Thank you for The State of Poverty in Hawaii.  Its finding that "food insecurity affects 1 out of 8 Hawai`i residents" requires immediate attention by state and local governments.  Raising the minimum wage and reforming our regressive tax system are both worthwhile recommendations.

It might also be worthwhile to note that food insecurity in Hawai`i is a thoroughly modern phenomenon.  

In 1779, when Cook visited, Lieutenant King remarked that sweet potato, the pre-eminent rain-fed agricultural crop in Hawai‘i, “thrives prodigiously, indeed it is such Plenty that the poorest natives would throw them into our Ships for Nothing”.  

Food security in old Hawai`i was ensured by a sharing ethic.  This ethic was expressed by “the accepted greeting, even to comparative strangers”, which Mary Pukui translated literally as “come in and eat, eat all you want”.

Let's try to do as well as kanaka maoli did in the eighteenth century.