Building Capacity for Cooperative Development in Hawaiʻi Agriculture: A Food Security and Food Sovereignty Approach

Commodities

Practices

• Crop Production: agroforestry
• Sustainable Communities: community development, food sovereignty

Hawaiʻi faces an urgent food security crisis rooted in unsustainable import dependency. The state imports 85-90% of its food annually at a cost of $3.1 billion while one in three residents experiences food insecurity-rising to 43% among Native Hawaiian communities. This structural vulnerability creates supply chain instability, undermines agricultural sustainability, and severs connections to ancestral food systems. Though Hawaiʻi's 2030 goal targets 30% locally produced food, the farm sector remains fragmented: 90% of farms operate on fewer than 50 acres, facing barriers including limited market access, lack of scale, and inadequate infrastructure.

Cooperative business development provides a proven pathway to overcome these barriers. By pooling resources, coordinating production, and sharing infrastructure, cooperatives expand market reach and build regional resilience, fostering sustainable food ecosystems. Yet while agricultural producers across Hawaiʻi increasingly recognize cooperatives as essential to their viability, critical gaps persist: limited cooperative development expertise and insufficient technical assistance capacity for agricultural producers. Evidence from successful models confirms that cooperatives improve producer income, market competitiveness, and ecosystem stewardship, generating multiplier effects across island economies.

This Western SARE Professional Development project responds directly to these needs. Over 18 months, an intensive education series will train 45 agricultural professionals and producer-leaders, building capacity and expertise to support cooperative formation, operations and long-term growth. Employing a train-the-trainer approach, these leaders will extend cooperative knowledge and skills into their communities, creating sustainable institutional capacity for ongoing cooperative development.

Nine in-person workshops across Maui, Oʻahu, and Hawaiʻi Island will strengthen cooperative networks, establish shared resources, and advance the implementation of sustainable agroforestry and cooperative models for resilient island food systems. By building local capacity and infrastructure for cooperative development, this initiative lays the foundation for community-driven approaches that secure both Hawaiʻi's food security and food sovereignty.

The project pursues five interconnected objectives to increase agricultural professionals' knowledge, skills, and capacity supporting food security and sovereignty through cooperative development.

Objective 1: Increase cooperative development knowledge integrating food security and sovereignty principles among 45 agricultural professionals and producer-leaders on Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, and Oʻahu. Measurement: Pre- and post-training assessments administered within one month of training completion will demonstrate that 70% of participants achieve a 50% increase in knowledge related to curriculum content.

Objective 2: Enhance capacity of trained agricultural professionals and producer-leaders to provide cooperative TA. Measurement: Three month follow-up surveys administered with each island group will document that 50% of trained participants have delivered cooperative TA services to emerging producer cooperatives, including those participating in the training, tracking number and type of TA activities and producers assisted.

Objective 3: Develop and disseminate training curricula, case study materials, and TA toolkits adapted for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Island contexts. Measurement: By month 18, publicly release of one comprehensive training manual with facilitator guides, five documented cooperative case studies, and one TA toolkit through Western SARE, Ke Ō Mau Center, and Enlivened Cooperative platforms. Products will be evaluated through feedback from agricultural professionals and producer-leaders.

Objective 4: Establish a Peer Learning Network (PLN) among agricultural professionals and producer-leaders for ongoing cooperative development knowledge exchange and best-practices. Measurement: At least 50% of trained participants actively engage in PLN - collectively planning meetings, online forums, or collaborative projects tracked through attendance records and documentation of knowledge-sharing activities.

Objective 5: Strengthen emerging agricultural cooperatives advancing food security and food sovereignty through targeted TA in cooperative development, market access, and community food system integration. Measurement: 50% of trained participants design and implement TA pathways and document TA provided to emerging producer cooperatives and direct engagement with producer-leaders to further their cooperative objectives.