To: The Hawaii State Senate and Governor David Ige

We Support Scott Enright as Chair of the Hawaii Department of Agriculture.

Aloha Governor Ige, We support your nomination of Scott Enright as Chairperson of the Hawaii DOA. Scott Enright has demonstrated support of organic and regenerative agriculture through his positive working relationship with Hawaii Farmers Union United, and it's solution based mission to advocate for the sovereign right of farmers to create and sustain vibrant and prosperous agricultural communities for the benefit of all Hawaii through cooperation, education and legislation.

Why is this important?

From Vincent Mina, President of HFUU:
I am in support of Scott Enright continuing to being the chair of agriculture for Hawaii! When we have those in government who can work with you, and want to work with you, well you work with them. I am a family farmer of 21 years who also has been an advocate of educational outreach and programs in support of our family farmers for the past 17 of those years producing conferences on "Body and Soil" practicing the concepts of Aloha Aina, Malama Aina. I have been walking the talk and continue to do so, instigating the development of and leading with others HFUU as an alternative to the farm bureau. I appreciate having someone in office who I can relate these values to in support of what we want to see come forward for our family farmers. These farmers are in the trenches every day, doing all they can do to stay on the land and practice what they love and do it without use of poisons or non-renewable practices. I, along with my wife and son, make our living growing food for the community, and we do so using regenerative and renewable practices.

Scott has shown his support by standing up in working with the leaders of HFUU in the development of programs that promote soil health. With that said Scott's job is to represent the agricultural industry in Hawaii. We don't support all forms of agriculture yet under US law all are legal. We recognize all forms yet don't support all forms. I appreciate and value the work of Shaka in holding chemical companies accountable. With that said, my focus and kuleana as president of HFUU is to advocate for the creation of vibrant and prosperous agricultural communities. We need to be piloting demonstration projects that will be based on consistent and resilient production systems. We as family farmers need infrastructure in support of recycling of renewable nutrients back onto the farm. We need a food aggregation system of distribution in the form of a community owned cooperative. We need land trust to place our young passionate farmers living on the land they are farming. All this would be a great start if we are going to be able to turn this ship around and actually be able to grow our own food here in Hawaii and support those who are going to grow it. This does not happen in a vacuum and HFUU is committed in seeing this come to fruition and Scott is holding the space for this to come forward which means as we get our collective act together he will not impede us moving this forward. Scott has been advocating for folks to sign up as members of HFUU when he has presented at our chapter meetings on Maui and Oahu knowing that in the legislature numbers matter.