Last week I attended the annual Farm Bureau meeting. There were the usual discussions of new ways to do business, new farming techniques and what’s happening on the national level.

But that’s all just moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.

At that meeting I was nominated as Treasurer and asked to say a few words.

I told the audience that I feel it is not fair for farmers to be the only ones carrying the burden of feeding Hawaii’s people. And that they should be concerned about their own well-being.

Farming is in trouble. There were more than a few farmers at the conference who are on the verge of going out of business.

I’ve been pointing out for a while that farmers are in trouble because fertilizer and supply costs are high, while consumers faced with shrinking discretionary income are changing their behavior and not buying as much produce.

Retailers and wholesalers are better positioned to maintain their profit margins, and farmers are the ones least able to avoid shrinking margins. I’ve said before that some farmers are actually dipping into their savings to buy fertilizer.

I told them I was the only person from Hawai‘i to attend the Peak Oil conference in Houston last year. I told them that we, as farmers, know the connection of oil prices to farming. And that we all know oil is finite and the world population is increasing at the rate of 70 million people per year, so therefore we know oil prices will start rising again. And then farming costs will rise some more and people’s discretionary incomes will fall.

At the Farm Bureau meeting, I said that if we are serious about food security we will need farmers to farm. It’s not rocket science: If farmers make money, farmers will farm.

We all know that being too reliant on foreign oil is not good for our economy. It’s like paying a giant tax and it hurts all of us. Money leaving our economy to pay to import food does the same thing. This subject should be our highest priority.

Andy Hashimoto, dean of the University of Hawai‘i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, gets it. He was the most passionate I have ever heard him on the topic of food security.

I agree with him. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we as a society do not have the will or commitment to deal with food security for Hawai‘i’s people.

The tourism and high tech industries are allocated millions of dollars annually. But food security is only given lip service.