Dairy’s Decline and the Politics of “Local” Milk in Hawai‘i

Abstract

This paper uses the case of Hawai‘i’s dairy industry to examine the history of food production in Hawai‘i, contemporary interest in re-localizing Hawai‘i’s food system, and the conflicting agrarian imaginaries that challenge this endeavor. The evolution of the dairy industry in Hawai‘i illustrates how over the past several decades the US dairy industry has become consolidated in the name of economic efficiency, regardless of the potential environmental and human health impacts. As elsewhere in the United States, Hawai‘i consumers are pushing back against this economic transformation, and advocating for greater protection of local dairy farms. Most local food advocates do not value local purely on a geographical basis, but for its potential to capture desirable attributes such as sustainably produced, supportive of local economies and/or freshness. This can make it difficult to establish a local food system when community members hold different visions, or agrarian imaginaries, for how best to produce local food, and for where or by whom it should be produced. I highlight the history and political economy of milk production in Hawai‘i in order to demonstrate both the challenges and opportunities for reforming—and more specifically re-localizing—the dairy industry in Hawai‘i, and in the United States more broadly.

Keywords:

• Hawai‘i
• dairy
• local food
• food politics
• agrarian imaginaries

Acknowledgements

I thank The Kohala Center for their support of my fieldwork as well as Alice Kelly, Mez Baker-Medard, Lindsey Dillon, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper. I would also like to thank Tanaya Dattagupta for her help with archival analysis.

Notes

1. Though there is no consensus around the definition of “local,” for the purposes of this article (and based on stakeholder interviews and document analysis) I define local as produced within the state of Hawai‘i and do not assume local to inherently imply any other specific attributes (i.e. organic, small-farm produced) other than this geographic boundary.

2. However, there is some debate over milk as an “essential part of the American diet”—see DuPuis (2002) for an account of the social construction of milk as a major dietary practice in the United States.

3. Again, it is important to note that while today milk is consumed widely across the state of Hawai‘i (though to varying degrees amongst Hawai‘i’s various ethnic populations), milk was not historically part of the Native Hawaiian diet and was only introduced by white settlers in the nineteenth century.

4. Milk quality can be measured in two broad categories: (a) bacteria-related issues and (b) nutrient changes in milk following handling. Bacteria-related issues result in spoilage and potential illness. Handling, such as through the extended heating of milk, can denature proteins or amino acids and thus change the values of the nutrients in milk. The pasteurization process itself does alter some proteins and enzymes. Hawai‘i milk is unique in that it is pasteurized twice—first before being shipped to Hawai‘i and then second it is re-pasteurized prior to bottling for retail in Hawai‘i. It is worth noting that California specifically prohibits the re-pasteurization of fluid milk for fluid purpose. Milk imported to Hawai‘i has also been shown to exceed federal regulatory limits in bacterial counts five days prior to expiration. While the source or site of this contamination has not been determined, Lee (2007) notes that the duration of time the milk at retail in Hawai‘i would have left a cow if this milk were imported might be quite lengthy. He estimates that the age of milk after it left a CA cow and at its expiration date is at minimum 24.7 days, and at maximum 30 days. While it is unlikely that any other state in the nation has 25–30-day-old milk sold to consumers unless ultrapasteurized, no law is actually broken with this duration because no states regulate shelf-life (Lee 2007).

5. These actors are from the islands of Hawai‘i and Molokai and include farmers, restaurateurs, grocers, distributors, government officials involved in food and agriculture policy, researchers, non-profit practitioners advocating for local food and community leaders. They reflect the diversity of Hawai‘i’s ethnic fabric, as they include members of the Native Hawaiian, Asian immigrant and white settler communities. They also come from varying economic backgrounds, ranging from struggling farmers to tenured university professors. Interviewees were asked why “local food” is important and what goals they held vis-à-vis local food production. They were also asked the metrics they use to assess progress towards achieving these goals.

6. The analysis of these two cases is based on research conducted between 2012 and 2014 while based primarily on Hawai‘i Island. Along with the semi-structured interviews mentioned above and document analysis (e.g. media reports, internal community organization documents), an integral component of my research involved participant observation, a key methodological tool for qualitative research that involves intense involvement with people in their cultural environment through both observation of and participation in daily activities over an extended period of time (Guest et al. 2013). Specifically, I worked closely with a local non-profit focused on food self-reliance in Hawai‘i. As well as with interacting with my interlocutors on a regular basis, I attended numerous community food system events and sustainable agriculture workshops. The empirical data gathered through these processes—both formal interviewing and informal participant observation—informs the following narrative, which I present in some places through direct quotes and in other places through paraphrasing or synthesis.

7. His stance also reflects broader analytical efforts to denaturalize dominant discourses on “development” that serve as mechanisms of control over the “Third World” and instead to offer alternative visions for the post-development era (Escobar 1995).

8. While I am in solidarity with sovereignty advocates who choose not to italicize Hawaiian words (see Silva 2004 for the rationale behind this), I have chosen to italicize Hawaiian words based on the logic that italicization is conventionally used to indicate the use of a foreign language, which is relational to the author and the place one is writing about and from where (which in my case is the place of an English-speaking author writing about Hawai‘i from the continental United States).

9. There were, however, a number of unintended negative environmental consequences, including destruction of native grasses and crops such as taro by grazing cattle (Fischer 2007).

10. Prof. Louis A. Henke was a professor of Agriculture at the College and University of Hawai‘i. He was also known for developing the most outstanding herd of dairy cows in Hawai‘i. The herd held the first place for all Hawaiian produced A.R.O records (The Garden Island, May 3, 1921).

11. The figures were computed by the Territorial Planning Board, Hawai‘i (1939), based on running averages for five-year periods. Sources for the data include Board of Health, US Census and US Department of Commerce reports.

12. For example, in his New Day Plan, Governor Neil Abercrombie has called for an “agricultural renaissance” in which Hawai‘i grows more of its own food and becomes increasingly self-reliant (Abercrombie 2010). More recently, the Hawaiian Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) and the Department of Agriculture put forth a food self-sufficiency strategy report in 2012 that aims to increase the amount of locally grown food consumed by Hawai‘i residents. The report’s strategies include strengthening agricultural infrastructure, increasing support for Farmers’ Markets and further developing a “Grow Local/It Matters” campaign (DBEDT 2012).

13. As smaller considerations, 12.6% of responses stated that local food was important because it was good for community well-being, citing community resilience, the maintenance of rural character and inter-community relationships as key benefits of a local food system. Some 11.8% of responses cited quality as the reason for supporting local food production—either in regards to better taste, freshness and/or superior product. Respondents also mentioned accountability (5.9%), health benefits (3.4%) and reduced environmental impact (2.5%) as reasons for local food’s importance.

14. The critiques of re-localization discussed above call into question the logic behind the beliefs and goals of local food proponents in Hawai‘i (e.g. an economist might argue that the principle of competitive advantage is more important than overall self-sufficiency). This article does not purport to assess or pass judgment on the empirical validity of their claims, but instead takes their re-localization efforts at face value as a starting point to analyze what is a growing and noteworthy social movement capable of producing outcomes that merit increased scholarly attention.

15. While the term haole (meaning “white” or “foreigner”) is used colloquially to describe non-Native Hawaiians, the term “settler” is used in academic literature to describe non-Native Hawaiians and will be subsequently used in this paper.

16. This sentiment—criticism of local farmers who farm conventionally with pesticides—was voiced numerous times in interviews. See Appendix A for further quotes in this vein.