bill 2590 relating to food security, caught the attention of us community college students at Waianae Moku.

In a state that imports 90% of our food, creating a local food economy will not only help to improve our state economically but help to address the food security issues experienced in our state as well.

SB 2414 also addresses the root causes in the creation of a sustainable food system, integrating the objectives of environ- mental protection, land stewardship and climate change resilience while keeping in mind the health of a community and its well-being. Especially coming from Waianae, a community that experiences the bulk of our island’s pollution and environmental burdens, this bill will help to address these issues through the development of a sustainable food system.

HB 2590 combines our need to address the rising issue of food security in our community, while supporting our local economy, aligning with our club’s vision for a sustainable future through the bill appropriating funds for food bank purchases from local farmers.

When speaking with community members on the Waianae coast, my club has observed the common sentiment among community members in their vision for Waianae, one where our dependence on food supply is not from one elsewhere, but grown here. Community members within the Waianae Coast Community College have expressed not only this but also their frustration with the high cost of groceries, making food accessibility difficult.

Despite the death of SB 2414 this session, my community college is hopeful about the possibility of the passage of a bill similar to it: SB 420, last year’s version of SB 2414, also promotes a sustainable food system for the state of Hawaii within the Department of Agriculture. As we approach the timeline for SB 420 and HB 2590 to be scheduled for hearings, my community in the Waianae coast strongly urges the passage of these bills — to not only address the so-important need of food security in the Waianae coast community, but for the multitude of benefits to the state.

Timothy Wiley is a student at Leeward Community College Wai‘anae Moku and president of his school’s Student Advocates for Environmentalism club.