Despite myriad challenges, advocates for Hawaiʻi’s Farm to School movement continue to persevere, inspired by their belief that our keiki deserve to eat fresh food grown near their homes.
The Farm to School movement is a general term that describes wide-ranging actions to bring locally grown food into school cafeterias. More broadly, these efforts support local agriculture, increase Hawaiʻi’s food independence and improve the overall health of our communities.
“It’s about our ability to stand on our own two feet and provide the foods we need to survive outside of continental influence,” said Kawika Kahiapo, program coordinator for Hawaiʻi Farm to School, a program of the Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute (HPHI). Kahiapo said that local food advocates have a strong drive to make Farm to School happen in Hawaiʻi, especially now given the instability of federal funding.
The movement officially organized in 2010 when HPHI set up the first state network of public- private partnerships to advance Farm to School. In 2015, the Hawaiʻi Department of Education (DOE) began purchasing locally sourced food for cafeterias, and schools started to plant their own gardens.
In Kohala, for example, the nonprofit organization Hawaiʻi Institute for Pacific (HIP) Agriculture and Kohala High School started a school garden in 2018 to provide food and learning. Students from the school’s natural resource classes spend one to three days a week growing fruits and vegetables like kalo, ʻuala (sweet potato), ʻulu, avocado and citrus.
Before the pandemic, students and faculty harvested the vegetables to cook in the school’s cafeteria. But due to liability concerns, processing of the food was moved to the Kohala Food Hub.
“What’s really beautiful about a local school garden is that there are ways, through Farm to School activities, that we can still have impact outside of the cafeteria where there are more barriers,” said Erika Kuhr, co-founder, co-director and chef at HIP Agriculture.
The DOE is mandated by state law to locally source 30% of its food by the end of this decade. But progress toward this goal has been lagging. Depending on who you ask, the reasons for this vary but include rising food costs, inflexible procurement rules, a lack of eligible vendors, and decreased farm productivity due to climate change.
According to DOE’s January 2025 report, local food made up only 5.43% (about $4.5 million) of all food purchased by the department’s School Food Services Branch. This is compared to the non-local food expenditures, which amounted to 94.57% (about $77 million) – thus, most of the money spent on food for our keiki is leaving Hawaiʻi instead of being reinvested into our local economy.
The DOE’s local food purchases are composed of 1.83% local fresh fruit, 3% local meat, 0.51% local dairy, 0.06% local bottled water, and 0.03% poi.
Currently, food purchasing for schools happens at a statewide level. Changing the rules to allow procurement to occur at a smaller, more localized level would make a big positive difference, said Kuhr.
“Hawaiʻi is very complex and its harder to move forward on the dial because we have islands, and each island is individual,” said Kuhr. “The type of coordination and farming needed to get to different sites varies.” She added that training and equipping cafeteria staff and managers is greatly needed. Beyond that, Kuhr sees opportunity for innovation – to train and involve students in the preparation of their food.
Several pieces of legislation to remove systematic barriers for Farm to School or Farm to Home initiatives are currently under consideration by lawmakers. HB 1293, for example, seeks to temporarily adjust the DOE’s small purchase procurement rules for local edible produce and packaged food products to make it easier for the department to buy these local goods.
Groups like the Hawaiʻi Food Youth Council are training and supporting high school students to learn about legislation and advocate for better local food policies. In March, the Council hosted the 10th annual We Grow Event at the Hawaiʻi State Capitol. Through the event Hawaiʻi youth connect with farmers, cooks and others involved in agriculture while also learning about the legislative process.
“We work with them to develop their own personal story related to local food, and they use that story as part of their testimony. Their relationship to the issue is what tears at the heart strings of legislators,” said Kahiapo. He is currently working with 16 high-school-aged youth, each one following a different bill at the legislature.
One of those students is Vivienne Momo Hill. “There’s such a want and demand for the Farm to School movement,” said Hill who testified on behalf of HB 428, a bill to provide funding to Hawaiʻi’s food banks to purchase, store, and transport Hawaiʻi grown or produced foods to food insecure communities.
“Our families often can’t afford the locally grown produce because it’s more expensive than what is coming in on the ships, which is ultimately what families can afford,” Hill said. “There’s something wrong with a system that makes shipping stuff from across the world more affordable than something grown like a couple miles away.”
She said events like We Grow are important because they empower Hawaiʻi’s youth to engage with local food issues. “Students took time off school to come to the Capitol and lobby their legislators. They realize, ʻOh my school lunch isn’t great’ and that it’s not just a given – they can change it,” Hill said. “Tapping into those voices and giving them space to share stories is so important.”
