Richard recently showed me a really interesting report called The Hawaii Whole System Project.
This 84-page report, prepared by the Rocky Mountain Institute, was sponsored by the Omidyar family.
To wander away from my subject for just a moment: I was curious as to why the Omidyar family is interested in Hawai‘i and put its money into this in-depth look at agriculture on the Big Island, so I poked around the web a little.
It turns out that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has a connection to Hawai‘i—he attended Punahou School and was recently named to its Board of Trustees. A quick Google search finds an interesting interview with him from when he was inducted into the Academy of Achievement and also that the philanthropist is one of Newsweek’s 15 People Who Make America Great.
“Business can be a force for good,” he says in that article. “You can make the world a better place and make money at the same time.” It sounds a lot like our hero Richard Ha, doesn’t it?
(You wouldn’t believe how much energy I have to expend, getting Richard to allow me to say things like that about him on his blog.)
From the report itself:
The Hawaii Whole System Project is a research and action project conducted by Rocky Mountain Institute on behalf of the Omidyar family. The Omidyar Family is pleased to sponsor this project to promote innovative, long-term planning and local self-reliance.
With the underlying assumption that local food and agriculture can be good for a community (expanded upon below), the goal of the first phase of this project, the phase contained in this document, is to understand the agricultural system on the Island of Hawaii in order to:
I. Identify the reasons why locally produced food holds such a small market share (about 85 percent of locally consumed food is imported according to several sources),
II. Define the barriers to increasing local market share and strengthening agriculture,
III. Locate leverage points that, when targeted with time or investment, could have multiple positive effects on local food and agriculture, and
IV. Identify business or non-profit opportunities that could activate these leverage points.
In order to identify the barriers to more local production and consumption, Phase I of the project focused on mapping the Hawaiian agriculture and food system. The research for Phase I consisted of gathering and studying published academic and government documents and analyzing agriculture and local food statistics from diverse sources, as well as interviewing people from up and down the food and agriculture value chain, from farmer to consumer, in order to understand the whole system, how it interacts with other systems such as energy, and how to influence it.
In Phase II, based on this preliminary research, the RMI team will analyze the feasibility of the opportunities. Finally in Phase III, the RMI team will work with The Kohala Center and other partners to bring together potential entrepreneurs and investors, as well as other people who might have an interest in local food and agriculture in order to act on the research findings.
It’s coming at us from all sides now – this interest in Hawai‘i’s sustainability and food security; this certainty that Hawai‘i doesn’t HAVE to import what the Whole System Project says is now 85 percent of its food.
In October, Richard will speak on these subjects at a food summit conference called Hawai‘i Island Food Summit: Our Food, Our Community, Our Future. It will be held October 5th and 5th at the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Hotel.
This two-day Summit will explore the visions, possibilities, ideas, and practical solutions to answering the question “How can Hawai’i Feed Itself?” We hope this conference will be a catalyst not only for changes in policy and practice at the island level, but a convening of the agricultural community to create a compelling vision for the future of food and farming across the state.
We’ll tell you more about all this as it comes up. You know we will.