Lack of leadership hurts farm-to-school

Poor logic and faulty numbers are preventing our leaders from fully activating the mandated farm-to-school program (“Bills to transform Hawaiʻi’s school meals die in Senate,” Star-Advertiser, March 29).

For starters, if the concern is “the proper amount of time” for the state Department of Education to source enough food to provide locally sourced meals to students, how is the solution to wait even longer to start those efforts?

Secondly, 50 percent student lunch participation is calculated to cost $63.8 million, yet increasing that to 75 percent would cost $137.9 million? So a 50 percent relative increase—from 50–75 percent—would result in a 116 percent increase in cost? That simply makes no sense (or cents) when economies of scale almost always reduce costs on a per-unit basis.

Food systems and food security are the larger issues here. The narrow-mindedness of our legislative leaders not only is compromising the education of our students in the short term, it is preventing long-term resilience for all of us.

John Cheever
Kalani Iki