 My name is Durasian and I'm here as the host of Think Tech Hawai'i's Finding Our Future show. And we're here every other Tuesday, 1 to 1.30 p.m. Hawaii time. And we are in the midst of a global pandemic, so it's kind of unprecedented times to be alive. And things are changing so quickly, which is why I'm really excited that my guest today is Hunter Hevelin. And he's a food systems planner here in Hawaii. So thank you, Hunter, for joining us. Thanks. Happy to be here. I'm back on Think Tech. Yes, good to see you, although not in person. If you can just introduce yourself, I know you wear many hats. So what is your role in food systems in Hawaii? Sure. I think most of my work broadly fits under food systems planning. A lot of times I do a number, as you said, a few different things. I'm pursuing a PhD at UH Manoa in the Department of Geography and Environment where my research is on agricultural change, here on the islands, and looking some at what kind of periods of transition we've had and how that can inform facilitating a transition towards more sustainable food systems here in particular. And then a little bit of that has been very timely, at least, looking at the history of emergency food planning. My other hat, I chair the Sierra Club for the Island of Oahu and focused there on a lot of kind of watchdogging of agricultural development programs, land use, and so forth, and advocating for good policy to support local food systems. And we have seen tons of things change when it comes to food here in Hawaii with the global pandemic. I think historically, we've used the figures like 85% or 90% of food is imported here in Hawaii. And we've really seen kind of how severe that problem is with people panic shopping. And we've been seeing the empty shelves at grocery stores and really seeing how much of that packaged food can be at risk, especially when people panic shop the way that they do. So can you talk a little bit about what's happening with the food system and why Hawaii is so vulnerable to these issues? Yeah, I mean, I don't think we've necessarily seen a lot of times when people think about food system disruptions, the supply side is what's considered, right? It's imagining that the shelves are empty, not because we've gone in there panic buying, but because things aren't arriving, right? So there's a pretty common phrase of the boats stop coming, that type of narrative, right? That as an island state, pretty far from everything, we have some founded fears in terms of concern of being at the far end of the global food system, how reliant we are upon these imported goods and how resilient we might be to disruptions that extend now, as we can see through this pandemic globally pretty rapidly. The current disruption, like the empty shelves that we see are not a byproduct of supply side supply chain disruptions at this point, really. This is kind of the panic buying that happens when you see a shelf start to empty, you also want to fill your cart with goods. What we may end up seeing down the line, or what we're starting to see in some other countries at least, is some of the kind of the same approach happening at national level, right? So countries starting to close off some of their exports. If that continues to happen, or if fundamental disruptions say as borders get shut down, disrupts say the flow of labor that's very important, particularly in U.S. productivity, we could start to see supply side disruptions more akin to the ones we've thought about historically, but the food system here in particular, what we've seen to date is demand side, right? So where we used to go to get our food has been completely upended. And obviously, we're not going to be in a pandemic forever. I mean, this is a temporary situation, but it's definitely giving a lens into ways that our local food system is flawed and ways that we can improve it. So for me, I see it as like a really great opportunity and challenge to tackle together. One thing that's been really fascinating and not something that I would have personally expected to happen so quickly is the surge in demand for local locally grown produce, especially those CSA boxes, which previously, for those who don't know, community supported agriculture are these like farm boxes or bags of produce that you get from a farm, you pick it up in a convenient location or you get it delivered to your door. And it's been a pretty like only like the hippies get that, you know, and it was the most people just went to the grocery store. But I mean, I've heard from a lot of these local farmers and CSA providers that their demand has surged to the point where they're sending out emails apologizing for being behind and being like way overwhelmed with the demand and all the online orders that I've just come through in the last week or two. So can you just talk a little bit about what's happening there? Yeah, I think part of it is the crowd nature of a supermarket has a lot of people I think reasonably concerned and as well as in their attempts to follow CDC guidelines about gathering and state regulations around stay at home and, you know, keep your distance social distancing practices that we're moving out of aggregate marketplace and trying to find alternatives that allow for home delivery, they'll allow for, you know, one on one type of pickup situations. Farm Bureau, for example, is, you know, kicked off a food hub of their own that's going to be a drive-through system tomorrow at Blaisdell. And as you mentioned, a number of these CSA programs, a number of the food hubs that have been in operation for a long time are seeing surges in participation, not just by consumers, but also by producers. And it's putting a strain on their ability to deliver, you know, when you've got suddenly five, 10 times as many people signing up as you would normally, you have to do a lot to try and meet that demand and meet that that shifting sort of approach. The question that I think is important for us to start considering is how do we facilitate this shift in demand towards local goods? Or how do we make sure that that stands as we come out of this pandemic at some point in a kind of yet identified future time period? I think it's quite reasonable that a lot of people that, you know, now are surging to get their local fare, as soon as there's a, you know, a person comes down with a coronavirus on a particular farm that that probably will shift how people start to think of these things, unfortunately. But we need to think through how do we transition from this immediate surge in interest to shifting our food systems in the long term to continue supporting agriculture, which has long been one of the primary industries that we think of when we think about diversifying away from a tourism based economy. Yeah. And I think there's a there's a huge conversation to have there around Hawaii being so dependent upon tourism and Waikiki recently coming to its knees and having hotels completely dark. People aren't coming here anymore. Hotels are, I think I heard a hundred hotels across Hawaii have closed down, mostly all of them being in Waikiki. So it's it's a really weird time and a way for us to like reflect and reshape the economy. So I guess I'm wondering from your perspective, having studied food systems for so long, what do you see as the best way to use this opportunity for a positive long term shift in terms of our ability to have food, its sustainability and resiliency? So one of the the primary efforts I'm working on at the moment is building sort of a coalition to essentially pitch to the powers that be to support the development of a food system resilience plan that I think would also be backed by essentially a task force or food policy council type entity composed of industry practitioners, experts and so forth to identify what some of these long term resilience goals are and then within those goals be thinking about what food emergency response planning should entail to get us closer to those goals so that when we respond to this crisis to when this crisis conceivably pops back up come next fall or the fall thereafter for example that we're getting ourselves closer to where we want to be in the long term as opposed to now where we're seeing a lot of scrambling a lot of amazing work happening across the food system from chef who is to food banks to all manner of organizations working to maneuver food to those who need it and particularly our existing emergency food planning focuses a lot on those who are hungry those who are unable to currently provide for themselves the system as I have thought about it food systems in general really the emphasis is often on supply side disruptions right but this demand side disruption as I was saying earlier is in where we get our food right now but if we think about what this pandemic could do what this shutdown could do to our our economy and our ability to purchase food our entitlements essentially our ability to our income right three months down the line how many of us are going to be able to make a decision between a grocery store or a csa versus do we pay our rent do we continue to pay our health insurance and so the the timeline of this pandemic is really calling into question a lot of these you know deeper broader issues for example what happens in three months when unemployment conceivably hits 25 percent 30 percent and nobody can buy food anymore our food banks are not designed to handle that type of response so we need longer term planning both about where we want to go and expanded current emergency planning to think about how we can get there do you have examples of cities or states that have done this and have had success or maybe other countries that you would model off of and and another question on top of that would be like what would that plan hypothetically or potentially include that would help create solutions to the problem so I despite studying this for many many years would not feign to be the sage to say exactly what that should should entail um in terms of looking elsewhere I mean we do face a novel situation there are many other island states that are able to govern food in a very different way because they are often nation states in themselves we are in the very unique context of being essentially a distant state within a broader nation state and so we through the commerce clause and so forth have relationships with other states that we can't just up and or or um cease our imports for example right or or moderate our imports or even tax them differently so it really modifies how we can approach trying to build this more resilient system in terms of what types of things this could such a plan could could maybe begin to address is I think thinking about what entitlement programs are what how do how do living wage goals fit into the ability of people to feed themselves in the long term and that it directly impacts what food prices are and that impacts the ability of farmers and essentially farms to be viable here so it's a thing interconnected across these various systems another example I was talking with some folks at sitar this week you know there's that's the surge in food hubs but in my experience um I was the manager at farm link here on wahoo for a few years that we had a lot of new farmers in particular coming into the program that didn't necessarily have the experience with grading with uh packing and those types of tools historically college of tropical agriculture has done a lot of work in cooperative development and cooperatives form a very important intermediary um aggregator and scale connector between small farms you know our average farm size is under 10 acres I think vast majority of them are around five acres um but a five acre farm works pretty well when you are selling to a wet market or a corner store maybe even a supermarket but now we've got Costco and Whole Foods and so forth and so your five acres of production doesn't fit into their global supply chain network we need intermediary tools to connect the scales between these things and we need to have additional providers of you know skills training like say college of tropical agriculture to work with these producers so that the food hubs can do their job doing the aggregating and connecting can you just list some of the major players I mean you you kind of mentioned some like farm link there's food hubs like what are the food hubs what are the co-ops that currently exist that people can look to and look into to start you know getting getting to know what's going on here locally sure there so I did a study last fall for holy green growth on assessing local food price we haven't had a agricultural statistical service functioning here for about a decade so we had very little knowledge about what local food prices were particularly for small farmers because that varies that's pretty different than if you're a large wholesale producer right so I did a study of looking working to try and collect data from as many the food hubs were across the state that were able or willing to participate and ended up putting together a map as well that's up on my website of the food hubs across the island so we've got you know essentially from a few a few different ones on Oahu there's one on Molokai there's like Maui I believe in others at least maybe two others might be in the works on Maui a couple good sites on the big island one of which you know adaptations have been run for 30 years or so and I believe some others that are now possibly going to pop up on the big island so there's pretty good spatial coverage with one one major gap in particular that Kauai did not actually have an entity performing this role quite the same way as these others were. Molokai has been doing amazing work amazing spectrum of work in the food system for a long long time and has particularly in this crisis really really done heroic volumes of connecting people and food on that island but that's different than a longer term you know an entity that's focused on being playing this intermediary role between say producers and markets or producers and consumers so there's a pretty wide... I just wanted to if you can introduce like what a food hub is for those who are pretty new to the concept in this this field sure so food hubs I wish I could rattle off the USDA definition for you from memory but I can't the essentially they're they're aggregators and distributors often of produce and they can take a lot of different forms right so sometimes it might be a hui of farmers get together and they're going to aggregate and then distribute it could be a non-profit for example on Molokai sustainable Molokai runs this mobile market program where they've got producers on island whose goods they then distribute through various means to to buyers on the island to a lot of individuals in particular others function differently so adaptations on big island has been running you know they were essentially a farm and then grew out from there and had a lot of restaurant clients right we're kind of instrumental in hoi original cuisine being developed as part of that sort of early farm to table moment movement here more recently Oahu Fresh on Oahu Kahumana food hub you know as their their farm at Kahumana has also expanded to play this kind of community role that's under a non-profit arm arm Oahu Fresh and Farm Link are both um businesses that run this similar operation so they can take a lot of different forms but the primary bit is number of producers you aggregate their goods and you you know take care of some of the distribution and sales and it allows farmers to focus on farming instead of having to do you know the whole swath of all the market market development and so forth and um in my experience I think the farmers farmers liked it yeah I'm sure they're grateful that they can focus on farming which is their primary goal and not have to worry about all the other business um aspects and the um distribution chain so that's great um and then you had shared some maps so there's a Hawaii wide map and an Oahu map if we can show those really quick and can you just explain a little bit about what your goal here was with making these yeah so this was a this is just like one bit of a that broader project for Hawaii green growth as a contribution to the state's uh food dashboard and so this is just a map of points uh uh with contact information that you can click around if you're on on whichever island and see okay here's how I can you know access a whole bunch of farmers through one place um and this was something that I just sort of threw together after after this pandemic kicked off and this is essentially Farm Link Oahu Farm Link and in red uh Oahu Fresh in blue and Kahumana in green for their distribution areas and their distribution days with links to their website pretty really fast and dirty mapping I think two of the three of those I did just called my friends and run those organizations and said okay tell me tell me where it is and I'm plotted out a little map and then threw that out there but what that also highlights right is that there are gaps in coverage even here on Oahu right so if you're above say hygienic store towards laie and you're a farmer that wants to get your goods to market you're going to probably have to move a pretty good ways to get it somewhere where one of these aggregators is able to pick it up easily um and similarly if you're you know consumer in one of those regions you're going to have to travel a good ways to to get access to these goods yeah so there's opportunity here for sure can you um share where people can find those maps and these data points in case they want to look at them in the future sure my website is supersistence.org and it's like subsistence but better um so s-u-p-e-r-s-i-s-t-e-n-c-e.org and that's got a whole bunch of different different websites and tools I've been throwing together um as well yeah I think your data your love for data is a huge benefit to the movement so thank you for putting that stuff together mapping's not everyone's skill set or interest it's definitely uh yeah as a geographer um it is me queuing close to home but um it's at least a way for people to to see something and see data in a way that makes it a little easier to to think about and to think through and I want to talk about what's going on with restaurants right now I know a lot of local produce and maybe you have some percentages here that would be cool if you did um of like what percentage of local food was locally grown food was going to restaurants versus individuals and how that shifted just in the past few weeks with the stay at home order and the shutdown with the pandemic um if you have those numbers if you just want to like touch upon that because I know delivering to homes and it's much more um burdensome for the farmers and the food distributors because there's so many more people to deliver to families and individuals as opposed to giving bigger quantities to restaurants that are largely now closed or their operations have been severely reduced so I don't know if you can speak to that um topic a little bit sure I definitely don't have numbers about uh how much local food has moved around I think the closest we'd be able to get to something like that would be looking at the uh it would take sort of the back-end data from aggregators and distributors like food hubs or some of the more broadline um distributors to to see how that transition has changed um what what I can tell you is that one of the things that a lot of farms have been dealing with is that they're you know a primary sales outlet for for farms that have been working at scale for a long time as often hotels restaurants larger food service um systems where now they're scrambling to say okay how do I do I let this rot in the field do I harvest it and try and find another market it does it pencil out to do deliveries if you know you're working mostly with individual buyers which are you know if you've got a whole field of of goods and you're trying to sell it by the pound um and you're going to have to deliver that it it starts to not make economic sense pretty quickly and so the the shuffle that's happened and some of the other work that's been going on is trying to see particularly with with I know Claire Mato has been working on this is trying to see what type of um financial resources can be distributed to farmers to essentially pay for those goods and then those the goods end up then at farm or at food banks rather that are now you know part of the frontline response um for folks whose you know ability to pay their own rent or buy their own food has been disrupted right um what one thing I was curious about it is what you see I mean this is like a situation that's like quite unpaid so things are like every single day um but what do you see as the long-term ideal vision for our food system where we do have like a different diversified economy outside of tourism where things aren't so hotel driven and tour tourism driven um when it comes to food local communities like what do you see um for your ideal vision um I don't have a a perfect crystal ball I will say by far but one of the ways I've been trying to think about and frame some of this thinking is thinking of what does an archipelago economy look like right we will continue to be part of the world um imagining that we're going to become wholly self-sufficient I don't think is actually a more resilient thing than having a relationship with the broader world that's a little bit more on on our terms or at least based on decisions that we've made as opposed to um conditions that we've inherited and so I think that the the food system resilience planning process will do a lot to help identify uh you know what it is that we are seeking out of our food systems and who it is that we're aiming to benefit through them right so there's been some popularization or rather probably there's been a couple of efforts right so we have the statewide aloha plus challenge to double our local food production we have the governor's sustainable hoi initiative also to double local food production by 2030 and 2020 respectively they didn't necessarily lay out much in the way of plans about how to get there um and so what we've seen in particular of late is a lot of large finance capital investment moving into the local food space that is conceivably going to be displacing not so much the small backyard operators or hobby farmers but the commercialized longtime farm family farms in some cases that have been here for many years right so when for for example villa rose eggs wants to come in which is a partnership with the largest egg distributor and the largest egg producer on the mainland wants to come in and you know get up to a million eggs a day my friends in Waimanala with 25 chickens aren't going to go out of business but the family farms have been operating wahiwaha for 80 100 years they're the ones that are going to be imperiled right and so what we may end up seeing as a byproduct of this it is that these firms come in while it makes economic sense and if situations like now happen where the the economic winds change and it becomes unprofitable to work here or more profitable to work somewhere else that they were likely to leave and we will have a hollowing out of the middle of our agricultural productivity and be left with a less professional class of farmers and the less ability to actually feed ourselves in the long run so we need to be very conscientious about what the state supports and how it chooses to support agriculture here and in my opinion there is a is now and has for a long time been significant underfunding in supporting productivity and particularly family farmers right if we need to take a livelihoods perspective not just a calorie perspective it's not just how much we produce but it's who produces it and how they benefit from that economy and how their work and participation in our environment and in our communities supports our broader goals as an island as an island state yeah i think the government has a big role they have set pretty ambitious goals and they need to probably step up in terms of their implementation of that so that's a really good call to action for the state what would be we're coming on our last minute here so what would be your call to action for people people who are staying at home right now people who are just like wanting to be a part of the solution um i know that there's been a lot of interest in or some growing interest in like victory gardens and that kind of work i think i would advocate for people to go out you've got some time go try out a green thumb not because i believe that radical self-sufficiency is the the path to um our island's sustainability or resilience but because i think you'll probably realize quickly how difficult this work is how challenging it is and how complex it can be and that might give you a little bit more willingness to pay when your next time you're at the market or when you're making your decisions about what type of agriculture and what type of food system you want to support and so if if laboring in your yard is brings you joy great um but we should not mistake lifestyle decisions for you know community resilience necessarily and so go out there give it a shot uh and then find find the farmer in your neighborhood and maybe don't haggle with him so much next time if you can't support your farmers try farming so you know how hard it is um so superstance.org thank you hunter for being um an awesome advocate and uh food system so thank you so much and hope you're having some fun time at home likewise bye