Buy Fresh. Buy Local. A different type of sovereignty movement is now taking root and this one involves food. Farmers and cattle ranchers from across the state are educating Island residents about their produce and meats, while Slow Food "Conviviums" on the Big Island, Kauai and Oahu are encouraging kamaaina to "Eat Local."
Founded in 1986, the Slow Food Movement is the brainchild of Carlo Petrini, an Italian journalist and activist who protested the opening of a McDonald's near Rome's Spanish Steps and was, in general, anti fast food. Today the organization has spread to 45 countries and counts a worldwide membership of more than 65,000 members.
"He (Petrini) didn't boycott McDonald's," said Laurie Carlson, president of the Slow Food Oahu Convivium. "Instead, he wrote a manifesto; his vision was to value local products and fight the invasion of fast food."
Recognizing that the industrialization of food was homogenizing taste and leading to the annihilation of thousands of food varieties and flavors, Petrini rallied friends and farmers, and established an eco-gastronomic movement — one that is ecologically minded and concerned with sustainability, and sees the connection between the plate and the planet.
With the preservation of taste paramount, the passionate foodie sought to support and protect small growers and artisanal producers, support and protect the physical environment, and promote biodiversity.
Today, Slow Food's mission can be summed up in three words: "Good," the food has to taste good; "Clean," the product has to be bio-diverse and sustainable; and "Fair," those who farm, produce and prepare the food have to be paid a fair wage.
"There's a direct correlation between living green and what we consume," Carlson asserted. "Consumers have a choice. They've got to question: 'What's this doing to support farmers?' 'What's this doing to the environment?' 'What's this doing to support sustainability?' There are a lot of externalities and the choices we make have great ramifications."
Similar questions prompted the state to create "Hawaii Seal of Quality" two years ago in an effort to ensure that products bearing "Hawaii-made" are actually of Hawaiian origin, content and quality.
"When the consumer sees the 'Hawaii Seal of Quality,' they can be assured that the product was 100 percent grown or processed in Hawaii," said Matthew Loke, Ph.D., administrator for the state's agriculture development division. "We started this program as a way to protect the value and integrity of our local products."
The 45 farmers who belong to the Hawaii Seal of Quality aim to do what a dozen top local chefs did 17 years ago when they formed Hawaii Regional Cuisine: To initiate a movement and create awareness about indigenous ingredients.
"Local produce has improved by leaps and bounds since I first started using them," said famed chef Roy Yamaguchi, one of the members of the elite 12. "It's incredible to see what's happened in the past 16 years."
One of the leading growers has been Nalo Farms. The fertile property beneath the slopes of the Koolaus has been in the Okimoto family since 1953.
"There has been a greater demand for local products because they're fresher, they taste better and they last longer," said Dean Okimoto, whose products and dressings are all stamped with the Hawaii Seal of Quality. "Even with just four acres, we're able to supply herbs and greens to 120 different restaurants; it's constant plowing, planting and picking."
Okimoto hopes to expand beyond his four acres, where he currently grows a vast array of produce, from pea shoots and sprouts to herbs and micro greens. With the passage of Senate Bill 2646 during this past legislative session, he is confident that should help Hawaii move toward providing freshly grown fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, dairy and other local products that are critical to a strong and sustainable economy.
Agriculture has always been integral to Hawaii history and it continues to be an important industry, generating $2.9 billion to the state's annual economy, and directly and indirectly providing 42,000 jobs, according to statistics from The National Agricultural Statistics Service, which operates in cooperation with the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture.
"We need to support farmers more and give them tax incentives," Carlson said. "And we need to reach out to conservationists and environmentalists because they are the stewards of the land."
One group that's helping local farmers is the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation (HFBF), whose mission statement reads: "(we're) a nonprofit organization of farming families united for the purpose of analyzing problems and formulating action to ensure the future of agriculture thereby promoting the well-being of farming and the State's economy."
With approximately 2,200 members, the organization has helped organize Farmers' Markets throughout the state, including those held on Thursdays in Kailua, Saturdays at Kapiolani Community College, Sundays in the parking lot at Mililani High School and, introduced this month, an open-air market at Makaha Resort every first and third Saturday.
"We can't rely on tourism," said State Rep. Clifton Tsuji, D-3rd (Hilo, Kea'au, Mountain View), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. "That's why I think the passage of SB 2646 was a really significant step forward in fulfilling a 1978 constitutional mandate that called for the protection and preservation of important and productive agriculture land.
"It's not a perfect bill and there's still much work to do down the road," the two-term Big Island representative said. "But the ultimate goal is to strengthen the Hawaii agriculture industry and to lay down the framework for a sustainable future."
When the first Polynesian voyagers traveled to the islands, they brought with them taro, bananas and other staples to nourish and sustain themselves. This marked the start of a burgeoning industry that began with growers planting everything from sweet potato to rice. In conjunction, fishponds spawned along the coasts and aquaculture farming began. But these farms would eventually give way to development and so-called urban sprawl, forcing residents to rely more on imported goods.
"The one question that keeps coming up these days is, 'With the price of crude oil going up, how is that going to impact food prices?" Loke said. "We import a great amount of food — some of which is unavoidable because it would cost too much to grow here, like rice and wheat — but we can strive to be more self sufficient in other areas. For example, we're about 70 percent self-sufficient with watermelons, but we can push that to probably 90 percent."
This month, Loke will help relaunch the state agriculture department's "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" campaign on the Big Island.
"We're going to start with the two remaining dairy farms there," Loke said. "The milk we're getting now is pasteurized in Utah, shipped here then pasteurized again; so it doesn't taste very fresh."
While Loke can't cite current figures on the agriculture landscape — a census about the industry is presently being conducted — he has seen agricultural lands return to a new era of small farms growing diversified agricultural products, from specialty exotic fruits and coffee to macadamia nuts, flowers and cacao.
"It's very important to protect our agriculture lands as means for agriculture," Tsuji said. "Whatever farmers have, we would like to encourage them to grow more. This will minimize our dependence on imports and will help shore up a strong agricultural economy."
Community-supported agriculture has become de rigueur, and now the movement is catching on among local fish farms. Hawaii's aquaculture is starting to spawn and the early fishponds have now matured into high-tech aquaculture ventures. And some not so high-tech, like what's found at He'eia Fishpond, which is run by a not-for-profit group called Paepae o He'eia. The organization's goal is to provide food for the community using values and concepts of yesteryear.
"A visit to the fishpond was one of our events this year," Carlson said. "We had a lunch of poi and moi, which was prepared by Ed Kenny (chef/owner of Town & Downtown)."
While agriculturalism may lag behind Hawaii's number one industry of tourism, the two cannot be separated. Each year, millions of visitors from far and wide travel to our state with the expectation of viewing verdant landscapes and white-capped waters. Trends in the travel industry have indicated an increased interest in eco-tourism, farm tours and cultural experiences, attractions that are all agriculturally based and sustainable.
"It's our constitutional duty to perpetuate the agricultural industry by providing positive incentives, tax credits and economic stimuli," Tsuji said. "With the demise of sugar and pineapple plantations, we need to rebuild a strong and sustainable agriculture economy, and pursue value-added areas, such as eco-tourism and agri-tours."
But if the term "sustainable" sounds like the buzzword of the day, it wasn't the case when Carlson was passing out mimeograph leaflets about eating "green" around UH campus.
"Thirty years ago, the terms sustainable and bio-diversity didn't exist," Carlson said. "Food is politics; and food is more than just sustenance, it's who we are. And you can't eat fast food, if you're going to be green."
