An environmental impact assessment is currently underway as The Food Basket works on plans to open its new Hilo property to beginner and intermediate level farmers by January 2025.

The Food Basket began clearing the 24.5-acre property adjacent to Homelani Cemetery on Ponahawai Street over a year ago for its long-planned Ho’olako Agricultural Innovation Park and Food System Campus.

Although the design of the future community food center and food bank, innovation center, agricultural support office and community center is not yet complete, the goal has always been to encourage farmers to start tilling their fields and growing food as soon as possible.

Although there have been delays due to bureaucratic hurdles, the EA could be completed by October.

If no significant findings are reported in the EA, The Food Basket will be eligible for a $1.6 million Community Project Funding grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provided by U.S. Senator Brian Schatz.

“The grant is for pre-development and is contingent on an environmental assessment being completed before we can use it,” said Justin Clayton, project manager at Ho’olako. “Part of it will go towards fencing the agricultural land, but the biggest cost will be clearing the property.”

When the land is ready for farming, The Food Basket will first leverage its current partnerships with GoFarms Hawaii and the Hawaii Community College School of Agriculture and invite student farmers to begin tilling the land and growing food.

“The biggest cost is clearing, but once the farmers are there, it’s just a matter of tilling the land, growing food and seeing what works. It’s a learning process,” Clayton said. “The next phase will be developing a space where they can process the food they grow, and hopefully we can start doing that in early 2026.”

The Food Basket also issued a public notice for its land use application, which is currently being processed. Eight acres of the property are zoned for commercial residential use, and the rest for agriculture, Clayton said.

While the zoning changes will help The Food Basket achieve its future goals, the project is in the process of reducing the construction time required to complete the project to 10 years.

“It’s going pretty well. The key is to stay in regular contact with the county,” Clayton said. “Mayor (Mitch) Roth is our lead on this project and everyone in the county has been very supportive.”

According to Executive Director Kristin Frost Albrecht, support also came from The Food Basket board members, who decided to stay on until the project was completed, as well as private donors who gave the nonprofit enough support to get everything off the ground this year.

“We have so many people who are fully committed to this project because they know how important it is to the future food security of our island,” Albrecht said. “Hawaii can be a leader in food sustainability, and I hope we can replicate Ho’olako on other island nations that need a sustainable food source.”

In the meantime, The Food Basket has been working on other agricultural initiatives, using different farming methods in pilot programs.

The nonprofit has been experimenting with hydroponics, using a Fork Farms Flex Farm, which uses hydroponic technology to grow produce that is portable and suitable for indoor use. Some of the vegetables grown have already been used in the Da Box program, which uses purchased produce from farmers in Hawaii and distributes it to people across the island.

These efforts are being further intensified with the arrival of Freight Farms’ Greenery S – a 40-foot hydroponic container farm that enables the cultivation of fresh food year-round, anywhere in the world.

The container farm could be built as early as Monday behind The Food Basket’s Kilauea office at 1284 Kilauea Ave.

The Food Basket is planning a community meeting on Ho’olako in September, but a date has not yet been set.

“We are definitely making progress and there are a lot of good things happening quietly,” Albrecht said. “We will be moving forward with our capital campaign plans soon and working on our other programs to help Hawaii Island.”

For more information about The Food Basket’s food assistance programs, access to healthy food, agricultural initiatives, and vision for Ho’olako, visit hawaiifoodbasket.org.

Email Kelsey Walling at [email protected].