Why grow food at home?
Many people now have some sense of the importance of growing food at home. Here are a few of the benefits of homegrown food.
Taste and nutrition
Homegrown is the freshest and therefore tastiest and most nutritious you can get. There is nothing like the flavor and vitality of freshly picked fruits and vegetables. Research has shown that produce that has been on the store shelf for a few days has significantly lower nutritional value as compared with freshly harvested produce.
Food self-reliance
Homegrown gives you control over your food. Currently about 85% of our island’s food is imported by ship or airplane from distant locations, and there is just a few days worth of food in stores at any given time. Many residents are concerned about economic, ecological, or health issues that might slow down or cut off our food imports. Many of our Hawai‘i Island Community Development Plans prioritize growing more of our food locally, supporting farms, and protecting agricultural lands. An event that restricted food imports might also curtail imports of fuel, fertilizer, and chemicals that are used commercially to produce and distribute food on the island.
Food safety
Growing food at home gives you full knowledge of how the food was grown and handled from field to plate. Most of us eat store-bought food that was grown and processed with unfamiliar methods by strangers in anonymous, distant locations. This distance between field and plate has caused growing concern about the safety of our food.Cultural integrity. A personal home garden reflects crops and varieties that suit individual preferences. On the other hand, large commercial growers generally grow just a few crop varieties, those that are best suited for large-scale production and long-distance distribution. The shrinking diversity of crops available in stores around the country has tended to diminish cultural connections to unique local foods and dishes. Since food is integral to cultural expression, growing our own food allows us to reconnect our culinary lives to our cultural/social identities.
Household economy
Growing food at home can decrease the percentage of the household budget devoted to purchasing food. Most home gardeners produce seasonal over-abundance of many crops, which can be shared with friends and neighbors or sold. By producing an abundance of food at home, the benefits to household economies overflows into neighborhood communities.
Minimizes carbon footprint
Because of our island’s remoteness, our imported food travels thousands of miles from food processors and distributors on the U.S. mainland. Some of that food is transported hundreds or thousands of miles (e.g., from China) to reach the mainland food distributors. Once the food arrives on store shelves on Hawai‘i Island, many of us drive our cars miles to buy it, burning more fuel. By growing food at home, we can eliminate the fuel consumed to transport, process, refrigerate, and store it. We may use some energy to grow food, but that energy may be saved by turning unused lawn or purely ornamental landscaping into fruit and vegetable gardens.
Craig Elevitch is director of Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network and an educator in agroforestry. His books include Agroforestry Guides for Pacific Islands (2000), The Overstory Book: Cultivating Connections with Trees (2004), Traditional Trees of Pacific Islands: Their Culture, Environment, and Use (2006), and Specialty Crops of Pacific Islands (2011) all of which promote diverse agricultural systems that produce abundant food. Pathways to Abundant Gardens: A Pictorial Guide to Successful Organic Growing (2007) highlights Hawai'i gardeners and their vibrant, bountiful, and sustainable food gardens.