deeper truths: “We believe that land is the chief, the people its servants,” said Kaipo Kekona, 38, who with his wife Rachel Lehualani Kapu have transformed several acres of depleted farmland into a dense food forest on a mountain ridge.
“Letting a chemical company pollute the island to feed the world while we suffer food insecurity is beyond ironic,” said Autumn Ness, the Hawaii program director of Beyond Pesticides and co-founder of the Maui Hub, the island’s first farm box scheme which connects small farmers and producers to residents.
“What’s stopping Hawaii feeding its own people is not lack of knowledge or skills, it’s the power structure, the ongoing plantation mentality which tips the scales in favour of big ag and developers while rubbishing traditional knowledge. We need to change this narrative because, without radical changes, what will be left of this place in a hundred years?”
Forest families
At Hōkūnui farm in the central valley, 37-year-old Koa Hewahewa and his family of foresters mix generational Indigenous knowledge and modern technologies to repair the damage caused by intensive cattle ranching and decades of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers. restoration project is fundamentally about cooling the climate to return the rains and pollinators – the forest birds that were wiped out or forced to higher altitudes to evade avian malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. (The mosquito line, the altitude at which the insects cannot survive because it’s too cold, has risen drastically due to deforestation.)
The forest is considered akin to an extended family, somewhat unwieldy and unpredictable but resilient and stronger together than apart. The lofty flowering acacia and myrtaceae trees are natural-born givers, capturing fog and rain to distribute moisture outwards like a lawn sprinkler and down to recharge aquifers. While the groundcover plants such as mosses and ferns act like a living mulch and create a healthy ecosystem for all sorts of useful micro-organisms.
deeper truths.
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