Oʻahu farmers still reeling from the Kona low storms didn’t get the funding assistance they asked for from the Honolulu City Council, so city support for them may be sparse.
Flood damage from the heavy storms in March was concentrated on the the North Shore, where many of the island’s agriculture operations are located.
The impact the floods have had on crop production is starting to show up at markets.
“Slowly but surely we're going to start to see it. We're already seeing it in the farmers markets — the price of food is going up,” said Micah Cockett, the founder of Ho'opili Hua, a grassroots group formed to help farmers after the floods.
“Some crops are becoming scarce, and it's because there isn't funding to fill this gap in the agriculture that got wiped out. Nobody really understands how severe or how impacted, or what the farmers need first in order to recover from this,” he added.
Cockett said some farms are still covered in mud. Part of his group’s purpose is to spread more awareness about how farmers are still in the early stages of flood recovery.
He was one of many farmers, along with advocates, who showed up at Honolulu Hale last Wednesday. They came to testify during the council’s final vote on what became a $5 billion city budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
They advocated unsuccessfully for funds specifically for farmers still recovering from the floods.
Some wanted the council to include a $5 million provision for “farmer disaster recovery grants” to help impacted producers.
The testifiers were led in part by the Hawaiʻi Workers Center, which also supported a $41 million provision in the budget meant for “disaster preparedness and response.”
Kami Yamamoto, the center’s executive director, in written testimony said, “Beyond the damage to crops, seeds, equipment, and infrastructure, many agricultural workers face continuous and immediate threats to their livelihood, housing and tenancy, and resilience against future disasters. Their need for kōkua is therefore urgent and time-sensitive.”
The groups also noted that many farmers are immigrants and were already vulnerable and underserved even before the floods.
But the $5 million request didn’t make it into the budget, and the $41 million provision was reduced to just $4 million. That was the amount in the original version of the budget, meaning it may already have another purpose and wouldn't be likely that it would go directly to farmers.
A $1 million budget item originally meant for “operations and emergency recovery” could be used for farmers, though it may be up to the city administration if it wants to use it that way.
The council also slashed a net $1.2 million from the city’s Office of Economic Revitalization, which provided support for local farmers.
OER’s original budget would have been $2.2 million. It said the budget cuts would eliminate the city’s support for local agriculture, including a $500,000 farmers’ market initiative and other assistance to farmers following the Kona flooding.
While the budget provided nearly $1 million for OER, including about $80,000 to pay a planner to support sustainable agriculture and food systems, some said the cuts effectively kneecap OER’s ability to function properly.
