Food Sovereignty Conference

With another busy weekend looming, I've just now begun to sift through notes and pictures from the last weekend. Last Friday was spent at Mohala Farms in Waialua as part of the ‘Aina Ho‘ōla o Ma‘ilikukahi conference, a food sovereignty movement that MA‘O first started five years ago.
(‘Aina: land, Ho‘ōla: restore, Ma‘ilikukahi: a great king of O‘ahu; during his rule, the land prospered and there were enough resources to sustain its people.)

Broadly, the movement is about educating youth and community in land stewardship so that we may feed ourselves. To help make the lessons more tangible, attendees worked at one of five farms/one fishpond to see the projects that people are currently working on to make O‘ahu sustainable, and to gain some practical experience. At Mohala Farms, some of us worked with Evelyn Giddings, composter extraordinaire, making compost piles and learning what goes into compost (everything she can get her hands on, including other people's rubbish). Mark Hamamoto shared the struggles in acquiring ag land, getting water, and fighting off bugs as an organic farmer. I like the experimental attitude at Mohala and the delight they take in working the land. It's amazing...Evelyn and Kathy Maddux are over sixty years old, but in the fields, they're lithe and strong.

My big question, though, after leaving Mohala Farms, was: how do we make farming economically viable for farmers? How do we expect farmers to farm organically, to plant diversified crops for O‘ahu's people rather than seed to be exported for large ag companies, when the latter is what pays the bills? How do we expect to win the fight against unsustainable development if it's more profitable (not to mention much easier) to sell the land to developers than to farm it? I admire all the small farmers on O‘ahu who have strong ideals and the extraordinary will to see them through, but for the rest of us, we need a little more assurance before we take the plunge.

These were questions I hoped to have answers for on Saturday, when we all convened in Kahana Valley and attended panels like Viability and Food Advocacy. But of course, if the answers were so easy to obtain, perhaps we wouldn't need a conference in the first place. The very simplified answer appears to a combination of policy changes, education, and just doing it. The personal problem, then, becomes what can I do that will make the most impact? There's only one of me, where do I direct my energies?

I have to come clean...while I'd like to say the most memorable part of the conference was hearing from engaged youth, or talking with inspirational people, really, the hedonist in me says the best part was the kalua pig for dinner on Saturday. A whole roasted pig killed and stuck in the imu the day before, the whole thing, head and all, shredded into juicy, flavorful pork...it's quite possibly one of the best things I've ever had. If you could give people a piece of that and tell them that this is what we're fighting for...I bet you could convince a lot of people to join the fight.