Mission

The mission of Ho’oulu Pacific is to improve self-sufficiency and holistic health in the Pacific Islands through innovations in farming and distributed agriculture.

Purpose

Climate change-induced rising seas & coastal damage are reducing already scarce land, water & fish stocks for islanders in American Samoa (AS) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (MI) forcing many of these U.S. nationals to leave their home nations at the highest emigration rates in the world. Many move to Hawaii, becoming some of the world’s first climate change refugees. They often have trouble finding jobs in Hawaii and there they face the highest food prices in the U.S. Many cannot afford healthy food and must consume high calorie, nutritionally-devoid processed foods. The situation is similar for many Native Hawaiians (NH) in Hawaii. Together, this “NH/Pacific Islander” demographic group has the worst health profile of any U.S. ethnicity.

We’ve developed an off-the-ground, proprietary, affordable aquaponic (fish-plant symbiotic) system that fits in backyards and requires minimal input costs. They are 1/3 the cost of existing systems, 6 times more productive than traditional farming (/unit area) while using 98% less water,  and they can be located on salt-infiltrated soil or pavement with no runoff. Tested in the Waimanalo NH Homestead, our prototype systems have already produced 50 types of fresh produce and fish, yielding all the fish and vegetables that a family needs plus significant surplus. We seek to integrate our technology with our innovative distributed agriculture model; aggregating production from a network of household farmers and redistributing it to the local community. Participating households will receive the equipment, supplies, & support they need & pay back costs via the surplus they sell. They earn supplementary income, we generate revenue that funds our expansion into other NH Homesteads and U.S. Pacific Island territories