An agriculture and food hub now under construction intends to help Hawaiʻi businesses and feed students with locally produced food.
Local officials celebrated the start of the hub’s construction at Whitmore Village on Friday.
“Hawaiʻi's keiki and families deserve access to nutritious, locally prepared meals every day, and especially in times of hardship. Feeding our keiki is about more than food, it's about building systems that care for our people before, during and after a crisis,” said Hawaiʻi First Lady Jaime Kanani Green at the ceremony.
The 34-acre Central Oʻahu Agriculture and Food Hub will be highlighted by its centralized food kitchen and a high-pressure processing machine.
The kitchen will facilitate the state Department of Education’s state-mandated goal of increasing its use of locally grown food to 30% by 2030. It’s currently at 6%, and has already reported issues in increasing that number any further.
The DOE said that central kitchens will help.
“By consolidating food preparation, the facilities will allow for greater use of locally sourced ingredients, streamline coordination with Hawai‘i farmers, and reduce the need for costly upgrades to individual school kitchens,” the DOE said.
Officials estimate that the kitchen will be able to produce 60,000 meals per day. The DOE serves about 100,000 meals per day.
The high-pressure processing machine will be primarily for Hawaiʻi businesses looking to improve the shelf life of their products.
Lei Rudometkin and her family run Da Tomato Guy, which specializes in making salsa. Rudometkin was at Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony and said the processing machine can help expand their business.
“ We produce our salsa in the kitchen, but we also have an interest in using the high-pressure processing machine because our salsa is made fresh, so it only lasts 14 days. And we want to extend that shelf life without having to add chemical preservatives or additives. There's no real way to extend the shelf life with the current ingredients that we have, and we want to keep it real simple and fresh,” she said.
Leeward Community College has a smaller HPP machine used mostly for research and development purposes, but does small batches for businesses, too. The two larger machines at the food hub are meant to help process food for local businesses on a larger scale.
The agriculture and food hub was allocated about $30 million from the state Legislature for this fiscal year.
State leaders estimate both the central kitchen and the HPP machine to be ready for use in late 2027.
