The Hawaiʻi Food Hub Hui (HFHH), established by Dr. Saleh Azizi Fardkhales, has been diligently working since the beginning of 2018 to raise awareness about the food hubs in Hawaiʻi and their efforts to enhance accessibility to locally produced food. In 2018, Saleh joined forces with Maureen Datta from Adaptations as part of the Hawaiʻi Farmers' Union United's Policy Committee. Together, they formed a sub-committee with five food hub operators, namely Hawaiʻi Ulu Cooperative, Adaptations, Kahumana Food Hub, Kohala Food Hub, and Farm Link Hawaiʻi, with the goal of advocating for the strengthening of local food systems through Hawaiʻi's food hubs.
HFHH has received funding from various sources over the years. The Hawaiʻi Farmers' Union United provided funding from 2017-2018, followed by Kahumana Food Hub & Organic Farms from 2018-2021, and then the Hawaiʻi Good Food Alliance from 2021-2022. In 2021, the efforts of HFHH members in response to the Covid pandemic were recognized and published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development under the title "Food hubs play an essential role in the COVID-19 response in Hawai‘i." The same year, HFHH membership grew from five to thirteen food hubs.
Currently, the food hubs supported by HFHH support 1,337 farms that serve approximately 14,465 customers per year across all Hawaiʻi counties. In 2021, the efforts of the HFHH members received increased attention in their response to the Covid pandemic, as they worked to ensure that local farmers and producers had access to markets and local customers had access to locally grown food.
In 2021, the efforts of the HFHH members received increased attention in response to the Covid pandemic, as they worked to ensure that local farmers and producers had access to markets and customers. The food hubs also worked to ensure that local customers had access to locally grown food via community food distributions and online markets that offered home delivery services.
Their stories were published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development in a paper titled “Food hubs play an essential role in the COVID-19 response in Hawaiʻi.” The paper highlighted the importance of food hubs in providing access to local food during the pandemic and the need for increased funding to support an expansion of services offered to farmers and consumers.
In 2021, HFFH via the Hawaiʻi Good Food Alliance received a grant award of $1M by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Regional Food Systems Partnership and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation for a project titled “Hawaiʻi Food Hub Hui- a statewide partnership for value-chain integration.
