Passengers on the Honolulu Skyline are in for a tasty surprise: Tomato, eggplant, scallion, sweet potato, and more edible plants fill containers outside the transit station. City leaders are making free food available in public spaces.
Community-driven efforts to grow food in urban spaces are not new to Hawaii. There have been years of failed efforts to get official permission for planting food forests or having publicly available food for residents. But most plans haven’t taken root.
State forest reserves already have wild food available for residents to forage after obtaining a free permit.
But Hawaii’s government worried over who would oversee, tend to, and harvest public gardens. Plus, there are concerns about theft, who benefits, and legal liability for falling coconuts or slippery mangoes.
When God created Eden, He made a lush garden and filled it with great variety. He intended fruit- and seed-bearing plants as food for its occupants. Concerns over how humans might misuse plants came later, as a result of sin.
Hawaii food systems planner Hunter Heaivilin spent years researching urban farming. He found that policy hurdles prevented growing food on up to 10,000 acres of arable land in urban Honolulu. He cites concern that “food trees would be ‘an attractive nuisance.’”
A 2013 bill encouraged builders to include urban gardens in affordable housing projects. But the law has largely been ignored, Heaivilin says.
Now Honolulu hopes for change. The city is competing for a grant to reform public services. Plans include increasing food access for commuters in public spaces, linking food, housing, and transit.
Honolulu Office of Economic Revitalization Director Amy Asselbaye points to transforming transit stations into food hubs. Commuters could take an ʻulu (breadfruit) or other plant for dinner, relieving a bit of concern about grocery prices.
“We want to create that possibility,” Asselbaye says, “and see how residents respond.”
City consultant Kima Wassel Hardy says the project illustrates that food can be made readily accessible in settings other than faraway fields.
At pilot stations, native plants well suited to West Oahu’s dry conditions replace patches of grass and shrubs. The result is fewer landscaping machines “and, hopefully, more community engagement,” Hardy says. “This is still the ʻāina [earth], even if it’s covered in asphalt.”
Heaivilin applauds the new free public food program. He hopes it will foster more projects to increase access to food across urban Oahu.
“People have been talking about this for years,” Asselbaye says. She then adds, “We’re not going to try to set too many rules while we figure it out.”
Why? When God created fruit- and seed-bearing plants, He named their chief purpose as food. (Genesis 1:29) Humans honor God’s design when they use creation as He intended.
