Feeding the future

Dr. Noa Lincoln, associate professor at UH Mānoa and co-director of the Ke ʻŌ Mau Center for Sustainable Island Food Systems, has been at the forefront of efforts to transform Hawai‘i’s food system. In this conversation, he shares insights on the challenges, opportunities, and innovations shaping a more resilient and equitable future for food in the islands. Support for the center comes partially from private donors.

Is the overarching goal to reach self-reliance permanently, or for times of crisis?

Permanently, and part of that is understanding what a good level of self-reliance looks like. I don’t think the goal is 100 percent local food. There are a lot of benefits to participating in international and national trade networks, but there are also positive outcomes from having a solid local foundation in our food system. Nobody’s taken a serious look at the question: what is a good level of local production to aim for? It’s about making a permanent, transformative shift — how our local food resilience is incorporated into Hawai‘i’s strategic planning.

What are the greatest obstacles to Hawai‘i’s reaching this goal?

Infrastructure. We need more certified kitchens and better cold chain integrity, but more important is the social infrastructure. During the plantation era, it was a very simple social structure. The plantation owners controlled everything, made the rules, managed people, and sold products en masse to a few purchasers. It was narrow and centralized.

Now, with local food systems and so many small farmers, it’s much more complicated. The networks and relationships that need to happen are complex. Social organization and infrastructure can facilitate that, and we’ve started seeing shifts in Hawai‘i. Twenty years ago, we had two food hubs; today we have twenty. This proliferation is significant.

Food hubs are social organizations that bring farmers together to share resources and organizational capacity, so they can access markets at a scale no single farmer could reach alone. We can’t affect the physical infrastructure much, but we can make meaningful contributions to the social infrastructure — sharing knowledge, sharing facilities, all of it.

I’m active with the Food Hub Hui, helping facilitate collaboration and cross-coordination so food hubs can learn from each other. In most states, land-grant universities run cooperative development support. Hawai‘i is one of the few that doesn’t, so we’re trying to support this, helping form cooperatives and cooperative associations, offering technical assistance, networking, organizational development, and cross-organizational development.

Which obstacles are most easily overcome?

The innovation component. Hawai‘i is a challenging ecosystem, socially, economically and agriculturally. There are a lot of reasons, but where we see real success, it often involves innovation in one form or another.

The Hawai‘i ʻUlu Cooperative is an example. They had to invent tools — like a breadfruit peeler, which didn’t exist — by working with engineers. They’ve created entirely new products and partnered with Kapi‘olani Community College’s culinary school to develop new food items from the crop. A good chunk of their success comes from leveraging technical innovation.

Supporting an innovation environment is key. We have resources in the state, especially at the university, all the tools to do these things. We just need to be better about making the tools available to local entrepreneurs and businesses so they can be competitive in our economic environment.

If the project suddenly received a crazy amount of funding, what could be solved right now?

• Indigenous Crop Innovation. Unlocking the potential of our indigenous crops. These have global implications. There’s irony in investing hundreds of millions of dollars in heat-resistant crops, while we already have tropical crops that are heat-adapted and can do what corn does.
• Equitable Value Chains. Supporting cooperatives and food hubs to ensure fair distribution of wealth across the food system. Building communities of practice and technical support.
• Biocultural Restoration. Revitalizing traditional food systems with environmental and cultural benefits. Examples include fishponds like Paepae o Heʻeia, which serve as hubs for food, education and cultural practice. These are whole-system impacts, but in one specific place at a time. We work with several of these efforts, and there’s a need for coordination and expansion.