Developing an Agriculture System with a Focus on Fostering Community and Preserving Culture
Partner organization: Ho‘okua‘āina
Team members: Grace Audette (Mechanical Engineering ’24), Jose Tamariz (Industrial Engineering ’24), Anthony Virone (Robotics Engineering ’24), Kaleigh Walsh (Environmental Engineering ’24)
Download the team’s final presentation.
Prior to Western contact, the Hawaiian Islands were self-sufficient and possessed a wealth of cultural and natural resources. Land was managed to ensure that everyone was provided for, whether it be food, shelter, or water. Each community member contributed to maintaining the culture of care and a sense of community on the islands. Western contact disrupted the balance of the Hawaiian Islands and ultimately led to a reliance on the mainland for food and other necessary supplies (Moloka‘i Community Service Council, 2007).
Hoʻokuaʻāina, a nonprofit organization on Oahu, restored agricultural abundance to 3 acres of land while creating a prosperous kalo (taro) farm. In the past 200 years, the land went through many uses, including kalo farming, rice farming, and cattle grazing, and finally in the years prior to Hoʻokuaʻāina’s purchase, was allowed to return to a wild state.
Through the cultivation of kalo, Hoʻokuaʻāina’s mission is to cultivate the life skills and values of community in the youth of Oahu through their education and mentorship programs (Hoʻokuaʻāina, 2017). The organization is in the process of expanding their operations to bring together a larger portion of the community through the purchase of a 116-acre plot of land down the street from their current farm. On this plot, Hoʻokuaʻāina plans to implement a custom agriculture system which will define the roles and interactions of participants within it.
The goal of this project was to help Hoʻokuaʻāina synthesize necessary components for the custom agriculture system they envision. This included an analysis of community-based agriculture approaches from across the globe to provide recommendations for Hoʻokuaʻāina’s planned custom agriculture system. In addition, the team focused on critically synthesizing Dean and Michele’s vision of the system on the 116-acre plot to gather their ideas and provide feedback to improve the plans for the system, as well as the creation of outreach materials to show its functionality.
The first objective was to analyze community-based farming practices worldwide. With this analysis the team produced a critical analysis in the form of a research paper that can be seen in Appendix I as a deliverable for the organization. The paper presents an in-depth analysis of published articles on community-based farming projects, as well as insights from project participants and experts in the field. The results show that successful community-based farming projects share common emphasis on conflict resolution, self-sustainability, community participation, and environmental stewardship.
The second objective aimed to collect all necessary information to fully define the custom agriculture system and create a synthesized document showing how each of the parts will function together. To complete this objective, we interviewed Hoʻokuaʻāina co-founder, Dean Wilhelm, to gather his ideas and vision for how the system will function. Using the information collected in the interview with Dean, we created three iterations of the write-up for the system and reviewed each in a roundtable discussion format with the full staff of Hoʻokuaʻāina to receive critical feedback. The team reviewed suggestions and provided our own insight to create the third and final draft of the custom write-up of the system, which was delivered to the sponsors at the end of the project. In addition, the team created a report of potential crops and their predicted yields on the plot for the organization to use as a rough starting point in their cultivation on the land. Through this report, a variety of suggestions and recommendations were provided to Hoʻokuaʻāina for future applications when implementing the custom agriculture system onto the new plot.
The third and final objective for this project was to create a StoryMap which demonstrated the operation and planned impact for the custom system, with the aim of attracting donors and new participants. The team researched and conducted interviews about the impact the organization has had on its participants, as well as historical data about the previous land use on the 116-acres. The gathered testimonials, paired with a photo of each interviewee, present an indirect way for potential members and donors to connect to the narrated experiences and visualize the operations and impact of the organization. In addition to testimonials, the StoryMap included historical maps and sites that are located on the land and are part of Hoʻokuaʻāina’s efforts to protect and steward natural resources on the new plot. Using the StoryMap, the organization can easily continue to maintain and update the content as the operations in the new plot expand and the system continues to develop.
Our teams’ efforts to provide written reports and the StoryMap only partially complete Hoʻokuaʻāina’s extensive task in developing 116-acres of land into a prosperous community focused agriculture center. We hope, however, that we can support the organization in their early planning stages and contribute to the shaping of such an aspirational initiative.