Thursday, June 18, 2015

Musings: Food Justice

I've got a new post on my new website, dealing with "food justice", farming and one man's memory of hunger in the aftermath of the Korean War.  You can check it out here, with all the photos, or read it below:

As soon as I got into the cab that was taking me to Incheon airport in Seoul, the driver asked if I was an American.
I said yes, a tad tentatively, not sure what sort of reaction I’d receive.
“I love Americans,” he enthused, his face breaking into a big smile. “My father was in the [Korean] war, and he told me, ‘son, never forget what the Americans did for us.’ Even now, when I think of how many Americans died to liberate us…”
His voice cracked and trailed off, and he dabbed at his eyes.
A few minutes later, he told me that he was 60 years old — old enough to remember the desperate, hard scrabble years that followed the war.
“I was hungry, so hungry,” he said. “Americans brought us food. I remember they brought food to my school, and the cookies, they were the best cookies I’d ever had, because I was so hungry. I can remember what it’s like to be hungry. But the young people today, they never knew that hunger. They have forgotten what America did for us.”
I looked out at the skyscrapers that towered beside us, the cars whizzing by on an eight-lane freeway, the modern apartment buildings, the bridges spanning the Han River — all of it constructed in the post-war years, creating the only life that the under-30 folks had ever known.
The driver, whose name was Dan Kim, tuned in a Joan Baez recording on his I-pod before continuing, telling me that he’d driven a Frenchman to the airport one time, and their conversation had turned to America. The Frenchman had said he didn’t much care for America, because it was the world’s policeman.
“But the world needs a policeman,” Kim said. “Small countries like ours, we cannot stand up for ourselves with big countries like China and Russia hovering over us, looking to take us over. And I told the Frenchman, have you forgotten how many Americans died to liberate France from the Germans, how much money they spent to rebuild your country after the war? He had no answer. He had forgotten, because he was not old enough to remember. He was not old enough to have been hungry.”
I said nothing myself, having had my own reservations about America’s role as the world’s policeman, having never suffered the calamity of war, having never been hungry.
But when I got out of the cab, I thanked him for sharing his experiences with me, because it had made me think.
And he thanked me, just for being an American.
Later, back in Honolulu, checking my phone, I saw an email forwarded by a friend. It was from an organization in Oakland, Calif., advertising an expensive tour to “Join Food First to explore food justice in [sic] O’ahu.” Clicking on the link, I saw this:
Explore O’ahu’s beautiful landscapes & vibrant culinary traditions while meeting with the actors cultivating food justice in paradise.
Yeah, they’re actors all right. Because while they’ve been busy fighting biotech crops on social media, they’ve forgotten to actually produce food or feed the hungry. Though some 20 percent of the people in Hawaii depend on the food banks to eat, the anti-GMO movement has done nothing to supply the food banks, set up feeding programs, open loi or do the hard physical work of producing any significant quantity of food, much less justice.
The promo then went on to link post-WWII military expansion to the decline of “traditional food systems” and the rise of biotech with its “massive open-air chemical trials” before claiming:
Hawaiians are increasingly turning to local food and native food traditions, ecologically-based farming systems, and a re-valuing of traditional ways grounded in Aloha ‘Aina.
Really? Where, exactly? On top of Mauna Kea?
I scanned down to find the price: $2,875, not including airfare, for eight days of traipsing through “paradise” and dabbling in the very same cultural appropriation and tourism that the food tour advertisement condemned.
What if the participants instead donated that money to food banks that feed the hungry? Created an urban community garden? Cleared a ditch? Bought tractors for a farming co-op? Got their hands dirty opening a loi?
Wouldn’t that do more to achieve “food justice” than listening to anti-GMO activists spout fiction about the “vibrant movement growing across Hawaii?”
And isn’t there any food justice to be achieved in the ghettoes of Oakland, the migrant farm labor camps of Salinas? Why come to the Islands and ignore their own backyard?
I thought of the thousands of acres of irrigated farm land that at this very minute is wide open for cultivation on the westside, land never leased by the seed companies. I thought of the abandoned loi in Hanapepe, Waimea and Hanalei valleys, the hundreds of acres fertile land on the North Shore tucked away into luxury estates, all of it just waiting to be cultivated by farmers, not actors.
Perhaps, when people get hungry enough, they’ll start supporting agriculture — all agriculture — and stop attacking farms and farmers who aren’t growing food the way non-farmers think they should.
But until then, this world of cheap, abundant food is all they know, allowing folks who have never known hunger the luxury of dabbling in “food justice tours in paradise.”

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

It all has to do with money and those who will use a movement to make some.

Anonymous said...

One of your best pieces, Joan. Brava.

Anonymous said...

I remember the younger Korean generation protesting against the U.S. at our camps. Those demonstrations got kind of worrisome at times. But I also remember the older Koreans that would welcome us with open arms and also treat us with respect and dignity. The mom and pop kitchens were the best places to eat when going down range.

Serving in 2 ID was a hard year but the memories were worth it.

Pronunciation: Gae-goo-ri ol-chaengi jeok saeng-gak-do mot-handa

Literal meaning: The frog cannot think of the tadpole as an enemy.

Situation: You can’t hate people who aren’t as old or as experienced as you, because you were once just like them.

Anonymous said...

A quote from the article- "Hawaiians are increasingly turning to local food and native food traditions, ecologically-based farming systems, and a re-valuing of traditional ways grounded in Aloha ‘Aina.
Really? Where, exactly? On top of Mauna Kea?"

Joan. Surely you are joking. You do not know where to find any examples of local food production based upon ecological farming and traditional ways grounded in Aloha ʻĀina in Hawai"i? Multiple examples exist on all the islands. Surely this quote must be a typographical error.

Anonymous said...

The Kauai Council has a majority of part Hawaiians so what are they doing to improve the lives for the people of Kauai. Or are they just posers and impotent like a dirty pig?

You and the Mayor raise taxes every year but what do you guys have to show for? Where's all the improvements? All I see is a parking lot full of county welfare recipients at and all around the round building. They even had to close a street to creat parking for these lazy can't get a real job gudot handouts. All the money is spent in faux consultants that is a fraudulent scheme like the gas theft ring and the north shore shuttle service (150K for a 3 month fraud, waste and abuse scheme).

Anonymous said...

Most small ag operations are subsistence. The "successful ones" IE NS with land base at millions and a few thousand in income are not an economic model. The cost of water, insurance, supplies and labor make Ag a tough business. Plus you have to sell the stuff.
And with Costco and Wallmart and even 7/11 getting into the "organic" feeding frenzy the local farmer will be priced out.
Not to talk about a potential future farmer who gets a good land lease, knows irrigation, has the methods of plant, harvest and marketing....One farmer can knock out the many other farmers......ultimately, food comes down to quality, service and affordability.
The dilettante BS of wannabe rich guilty politicians (Da Hoos, MAson and JoAnn) and their followers do not make good Ag policy.
Everything cost money.

Anonymous said...

Abandoned lo'i has everything to do with water diversion that started with sugar.

Joan Conrow said...

I don't think that's true. Many of those lo'I were used for years to grow rice after sugar diverted water and for taro in more recent years. I think it has more to do with poor maintenance of ditches and lack of farmers.

Anonymous said...

Mānā plain was a thriving community where kalo was grown on floating rafts, aqua- culture practiced and niu, sweet potatoes and gourd planted at base of mountains. Knudsen came along and changed all that. He drilled wells, destroyed inland fish ponds and pumped out water for his ranching and sugar endeavors. Its much of his cattle that run wild in Koke'e. Nā Wai Eha Maui classic example of plantations hoarding water. No different here. Ask kalo farmers in Waimea valley how low water levels and warm water impact health of kalo.

Joan Conrow said...

I am aware of all that. My point, which you conveniently sidestep, was those lo'i continued to be used long after those diversions occurred. The abandonment is a much more recent phenomenon, occurring even after sugar declined and far less water was being diverted.

Anonymous said...

Another haole who thinks she know better than kănaka what happened in our history. I know many kuleana owners who walked away from their lo'i for that reason. Rice replaced kalo because kānaka died in droves. Chinese immigrants took over lo'i and planted rice. Many factors played a part in the demise of kalo farming of which water diversion was a big one, still today. Waiahole/Waikāne valleys on Oahu another prime example.

Anonymous said...

Clean ditch = lots of water. broken pipe = no water. One of the greatest construction on Kauai is the ditch that was built to water the fields in Mana. The ditch was built from the east side of the Waimea Canyon where a large black pipe was connected to the ditch and went down the slope and along the flats of the valley and up the slope on the westside of Waimea Canyon. This Black Pipe would have made an excellent roller coaster ride. This ditch goes under Waimea Canyou drive (Joe Brooks) along the mountainside and angles gently down to Mana. This was a marvelous Engineering Task. This the same water feeding the Taro patches in Waimea Valley west of Menehune Road. Sharing this precious resource needed to be done in a precocious manner. No can hog cheese. must share or going get conflict. Everybody could coexist = plenty Taro.

Anonymous said...

Sugar had nothing to do with abandoned loi. Zero. All BS make believe romantic grievance history.

Anonymous said...

The inland briny stretch of water from Kekeha/Waimea are clearly shown on my 1945 map of Hawaii. And as a resident I am w ell aware that in a wet year one could traverse from Kekaha all the way to the Queens Pond area inland by small canoe. There was no loi there. There were many ducks ( exported to Oahu by th e boat load when harvested by net). And there were sweet potatoes on the slopes as you said, and many vegetables like cabbages and potatoes on the upper plain above Kekaha. But no jobs. And the Territory was the one to lease the land. The holdings of the Hawaiian families were and are intact.,

Anonymous said...

Yes it is. Out of many best pieces!

Anonymous said...

Kalo farming is lots of hard work. Not many willing to work that hard.Subsistance cultures must grow their own food, we have less subsistance farmers and more working at better paying jobs and costco shopping. The price of Kalo per pound/ the length of time it takes to grow and the hard work in between is why there is less loi planted.Mahalo to all the farmers that keep growing kalo.

Anonymous said...

Obviously people are unaware of the vast acreage in kalo that once proliferated across all islands. Disease was greatest single factor in reducing kalo farmers going back to 1800's. Whole families wiped out. Despair rampant. Change in land tenure, land theft, from barter to cash economy, sugar planters acquiring vast acreage of prime agricultural land and diverting water from Koolau to Kona moku or as in Kauai's case from the source Waialeale to lowland plains below. Kānaka left with sub par farmland (DHHL) with no water. Ethnocide that devalues all aspects of culture and forced assimilation to American ways.