Solution | Kuleana Coop
Food Security Hawai’i is collaborating with the Kuleana Food Cooperative to facilitate the development of an innovative new paradigm that addresses the many issues causing a decline in small family farms across the country.
We are re-envisioning farm ownership as well as added product value production. We believe the solution to many of Hawaii’s food security issues lie in the development of a for-profit farm to table cooperative.
A Food Hub is a centrally-located group of complementary businesses developed to support local farms and their many customers. There are now 236 food hubs in the US with more popping up all the time! They connect the dots between producers and consumers in local food systems by managing aggregation, distribution, and marketing to satisfy rapidly increasing wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.
Food Hubs are a crucial part of profitable community-based local food systems. They engage a diverse group of stakeholders around common goals: healthy, vibrant, and profitable farms; food security and food sovereignty; and protecting the area’s watersheds and foodsheds. Communities get together around the dinner table – Food Hubs provide a bridge from farm-to-table-to-culture by ensuring farmers have a thriving future in the communities where they live and work, and local families/businesses/schools have access to fresh food grown and raised in their own region. Demand for locally-sourced foods continues to rise apace, and many smaller farming and ranching operations find it difficult to make the jump from selling at roadside stands and farmers markets to selling larger quantities to grocery stores, restaurants, and other institutions. Food Hubs make it possible for producers to gain entry into markets that would be difficult or impossible to access on their own.
“A new ownership model of a vertically integrated farm to table value chain will reduce the stressors that affect small farm families.”