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UPDATED 9/21/11 1:44 p.m.

Highlights from an put on Tuesday evening by Kanu Hawaii at Kapiolani Community College. The goal: “Making Healthy, Locally Grown Food Accessible to Everyone.”

• Best idea: Health insurance offering a full rebate on a CSA box. (Currently implemented in Madison, Wisconsin, idea presented by Ashley Lukens, founding member of the Hawaii Food Policy Council.)

• Runner-up best idea: Setting up farmers’ markets in schools run by students with produce grown by students, or CSAs as potential fundraisers. I’d support that over car washes/Krispy Kreme/candy bars fundraising. (Idea presented by Dexter Kishida from Kokua Hawaii Foundation)

• Best untapped (and currently inaccessible) market for local farmers: tie between schoolkids and low-income communities. Kishida cited approximately 180,000 students in public schools, accounting for 10 percent of the population. Lisa Asagi, co-founder of She Grows Food and co-manager of HFBF farmers’ markets, estimated 134,000 people received SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly Hawaii Food Stamp Program). At $215/person/month, that amounts to $29 million/month spent in SNAP benefits. Diverting 10 percent of the purchases into the local food system would be $290,000 a month invested in our local economy. Asagi and Gida Snyder’s efforts in bringing EBT to farmers’ markets work towards this goal.

• Most moving speaker: Lisa Asagi. Drawing on personal experience, she delivered heartfelt testimony on healthy food access as a point of dignity. The local food movement cannot succeed without the support of low-income communities, Asagi said. “They must be invited to become stakeholders in the discussion and strategies of our local food system,” she said.

• Best confirmation that Ed Kenney, chef/owner of Town/Downtown, is indeed a rockstar chef: pitching bags of MA’O greens into the audience and kissing a deboned pig’s head on the snout.

• Most fuzzy math: The point of the pig: Kenney turned a $500 Shinsato pig into $6,400 revenue, but not mentioning anything of labor costs and training. I’m not sure that he really addressed his topic: to create new business models that value people, planet, profit. But it was some pig.

• Best summation of the food forum attendees: “I feel like I’m in front of the Tabernacle Choir and I’m supposed to preach,” Kenney said.

• Punching bag of the night: Whole Foods. Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz admired Richard Ha of Hamakua Springs for “selling to Costco, not Whole Foods where only the rich can shop.” Chef/owner Mark Noguchi of He‘eia Pier and General Store dismissed Whole Foods as elitist before introducing the documentary “Ingredients Hawaii,” partially funded¹ by Whole Foods. Not noted: many of the projects mentioned throughout the night — Kokua Hawaii, MA’O, Kanu Hawaii — had help from Whole Foods.