More Local Food? These State Agencies Aren’t Buying It
Few departments met the official 10% goal last year. While cost, quality and lack of consistent supply are concerns, the current pace doesn’t bode well for the larger push to wean the islands off imported food.
Most state agencies are showing sluggish progress toward meeting their local food purchasing goals, while some are backsliding, according to 2026 legislative reports.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, for instance, spent almost $430,000 exclusively on Hawaiʻi-grown beef, fruits and vegetables and grew more than $100,000 worth of produce itself. That amounts to 4.17% of the agency’s $10.3 million food budget spent on local food last year — up from 3.44% in 2023 — but it still falls far short of its 10% goal.
In 2021, the Legislature set the 10% goal for the departments of Corrections, Education, Health and Defense as well as the University of Hawaiʻi system, as part of a plan to gradually increase institutional local food purchasing. State officials hope to see it reach 35% by 2035 and 50% by 2050.
In addition to produce, the effort includes meat and value-added products such as jam and canned vegetables. However, it’s still not clear whether local farms and food producers can meet the demand.
The Department of Education, which serves more than 100,000 meals a day, has been a focal point for the local food spending effort. The department spent $5 million out of its $77 million budget locally last year.
Meanwhile, some parts of the University of Hawaiʻi system are on track to increase the amount of local food used in its academic programs, having met the initial goal. The state’s community colleges, which run culinary programs and have the largest grocery bills, have made significant progress. More than 11% of the community colleges’ grocery spending went toward locally produced or manufactured food, 2.7% more than 2022.
UH Mānoa — which offers food science and nutrition programs — reported much less overall spending in 2025 than in previous years, but it spent over one quarter of the $8,000 reported budget on local food.
UH West Oʻahu didn’t spend any of its $147 budget for 2025 locally, according to legislative reports, while the university’s Hilo campus hasn’t reported any food purchases used in academic programs since 2022.
The UH data does not account for the 46,000 pounds of produce cultivated on campuses statewide, much of which is used for educational purposes or donated to nonprofits working to address food insecurity.
The Legislature originally set goals for all state departments in 2021 before streamlining the initiative to focus on the departments that purchase substantial quantities of food.
The Department of Health is one of those agencies, as the Hawaiʻi State Hospital spends $270,000 on the food it serves its patients and their guests. That’s more than double its 2022 spending, but the proportion of local food on the menu is less than half of what it was, down to 15.4% from 31% in 2022.
The agency also oversees the Hansen’s disease facility in Kalaupapa on Molokaʻi, though it does not measure its spending on local food. Measuring food purchasing for the remaining five patients would be “impractical and its policy benefit extremely minor,” the department wrote.
The state agencies have continually raised concerns about local farmers and ranchers’ ability to meet their demand. The increased cost and lack of consistent quantity of food grown in Hawaiʻi have been key bottlenecks, as have purchasing rules.
Asking vendors to provide information on the source of food products would also increase the cost, according to the health department. That mirrors years of quiet resistance from other agency officials, who have said state procurement rules are unfit to clarify where food is produced, while also pointing out seasonality and budgets as an issue.
Meat such as pork and chicken and staple vegetables like potatoes and onions aren’t grown in sufficient quantities in Hawaiʻi to supply the Department of Corrections, which serves 10,000 meals every day, according to the department’s 2026 report.
Lawmakers are seeking a resolution to that issue, specifically for the Department of Education, in Senate Bill 3963. The legislation, if passed, would allow the department to pay up to 5% more on locally grown equivalents to cheaper imported produce and food products.
The local purchasing goals were created to boost demand from institutional purchasers, whose bulk spending would increase demand for local produce. The hope was that consistent demand would lead farmers to grow more food. But it hasn’t been enough on its own.
Lawmakers and state officials are also investing heavily in infrastructure to help farmers and ranchers get their produce to market. Slaughterhouses and food processing facilities have been among the top priorities.
In November, for instance, state dignitaries officially broke ground on the Central O‘ahu Agriculture and Food Hub, which is intended to help offset the cost of storing, processing and marketing local foods. The facility is slated for completion in 2029.
The agencies’ next goal deadline is 2030, when at least 18% of the food they buy is expected to be grown or manufactured in Hawaiʻi.
“Data Dive” is supported in part by the Will J. Reid Foundation. “Hawai‘i Grown” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
