“Support local farmers!” is the current digital war cry of Hawai‘i Agricultural Foundation executive director Denise Yamaguchi, the longtime non-profit leader, spouse of notable restauranteur Roy and one-time Daniel K. Inouye mentee. Yamaguchi’s HAF-sponsored Food-A-Go-Go website now sports a database of farms and fishing firms; beef, pork, dairy and egg producers; and healthy-food growers or processors of organic, raw, non-GMO and sustainably and/or naturally farmed eats, whose items support the freshest dishes served in Hawai‘i restaurants.
Food items can also be bought by individuals through the mail, farmer’s markets, or socially distanced visits to the companies’ brick-and-mortar storefronts. This online listing of local producers, at foodagogo.org/farms-local-producers/, promotes many businesses that have adapted their retail and wholesaling practices to the coronavirus era, including:
- Terukina Farms of Kunia (picuki.com/profile/terukina_farms_/) that sells its mixed-veggie microgreens, and occasionally turmeric, at the Saturday morning Pearlridge Farmer’s Market (facebook.com/PearlridgeFarmersMarket/).
- Kahuku Farms on O‘ahu’s north shore (twitter.com/kahukufarms?lang=en) which wholesales sustainably grown fruits and vegetables as well as lifestyle and food products made from these farmed items, conceptualized by the latest generations of the Matsuda and Fukuyama families (kahukufarms.com/pages/generations). Next to the farm, the Matsuda/Fukuyama Farm Café, with its farm-to-table smoothies and meals, is scheduled to re-open on June 5.
- Kumu Farms of Maui and Moloka‘i (kumufarms.com/), a decades-old, Moloka‘i-born grower of organic fruit, herbs and vegetables, is especially known for its world-famous, non-GMO Sunrise papaya (see, for instance,themolokaidispatch.com/kudos-for-kumu-farms/). Kumu Farms offers its produce and packaged food products at Maui Tropical Plantation and other venues, CSA boxes for Mauians’ local pick-up, as well as fruit boxes shipped to the continental US.
Food-A-Go-Go is a recent initiative to support local food joints in surviving the profit-draining COVID-19 age (https://foodagogo.org/restaurants/) by noting down in a single, online site which restaurants, small businesses, and fast food firms offer delivery, curbside pick-up, and regular take-out. For more on this database, see hawaiiagfoundation.org/food-a-go-go-supporting-hawaii-restaurants-through-covid-19/.
For background on local-food advocate Yamaguchi, see http://hiluxury.com/hisociety/success-epicurean-proportions/.
