Celebrating 10 Years of Growing Together

Ten years ago, Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative began with nine farmers and a shared belief that Hawaiʻi could grow more of its own food while creating stronger opportunities for the people who grow it.

Today, as we celebrate our 10th anniversary, that vision has grown into an inter-island network of farmers, facilities, partners, customers, schools, and communities working together to build a more resilient Hawaiʻi food system.

A decade is an opportunity not only to celebrate how far we’ve come, but to recognize what it has taken to get here.

A Decade Rooted in Resilience

Building a strong market for locally grown staple crops has never been easy. Over the past 10 years, our farmers and cooperative have weathered natural disasters, the disruption of a global pandemic, rising costs, changing markets, unpredictable harvests, and shifts in the funding available to support agricultural development.

Through each challenge, we have continued to adapt.

At the heart of our work is an ambitious balancing act: help farmers grow more food while simultaneously building the markets, infrastructure, and demand needed to shepherd those harvests up the value chain.

That means planting ʻulu trees whose greatest harvests are still years ahead. It means creating processing and distribution infrastructure that makes locally grown staples easier for schools, families, chefs, and businesses to use. And it means continually introducing more people to the incredible potential of ʻulu and the diverse canoe crops and co-crops grown alongside it.

After 10 years, our collective efforts are adding up!

Behind all of these numbers are the people who made them possible: farmers tending trees, production teams processing harvests, chefs creating new ways to enjoy ʻulu, schools putting Hawaiʻi-grown foods on keiki lunch trays, and community members choosing to invest their food dollars here at home.

What Comes Next

Perhaps the most exciting part of reaching 10 years is knowing that much of what we have planted is still growing.

Thousands of ʻulu trees stewarded by our members will continue maturing in the years ahead, demand for locally grown food continues to expand, and the need for diversified agriculture, regional food infrastructure, and climate-resilient crops has only become more apparent.

Our cooperative model allows us to approach that future collectively. By connecting harvests of all sizes with processing, market development, education, and community partnerships, we can accomplish things that would be extraordinarily difficult for individual farms to build alone.

As we enter our second decade, our goal remains rooted in the same idea that brought nine farmers together in 2016: a thriving local food system starts with thriving local farmers who are empowered to build a system that works for them.

To every farmer-member, employee, customer, partner, funder, chef, educator, retailer, student, and community member who has been part of this journey, mahalo nui loa.

Ten years in, we are deeply grateful for how far we have come and even more excited about what we can grow together next.

Here’s to the next 10 years of feeding Hawaiʻi, cooperatively.

Explore the full 10-year timeline of the cooperative →