House Standing Committee on Agriculture & Food Systems

Aloha Mai Kakou. Welcome to the hearing on the House Committee on Agriculture and Food Systems. Today is March 13th and we're here for the 9 a.m. agenda in Rome 325 here at the Hawaii State Capitol. I'm Kirsten Kahaloa, Chair of this Committee and today we have with us Vice Chair Kush and Representative Peruso. Good morning everyone.

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Our first and only bill on this hearing notice is SB894SD3 relating to education appropriates funds to the Department of Education for regional kitchen expansion to fulfill the local farm to school meal goal requiring 30% of food served in public schools to consist of locally sourced products. First testifier on the agenda today is Hawaii Department of Education.

Good morning Chair Kahlo, Vice Chair Kusch and Members of the Committee. Dean Lucida, Deputy Superintendent with Department of Education. The Department stands on our written testimony in support of this measure. I'll be around to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you very much University of Hawaii System, Dean.

Mahalo for the opportunity. Chair Kahaloa and Vice Chair Kusch and Member Amy Perruso. We strongly support this bill and we believe that this bill has great potential for increasing local food production, enhancing Hawaii's self sufficiency in food. And we are here for any questions that you may have.

Thank you for your testimony. We have Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

Good morning Chair, Vice Chair, Members of the Committee, Cedric Gates here on behalf of the Department of Agriculture. The Department stands in strong support of this measure and we defer to Department Education for establishing the regional kitchens in each county. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next we have DBED.

Good morning Chair, Vice Chair, Member Perruso. Thank you for the opportunity. DBEDT stands in strong support on this measure. In addition to our testimony, I just wanted to put out a couple other points of not just what the regional kitchen means to child nutrition, but economically what this means to our food security and resiliency ecosystem.

The structure alone, in time of a natural disaster can be repurposed to provide meals to the communities. In time of need, our schools turn into shelters. We can rely on DOE to continue providing meals to those in our shelters. That is true resiliency having that infrastructure in place.

The second thing is with the uncertainty of the Federal Government now pulling back funds from but procuring local. If the state had this in place and we have to fill that gap, we would have been certain to have that dollar stay in our economy.

Now we're going to be looking at importing those dollars out to fill that local food supply. So I hope we can get this Bill through and support that initiative not just for child nutrition, but for resiliency and security. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next we have Agribusiness Development Corporation in support. Hawaii Farm Bureau.

Good morning Chair, Vice Chair, Representative Perruso, Brian Miyamoto here on behalf of the Hawaii Farm Bureau will stand on a written testimony in support.

Thank you. We had support from the Purple Maya foundation and individual testimony and Sean Kamisato on Zoom.

Aloha Chair, Vice Chairwoman Perruso. My name is Sean Kamisato. I'm currently pursuing my post secondary education with the Child and Family Specialty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The views I'm expressing this testimony is my own and do not necessarily reflect my school.

I intensify in support of SB894 which will allow the expansion implementation of regional kitchen statewide with the regional kitchen schools to effectively be able to handle, prepare and cook fresh food products. The usage of fresh local products support local farmers through increased revenue and increased local job opportunities.

In addition to this economic benefit of providing funds for regional kitchens, the Lancelet Regional Health America stated healthy meals can reduce macronutrient deficiency, promote healthy weight gain, improve cognitive development among others. As part of my master's social curriculum, I work closely with homeless youth every week for all those students and many others.

These families are not able to afford these fresh products to make healthy meals at home if they were guaranteed healthy meal to local farm school meal initiative as part of the Department of Education due to the expansion of regional kitchen their physical and cognitive health would improve.

In closing, I fully support SB894 relating to education as this bill will help to allocate funds to expand these regional kitchens patients in Hawaii so that our KI health can improve. With that being said, I urge you to support SB894. Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

Thank you for your testimony. Would anyone else wish to testify on this measure? Members, any questions? Representative Perruso.

DBEDT please. So you know, we've been talking about this approach for a long time and we see that this is estimated to cost just 55 million just for the additional design and expansion and construction just for the Whitmore site. And is that kind of consistent with your understanding that that's the price tag.

For the future sites? I don't know what the price tags are geographically, if infrastructure is available, if existing.

No, I'm just Talking about the 55 million is just for the expansion of phase one Whitmore and then there's additional cost estimation. Well, it's okay. Do you want to ask the Department of.

Yeah, I was gonna say DOE has the figures on their building.

Well, my question is actually for deep bit. Okay. Because I'm. Well, you might not know. So ask the Department. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Member. Might not know either, but I'll try.

So I'm curious as to whether this is incorporated into the Governor's Budget. So we just passed the House budget over to the Senate yesterday and I didn't note this in the the governance. It's not included in the government. Okay. So this is an additional appropriation item.

That's my understanding. Correct.

Okay. Thank you so much.

That's it. Thanks, Chair.

That's it. Any other questions, Members? We are going to take a brief recess till we have more of our Committee Members here for decision making. Thank you. Aloha Mai Kakou. We're resuming the House Committee on Agriculture and Food Systems on our 915 agenda item.

Still today on March 13th, we're going straight to decision making for SB894SD3 relating to education. This is our farm to school Measure I. We're going to create a House Draft 1 and defect the date to 3-1-3000, make technical amendments to this measure for clarity, consistency and style.

We, we are going to update the bill line items for the appropriation request per the Hawaii Department of Education's testimony. We do have line items right now for that, but we don't have them divided by fiscal year. So.

So we're just going to make a few more blank spaces to match the appropriation request from the Hawaii Department of Education. But the physical appropriation amounts will be put in the standing Committee report. So it will have blanks. But we need to fix the way the chart is listed in the measure.

And that is all we're doing to this bill at this time. Members, any questions or concerns? Representative Perruso.

So noting the allocation amounts included in the testimony by the Department of 55 million roughly fiscal year 2026 and 16.5 in 2027 and also considering the Council on Revenues projection from yesterday which shows us moving into a recession, it's hard for me just on that basis to support this measure because it is an additional appropriation not included in the Governor's Budget.

And additionally I will say I've always been hopeful that we could combine this model or create a more hybrid approach to farm to school. And in particular this project is an issue because it is sited in a tiny village with one road in and out and will directly impact in very negative ways that community of Whitmore Village.

So for those reasons, I a no on this measure. Thank you.

Thank you. Representative Perruso. Members, any other additional comments or concerns? I just want to note that there is a large appropriation and one of the goals is to start with this appropriation bill to put the infrastructure for facilities across the state.

So the entire appropriation amount covers statewide support for facilities facilities for planning and design for our communities also on other neighbor islands. So I'm really excited to have the opportunity for that expansion to move beyond facility regional kitchen just on Oahu to multiple on this island but then other facilities across the state.

If there are no further questions, we're going to move to vote. Vice Chair for the vote.

[Roll call]

Thank you Vice Chair. With no other further business on this agenda, we are adjourned. Thank you for your testimony today.