The Food Basket on Hawaiʻi Island has distributed around $700,000 in grants to over 30 island producers in an effort to promote local farming and improve food security.
The Mālama Da Farmer Grants represent the island’s first grant program, which was funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act to provide relief from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding will help upscale farming operations, addressing systemic food issues facing the island and the state as a whole.
“It's addressing the problem at the source. We saw what happened during COVID — the shelves were empty. We should invest in our local farming communities because they are the ones that are feeding us when the ships don’t come,” said Alex Haban, The Food Basket’s food hub development specialist.
The global supply chain was disrupted during the early stages of the pandemic, leaving Hawaiʻi without food imports — and about 90% of the total food consumed on the islands.
But the grants have also illustrated new problems local farmers are facing now, including the broad and volatile tariffs issued during the Trump administration.
One of the awarded farmers initially applied for grant money to buy material for fences, but was told that he would have to pay $10,000 to $20,000 more if he waited for the grant to be distributed to him.
"He ended up having to buy those upfront, and we had to re-budget with him. Instead of his proposal going towards the actual materials, now it's going towards the contract services for installation,” said Chelsea Takahashi, The Food Basket’s director of healthy food access initiatives.
The organization also says the grants have illustrated how much support the island’s farmers need.
It said there were more than 70 applicants who requested a total of about $1.6 million — more than double what the federal funds could actually cover.
The Food Basket wants to continue offering the grants, but with no certainty that federal funds will be available in the future, it’s looking for other sources of funding.
The organization said that the program, and how much more funding it needed to cover all the farmers’ requests, helped inspire a last-minute budget amendment proposed at a Hawaiʻi County Council meeting last week.
Council member Jennifer Kagiwada, who had expressed concern about the island losing federal funds meant for low-income families to buy food, proposed inserting $2 million for food security efforts in the county's $950 million budget.
The proposal was rejected following concerns that there wasn’t a concrete plan to spend the money.
About 40% of the households on Hawaiʻi Island experience food insecurity, according to a 2023 report by the Hawaiʻi Foodbank. It has the highest rate of food insecurity in the state.
