Reflections on the North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Campaign and the Kanu Eat Local Challenge

Now that the whirlwind that was the North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Campaign and the Kanu Eat local Challenge has subsided, I have a few minutes to reflect upon the project.

In North Kohala we met our goal of enlisting over 100 people to make an “eat local” commitment at KanuHawai.org during the statewide Eat Local Challenge. In conjunction with our many community partners, we produced 13 different events in North Kohala and Waimea- workshops where people learned how to grow food and to use it for medicine, parties where we got to eat, drink and be merry, we screened a film, and we washed, cut, cooked and ate together as a community.  We touched thousands of people statewide with our outreach campaign and hundreds of people in North Kohala and Waimea who attended our events.

The Town Market, located on the Parker School Campus in central Waimea, though only a couple of years old, is already a lively gathering place for area residents and visitors. While there, we ran into people we knew from Hilo and Waikoloa shopping for produce and munching on yummy fresh foods.

The vendors’ tents surround a grassy central square dotted with a few picnic tables where shoppers sit and enjoy their just-purchased snacks, do some people-watching or just rest a while. A DJ provided a wide variety of music.

A while back, we got two young female ducks from a friend, and one of them flew off and got lost in a real thick part of the woods east of our land. I felt sad about her plight, and went out calling and quacking after her. I was practically swimming in an ocean of vines and logs and brush for an hour or so. She must have froze with panic in this strange and foreign environment, because I was unable to get any sign of her. I gave up and began work on our house, when suddenly I heard her call. I rushed back, but she clammed up when she heard me coming. I waited for a time in the warm sun on a high log, to see if she might forget I was there and start calling again for her friend. I felt a connection to her fear and helplessness. I really wanted to rescue her and get her into our pond with her duck friends. I eventually gave up, though, and resumed my construction project.

For the second year in a row I’ve counted weekly produce advertising data from West Hawaii Today. Below is a comparison of the number of locally grown fruit and vegetable advertisements versus the number of imported fruit and vegetable advertisements.

Once again Choice Mart leads the pack with 250 local items and 423 imported items advertised. KTA promoted 214 local items and 502 imported items. Foodland/Sack N Save advertised 211 local items but a whopping 851 imported produce items, many of which, like avocado and mango, compete directly with Hawaii growers. Safeway ran ads for 96 local items and 603 imported items.