Under the guidance of Susan Crow of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, grad student Apilado is part of a team that received a $40-million U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant to implement sustainable, climate-smart practices and establish stronger markets for locally produced, healthy food and forest products.
Their Climate Smart Commodities (CSC) project hopes to overcome barriers in implementing sustainable practices, build markets that support circular economies, improve technical assistance through network-based organizations and decision-support tools, and address inequities in supporting the local producer community.
“The USDA project gives us a unique opportunity to improve system-level resilience and equity for food and forest products in Hawaiʻi and embed working lands within the state’s decarbonization strategy,” says Susan.
Destiny adds, “Farmers are busy people with little extra time on their hands. From managing pests, to facing high costs of water and land, it’s hard to make farming profitable in Hawaiʻi. Farmers face many challenges and bear great risks to bring food to our plates and we owe it to them to make the resources they need more accessible.”
Read the full UH News story.