On Hawaiʻi Island, the Global Food Crisis Is Already Here
Featured in Food Bank News · June 2026
Our Executive Director, Kristin Frost Albrecht, was published in Food Bank News, and the piece is worth your time. She writes from her windowless office in our Hilo warehouse, where a mouse hole in the wall is plugged with a bright orange plastic flower. From there, she lays out a hard truth: on Hawaii Island, 43 percent of residents and 62 percent of children struggle to stay fed, and because we import most of our food, a shaky global supply chain hits us first.
But this is not a story about feeling powerless. It is about what we are building. Kristin walks through Hoʻolako, our food systems campus whose name means “the place that provides,” and shares the day a group of seventh graders planted kalo alongside longtime farmer Richard Kodani. Her point is simple. We cannot outsource our survival. Food security starts in the soil beneath our feet, and it starts with all of us.