Alumni News

August was a busy month at the Urban Garden Center as faculty, staff, and volunteers prepared for two site visits, first from the House Finance Committee of the Hawaiʻi State Legislature, soon followed by the office of U.S. Representative Ed Case. State lawmakers, who are assessing Capital Improvement Projects statewide, were treated to a full tour of the iconic CTAHR facility in Pearl City, Oʻahu. This included a presentation by the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle (CRB) team, a CRB detection demonstration by the CRB canine program, a presentation on EFNEP/ SNAP-ED programs, and engaging with the Master Gardener Program. Committee members and their staff also conducted a walk through of the raised-bed containerized fruit tree and hydroponic demonstration area, strolled through the 4-H Children’s Garden, and viewed the historic Quonset hut from WWII. The guests heard first-hand from 4-H youth and UGC volunteers about the importance of UGC for Cooperative Extension programming.

Mitch Heidenreich, Congressman Case’s legal assistant, was provided with an in-depth update on CTAHR’s numerous statewide research and Extension projects involving invasive species eradication, suppression, and management. We also discussed CTAHR’s academic programs, increasing SNAP access, and youth development opportunities.

Development of the areas surrounding UGC has been on the rise, due to their close proximity to a planned rail stop – the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) for the Pearl Highlands Station Area. UGC’s relevance to the local community and the state was most evident, and we took full advantage of these opportunities to update policymakers about all the outstanding work being conducted by CTAHR, across the state. CTAHR is everywhere.

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Did You Know?

On any given day, CTAHR faculty and staff at the 30-acre Urban Garden Center in, are researching a disease-resistant strain of crops, preparing college students for a career in tropical agriculture or environmental conservation, hosting busloads of elementary schoolkids, training local residents as Master Gardeners, donating more than 16,000 pounds of fresh fruit to the Hawai‘i Food Bank, and much more.

Prior to Covid, an estimated 6,134 people benefited from direct contact with UGC in 2019. In-person activities halted for the public in 2020, but UGC quickly pivoted to online educational programs, continuing to disseminate information and new advances to commercial and backyard growers across the Hawaiian islands.

Extension faculty, staff and volunteers also used the ‘down time’ during Covid to revitalize the UGC grounds with new gardens and enhanced exhibits. Today, as the state emerges from pandemic restrictions, this cherished neighborhood facility is ready to once again educate visitors and residents, children and adults, in agriculture, environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation strategies.

With a $23K grant from Hawaiʻi County, Extension agents Jensen Uyeda and Kylie Tavares are bringing their successful garlic trials to Kona and Hilo. And if all goes well, a locally grown variety of the aromatic Allium family could soon appear in restaurants and groceries across the Islands. For five years, Jensen has been running field trials in a variety of test plots on Oʻahu and Maui, exploring the possibility of commercial garlic production in the state – and so far, so good. The growers he’s working with are successfully producing salable cloves. In fact, one farmer harvested 900 pounds this year and is marketing the garlic at $6-7 per pound, which is higher than the price of California garlic.

“There is a demand for locally grown garlic and that demand is willing to pay the higher price required by local production to meet production cost,” Jensen says. “The quality and diverse flavors of the locally grown garlic set it apart from the mainstream garlic being imported from Mainland and China sources. The garlic varieties being grown are not like any found in local markets, so they can demand a higher price.” 

Jensen and Kylie were the guests last week on Hawaiʻi Public Radio’s The Conversation. “Developing products that have higher value — so like garlic chili oil doesn't require a lot of product, but you can market it as a Hawaiʻi-grown product and that value would be significantly increased,” he said.

Read and listen to the full interview, Hawaiʻi Could Soon Have Its Own Domestic Garlic Industry, with host Lillian Tsang.

The Dept. of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences has teamed up with UH Outreach College and a host of contributors to produce Lifespan Nutrition, an open education resource textbook that will be the first such textbook developed to cover this core nutrition topic. The book will include interactive study activities for students to reinforce the concepts they have learned, as well as resources to help instructors adapt the book to their courses. The book is the result of a highly collaborative project that includes CTAHR’s Distance Education Group, HNFAS faculty and students (current and former), contributors in private practice, and institutions such as the College of the Desert. But before teachers and students can get their hands on the first edition, it needs a cover image! Please submit an image that reflects food and people of various ages within our local community. Submit your image to Lifespan Nutrition OER Textbook Cover Image by September 15.

“We are really excited to be working with an amazing group of collaborators that will provide another free textbook for students,” says Marie Kainoa Fialkowski Revilla. “This textbook is going to have some pretty innovative features that will help students to grasp the material and increase their interest about nutrition, from pēpē to our kūpuna.”

Marshall Joy was only with the Molokaʻi Farm to School program for a short while, but he made the most of his time. His job as program coordinator was to connect Hawaiʻi keiki with school gardening experiences and connect young keiki to local food, in hopes to grow the next generation of local food consumers. The coordinator position also means working closely with Maunaloa Elementary to establish their own school garden, which in the future will contribute to food that can be utilized in school meals, and most immediately creates learning opportunities outside of the classroom for haumana. “Not only can school gardens teach our students science and math, gardens give them an opportunity to get outside, connect with nature and engage with one another,” says Monica Esquivel of the Dept. of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences. “Even further along, when they see something they have taken care of grow and provide nutrition for their community, they can gain a sense of pride in self and place.”

Watch the Molokaʻi Farm to School program in action.

Even before the pandemic, the children and youth of Hawaiʻi were falling behind the rest of the nation in terms of economic wellbeing. In particular, Hawai‘i fell to 49th place (out of 50 states) for the percent of children in households with a high housing cost burden. We also rank 47th in the percent of 16-19 year olds who aren’t attending school or working. These grim but unsurprising conclusions were published in the 2021 KIDS COUNT Data Book, a 50-state report of recent household data by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “It is very concerning that Hawaiʻi already ranked in the bottom 10 states on children’s economic wellbeing, according to the pre-pandemic data,” says Ivette Rodriguez Stern of CTAHR’s Center on the Family. “It took the lowest-income families a decade to recover from the Great Recession, and now we are once again facing the threat of a greater share of our keiki growing up in economic hardship, which can have long-lasting effects on education and future employment.”

The center is a partner on Hawaii KIDS COUNT, a local collaboration supported by the foundation that includes the Hawaiʻi Children's Action Network and Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice. The center was contracted to lead social indicator research and guide the partnership’s use of data to inform policy initiatives.

Read Ivette’s op-ed in Civil Beat, a news report on Hawaiʻi Public Radio, and the 2021 Kids Count Data Book.