A RAINBOW HOPE and ALOHA LOVE

Robert Machado (IF'12, India) on September 6th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago I was in Honolulu, Hawaii and got  an opportunity to visit some organic farming communities on the Oahu island  such as ‘Aina O Makaha’, Ma’O  Community, Mark Hamamoto’s  Mohala Farm, etc.  To visit these farms was a learning moments for me and in a way to take a closer look at the traditional Hawaiian farming practices of the Native planters.  The native Hawaiians were force to give up their Native planting practices with the coming of Multinational companies like ‘Dole’ and sugar factories. The Pineapples and Sugar cane were grown in a huge quantity in the region to provide the rising needs of other processing plants. Small and marginal farmers could not stand to the competition as well as the posed  challenges of the Mall marketing culture. The production cost of the food and vegetable so exorbitant that nobody was ready to purchase their produce for high price,  the end result was they lost their basic investments and incurred a huge loss.  The customer preferred cheap inorganic food and vegetable then to expensive organic food.

With the growing consciousness towards ‘Growing Green’ and Sustainability and Bio-diversity some of the communities felt the dire need to propagate once again the traditional organic farming as well as to revive ‘dying wisdom’ of the old. Hawaiian Food is very much connected with their health and their spiritual realem of the world-view.  One of the their prayer says, “The Kalo (taro), from whose body we take sacred nourishment. The ‘Aina’ (land), from whose body we take sacred nourishment. The Wai and the Kai  (inland and the sea water), from whose body we take sacred nourishment.”   According to them all the nuorishing food is sacred which comes from their traditional organic farming. Emerging organic farming community wants Hawaiian community to fall back on their natural food habits in order to counteract with the hazardous health problems and new social issues. Ma’O Community college trains 30 youngsters to become full-fledged organic farmers on the island and to venture into the new business of Growing Green for the Hawaiian community. Aina O Makaha Community farm attaches bio-diverse socio-spirituality with the farming community where 24 homeless families are trained to take up farming as a income generation and as life subsistence occupation. They are even planing to build 80 more houses for the same purpose. Aina O Makaha community shares land in friendship with the local school students to teach them value of traditional farming. The owner of Mohala farm (Mark Hamamoto) motivates and trains local as well as international volunteers  to set up organic food &veggies Business.

“The dream was not to start something new. the dream was to nurture the love that was already there.”  A dream for tomorrow’s RAINBOW HOPE…

Tags: Hawaii, India, Organic, Robert Machado