Gearing up for the challenge

It's the eve of the Eat Local Challenge, and there are a million thoughts running through my head. Mostly about where I'm going to shop for my food (Chinatown, Whole Foods, Kokua, Foodland, farmers markets, that little produce stall on 9th and Waialae) and whether I consider soy sauce and fish sauce spices (verdict: yes, though I'm afraid I've opened the floodgates). When thinking about the pleasures I'll be giving up (like dining out and bread and olive oil), I think about what the purpose of all this is...I'm not trying to prove that we should start growing our own wheat, or that we shouldn't import olive oil; given our climate it makes more sense to import these, even factoring shipping costs. Instead, I'm trying to bring awareness to what we do have and what we should grow. Giving up olive oil seems like a silly exercise, but if I hadn't decided to, I would never have discovered Oils of Aloha's macadamia nut oil. If I hadn't given up bread, I would never have found myself mucking about in a lo'i in Kahaluu, learning about taro and poi and Hawaiian culture, in a quest to find a new starch to replace bread and rice.

One thing that I never really paid much attention to until faced with this challenge, doing research, and the current economic climate, is the idea of food security. I believe in nourishing our community, of course, but the idea that as part of the United States, that we might have our food supply cut off from us seemed like scare tactics. But I'm beginning to think that frighteningly, it's not a stretch. We are, after all, the most isolated island chain in the world, and we import 85% of our food. The scarcity of Hawaii ginger, as related by Cheryl To, of PacifiKool, could easily apply to any of our staples: potatoes, rice, meat. No one farms rice here anymore, of course...but have we now become so dependent on imported food, that if shipping becomes too expensive, or imports are contaminated, will we be unable to feed ourselves? Hearing news of food riots around the world, it's not something I want to find out...and so we need to encourage everyone to support local agriculture and seafood while we still have it to ensure that we'll still have it in the future.