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Eat Local Challenge Wrap Up

Aug 28, 2009 | By James Koshiba

The Eat Local Challenge was inspired by members. Jennifer Hong was the first to pledge to eat “localtarian” - a term she coined, which I prefer to the more widely used “locavore”. Soon after, dozens of local-food-related commitments sprang up online. Kyle Datta suggested the more specific idea of committing to eat local together as part of a campaign.

Initially, we thought we'd get a few members – maybe 30 of us – to eat strictly local for an entire week. We'd journal about our experience online, and highlight some important food sustainability  issues. We didn't anticipate the energy the campaign would unleash – among members and their friends, but also among restaurants, markets, and farms.  You can check out the Eat Local blog and Discussion pages for a full picture of the campaign, but here are some highlights:

Chef Goran Streng created a prix fixe local menu that ran all week at Tango Contemporary Cafe. Walden Au's food review of Tango is guaranteed to make your mouth water. Town Restaurant (which always pushes the local food envelope) offered dishes with 100% local ingredients down to the spices and oils, and added an all-local special menu for the last weekend of the campaign. Restaurant and sports bar Cafe Anasia served up local fish and sausage, paired with locally-brewed beers. Govindaji's Vegetarian Cuisine gave members a discount on their local veggie plates, and Indigo Restaurant featured local ingredients in some of their dishes.

One link down the food chain, markets volunteered to support members with discounts and specials. At Tamashiro Market, Cyrus Tamashiro crafted a special flyer about local items, and talked to smart mobbers about how to cook local fish and veggie pairings. Foodland/Sack-N-Save crafted a special list of all the local items in-store; Umeke Market shared their story; Kokua Coop offered members a discount at their deli; and, Whole Foods had signs and placards promoting the Eat Local Challenge all week.

At the beginning of the food chain, farmers and fisherman stepped up to the challenge. The United Fishing Agency and Sumida Farm offered us information about where our food comes from. Members "smart mobbed" at MA`O Organic Farms and Nalo Farms booths at farmers markets.  MA`O also hosted our close-out event where we planted and harvested, then shared stories over an all-local pot luck.

Sasha Hamada captured the campaign in video and text, and Kaimana Pine's photos of the campaign are remarkable.  We got youth bloggers like Dominik Walczuk to submit stories and journal entries. Martha Cheng covered us in the Honolulu Weekly. Ashley Brooks wrote about us in the Examiner. HMSA promoted the Challenge in-house and our friends at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation helped spread the word. An eat local pot luck at Hawaii Pacific University by Melissa Matsubara re-charged the school's Green Team.  Watermark Publishing offered us a 40% discount on local food cookbooks.  And all week, KGMB9 covered us on Sunrise.

Actually, we got overwhelmed by interest in the campaign. Restaurants on Kauai and farms on Hawaii Island wanted to join in, but we couldn't keep up with updates online or in our promotions. We apologize to those who got left out this time around...we're already thinking about how to make the next Eat Local Challenge bigger, better, and less Oahu-centric.

Eating local was fun, interesting, challenging and delicious.  As with our other campaigns, this one was about leading by example and making an impact, while raising awareness (including our own) about larger issues. Here are a few of the "big picture" reasons we ate local...

We kept more money in the local economy, at least $0.25 more of every $1.00 spent on food compared to imports, supporting local business and jobs. We ate healthier – lots more fresh fruits and vegetables, less Twinkies and SPAM (turns out it's not local after all). Buying Hawaii-grown meant we supported local farms that preserve the open spaces we love. And, we cut fossil fuel use and greenhouse gases because the stuff we ate traveled fewer “food miles” than imports.

One of the most important reasons we ate local was for economic security. At any given time, there's less than a two week supply of food in Hawaii stores. If barges and airplanes to Hawaii are disrupted (e.g., by a natural disaster or terrorist attack), we'd have an extremely short supply of food in the islands. Our Eat Local dollars strengthened the farmers, markets, and restaurants working to make us more "food secure." And, those of us that pledged to kanu (grow) something to eat strengthened our family economic security. In an age of layoffs and pay cuts, it was comforting to feed ourselves.

The deepest questions, though, were raised by simple member observations during the Campaign.

Many said, "It's hard to find local stuff to eat." And so it was. Some days, I survived on papaya and avocado - not exactly a balanced diet. We need to grow more of our food here, and a greater variety of it. Being completely “food independent” might be a ways off, but we should strive quickly toward producing more than the 15% of our food that we currently do. A combination of backyard agriculture, community gardens, and local farms are needed to get us there. All these require land and water fit for farming.

Right now, a battle is raging on the Ewa Plain of Oahu over whether prime agricultural land will be preserved for crops or be developed into a new community of 11,000 homes called Hoopili - just one example of hard conversations ahead.  As a community, we must decide: How important is our food security? If it's really important, then preserving agricultural land is just the start. We'll have to ensure that there's enough water for farming, the right infrastructure (irrigation, distribution) and that the crops we grow are fit for eating, not just for export or energy. Each of these decisions will be made by elected and appointed officials who need community voices to help them draw sound conclusions.

Another comment by members: "It's more expensive to eat local." I spent an average of $30 per day on food during the Eat Local Challenge, compared to $20 at other times. This wasn't just because lettuce at the farmers' market was more expensive than imported lettuce at the supermarket.  No, the big spending difference was because an 800 calorie meal of fruits and vegetables (local or imported) cost so much more than driving-thru for 800 calories of burger and soda (yes, I do drive thru on occasion).

 Here, too, the roots of the problem lie in policy. Last year, the U.S. government made $2 billion in subsidy payments to corn farmers to keep corn production up and the price of corn down. Most of that cheap corn didn't end up as ears in the supermarket – it got processed into high fructose corn syrup for soda and candy, and fed to cows that became my quarter pounder. Unhealthy, highly processed, fat- and sugar-laden, fast, packaged foods are cheap because our tax dollars cover part of the tab for producing them.

Thanks to federal agricultural policy, we are paying to keep unhealthy foods cheap, while the healthy stuff stays relatively expensive. At a time when our government is agonizing over how to pay for healthcare, it's absurd that the same government also subsidizes foods causing heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.  By making unhealthy food cheap, we've also guaranteed that these diseases are concentrated in poor communities that can least afford to eat healthy.   That's not only absurd, it's an appalling injustice.

All of that and more is at stake in our food choices and the food system we support. And, all of it calls us to step beyond our own eating habits (though that's a good place to start), learn about the issues, and get involved. We'll be posting more content on the "big picture" issues and the ways to work together on them in the coming weeks.

For now, there's plenty we can do to stay plugged in and "keep it moving" as a friend of mine in the national food movement likes to say. Make a commitment to eat local at least once a week, or to throw a monthly eat local party.  Read one of food-guru Michael Pollen's books or articles, and consider the counter points as well.  Join an "Eat In" sponsored by the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and Slow Food, or attend a screening of the film Food Inc.  Share your Eat Local experience with someone who didn't participate in the Challenge this year, and invite them to join us for the next one.

That's how we'll start to lead each other by example.  That's how we'll build the movement we need to get the food system we all deserve.

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