University of Â鶹´«Ã½ leaders, alongside more than 180 representatives from government, private sectors, and community organizations, gathered for the 4th annual on December 8 and 9 to explore strategies to build a stronger, more accessible and disaster-resilient food system.
The UH Ke ? Mau Center, its priority food system planning initiative (THFST), and affiliated faculty played a central role in sponsoring and organizing the event, and in guiding key discussions on planning, community education, and research. This work involves partners across the UH System, including UH West Oʻahu, UH System¡¯s Ke ? Mau Center for Sustainable Island Food Systems, UH ²Ñ¨¡²Ô´Ç²¹¡¯s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR), Leeward Community College and Kapiʻolani Community College. CTAHR Dean Parwider Grewal, UH West Oʻahu¡¯s Albie Miles and UH ²Ñ¨¡²Ô´Ç²¹¡¯s Noa Lincoln hosted a dedicated session on developing a collaborative research agenda to advance food system resilience in Â鶹´«Ã½.
“Food system resilience is the capacity to absorb, adapt to, and recover from disruptions while ensuring equitable access to nutritious food,” said Miles, associate professor of Sustainable Community Food Systems. “It depends not only on physical assets like storage and supply chains, but also on strong social infrastructure — the relationships, networks, institutions, trust and coordination. The 2025 Food System Summit was designed to help build this essential social infrastructure.”
A led by UH researchers reveals a critical gap in disaster readiness across Â鶹´«Ã½, with only 12% of households meeting the State of Â鶹´«Ã½‘s recommended levels of emergency stockpiling of food, water and essential medicine. This low compliance signals significant vulnerability should a major supply–chain disruption or other disaster occur.
This year¡¯s summit focused on preparedness came at a critical time for the state. Held at the Wahiaw¨¡ Value-Added Product Development Center, the event centered on, “Food System Resilience and Disaster Preparedness.” Panels and showcases offered frontline perspectives, including lessons learned from the L¨¡hain¨¡ wildfires and the Oʻahu Feeding Task Force. Discussions highlighted new developments and challenges in state-level planning and policy, emergency food distribution and opportunities to strengthen local production and shelf-stable emergency food availability.
The summit emphasized that building a disaster-ready food system requires awareness, planning, coordinated action, sustained investment and shared responsibility, noting that Â鶹´«Ã½ has the expertise and community leadership to make it a reality.