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When my son was little, my wife and I would read him “Hungry Pua’a and the Sweet Sweet Potato” by Leonard Villanueva. As a toddler, he particularly enjoyed the voices my wife did for the characters: nene, coqui frogs and, of course, pigs.

when my son, now 15, woke me very, very early with bad news: Overnight, wild pigs had gotten into his prized sweet potato patch.

Of course they did … puaa LOVE sweet sweet potatoes, I might have sleepily mumbled.

In the year that we’ve now lived in our house in South Kohala, our son, much like a Hawaiian puaa, has torn up the grass lawn in the front part of our yard. In the decimation, he’s planted canoe crops. He transplanted cuttings from his school and created multiple beds, consulting the planting schedule of the moon calendar. He’s created quite a mala (garden) with kalo, ulu, uala, maia, ko and kukui — taro, breadfruit, sweet potatoes, banana, sugarcane and candlenut.

To create his mala, much to my chagrin, he pulled rocks out of our walls that may or may not have been loose for his planting beds. He pleaded George Washington and the cherry tree. 

He’s taken a contemporary Hawaiian lawn with bird of paradise, eucalyptus and bromeliads and prepared for the rest of the 21st century by looking back to the 18th century when Hawaii was more in balance with nature. 

His plantings thrived in the rich soil and the plentiful rains. He was close to harvesting.

Then came the puaa. 

When he came into our room early that morning to report the damage done by the pigs, it was long before the sun had risen. He was up and preparing to pack the car and make the drive to Hilo Bay to race in the Hawaii island canoe championships.

If you’ve never seen Hawaiian pig damage, it’s a sight to behold. A pack of puaa noses, tusks and hooves are built to overturn substantial amounts of soil. This pack of at least half a dozen thrashed and bulldozed the grass under a guava tree next to his mala. 

The pigs were particularly interested in his sweet potatoes. Dozens of uala were unearthed and he gathered the dozens that didn’t have bite marks. 

At the races, he passed out paper bags of non-gnawed sweet potatoes to the aunties and heard stories from one about how a very young granddaughter loved to eat mashed-up sweet potato. 

What started as a day of disappointment, ended with a canoe club championship and the knowledge that he nurtured a crop that fed our friends and family.

When we returned home, we found the spot in the fence where paramours had previously snipped the wires to create a shortcut between their homes. We stitched the fence back together and he planned to replant. A lesson was learned.

Last week, a friend asked after my son’s career aspirations. I said, at this point, he’d like to be a mahiai, a farmer who can feed thousands.

This is a sharp departure from the past decades when America effectively deracinated a generation when we made agriculture more about chemicals and bushel prices and feeding livestock than feeding people.

Twelve years ago, my son and I spent the summer on our family’s farm in southern Minnesota. My grandfather and uncle had successfully farmed more than a thousand acres for decades, but my Uncle Sandy’s retirement after exactly 50 years was the end of an era. 

As we rode in the huge farm machinery, Sandy told me that when he graduated from high school in the early ’60s, the less academically astute male students were expected to farm.

As the oldest, Sandy was destined to farm and he didn’t take kindly to the “dumb farmer” label.

He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in agriculture. He defied the label and his adoption of new techniques and technologies allowed him to thrive through the end of an era of family farms. 

That summer 12 years ago, less than 2% of the U.S. population was involved in farming. The United States neglected to encourage our kids to pursue agricultural careers and we’ve been unhealthier and more insecure because of it. We went from a country that relied on subsistence farming to being unable to feed ourselves if a significant shockwave hit our society. 

A shockwave came and the next and the next are coming.

We already experienced the ill effects during the pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions. Next up are the changes looming as we start to confront the excessive heat affecting crops.

It should be news to none of us in Hawaii that we are especially vulnerable. We rely on barges and planes for 85% of our food, by some estimates.

Essentially, and I mean essentially, Hawaii needs to get back to feeding ourselves. 

There’s been a significant push in our education system to concentrate on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but better for Hawaii if we elevate our students to also working toward creating sustainable food systems. Instead of looking quizzically at students who want to pursue regenerative agriculture, we need to champion and encourage them. Our food security depends on these students. After all, the crops we need here in Hawaii aren’t going to magically grow themselves.

Besides encouraging students, we need to revamp an agricultural incentive system that is a mess. The wrong people are gathering the tax benefits and the extractive agriculture that has dominated Hawaii has harmed our lands. 

We already have many haumana, or students, in programs that promote food growth and we need to pour more resources and incentives into creating mahiai. Our Hawaiian haumana can acquire knowledge in the loi and mala that is so much more beneficial than what they learn in classrooms.

In Hawaii, we need to prioritize our own self interests and create a new generation of farmers. We need to start feeding ourselves and treasure those who feed us. 

While it seems that a task like this might be daunting, I think about how, not long ago, leaders in the United States were bemoaning our reliance on foreign energy sources. Innovations in drilling quickly changed the longstanding problem. Fracking of course has had numerous downsides, but the U.S. is energy-independent.

We need a similar push in Hawaii to achieve our food independence. And if someone happens to rid a South Kohala neighborhood of pesky puaa, I know a teen that will happily supply the sides for the kalua pig.

“Hawaii Grown” is funded in part by grants from Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.