Act now
Pick your lane. Every action below comes out of the papers — and every one of them costs nothing, or close to it, and waits on no one's permission. Seeds in the ground are the unit of progress here.
If you live here
The whole ask is a bed, a shelf, and a name. That's the on-ramp — and it's enough.
1 · Plant one bed — this week
ʻUala slips or seeds, a corner of the yard, pots on the lānai, a church or school plot, any ground you're welcome to plant. It costs nothing, and it waits on no one. Sweet potato fed this island's dryland field systems for centuries and asks the least of a new grower. One bed, mulched and kept, teaches more than a winter of reading. From there: a second bed, a few hens, a fruit tree. And if you want company, plant by the moon: the monthly planting nights follow the kaulana mahina — the Hawaiian moon calendar that names the right nights for trees, fruiting plants, and crops — the same nights every month, island-wide, no sign-up.
2 · Keep two weeks of food
Fourteen days of food, water, and medicine has been the state's official household standard since 2017 (HI-EMA "2 Weeks Ready"). It costs about $104 for one person (HPR priced it). Right now 12% of households meet the standard, while 56% believe they're prepared (UH study, Dec 2025). Be the household whose numbers check out. Buy what you already eat; rotate it.
3 · Buy direct from one farmer, by name
The island runs 25 farmers markets. Pick the nearest one, buy there first, and learn the first name of one person who grows your food. Then trade: join or start a crop swap — extra ʻuala for extra eggs, bananas for greens. Food given and received is the oldest economy this island has, and it needs no card reader. That single relationship is the unit everything else in this plan is built from.
If you farm or ranch
You are the capable contingent this plan organizes. Three moves, all open now — none of them needs a program, a form, or anyone's approval. Planting cohorts keep time by the kaulana mahina — trees on the Kū nights, crops on Kāne and Lono, the ʻOle nights for mending gear — so the monthly planting nights are already on your calendar: look up.
1 · Come to an input-making day — bring a 5-gallon bucket
Nitrogen is up 24.5–35.6% on the mainland; KNF is the documented local replacement — published Hawaiʻi Island trials showed purchased-input costs roughly 45% and 33% lower (CTAHR trials), with "virtually all of the inputs… available locally" (UH CTAHR SA-21). The Pure KNF Foundation meets monthly in Hilo — second Tuesday, Komohana Research & Extension Center. Come with a bucket, leave with finished input and the recipe. Fertility made on-island is the whole point: no boat, no invoice, no application. Start at pureknf.org.
2 · Get on the island producer map
Join your HFUU chapter at hfuuhi.org and get counted: who grows what, where, at what capacity. The named producer map is the island's working answer to a supply shock — neighbors who know each other's fields move food when nothing else does.
3 · Puna and Kaʻū — step up
East Hawaiʻi, Kona, and Kohala chapters are active; Puna and Kaʻū are open and looking for chapter leadership — the two districts that need it most. If you farm there, restart the chapter: the union will back you, and the meetings can start in a carport.
If you hold office
The asks cost zero. We are not asking for appropriations, programs, or grant rounds — the movement is built to run without them. Constituent legitimacy stands behind the offer: more than 800 union farm families statewide, and an island where nearly half of households are food-insecure.
County of Hawaiʻi — two zero-cost items
- Attach a food-supply annex to the county's emergency framework. No published island food-supply emergency plan appears in the public record. HFUU/PKNF will draft the annex — producer network, hub map, and cold-node grid attached — at zero county cost. Take the Civil Defense briefing.
- Accept a producer-network liaison. One named counterpart between Civil Defense and the island's organized producers, staffed by us, also at zero county cost — the highest-value, lowest-cost item in the program.
We testify; we do not wait — and we do not ask for money. How the movement pays for itself is Paper 06; the threat baseline is Paper 01.
If you want to give
First, know the engine: the movement funds itself — membership, paid workshops, input-making and input sales, barter and mutual aid, the commercial rails, food itself as currency. It is designed to run on zero public money. No grant calendar sets its tempo; no reporting chain shapes its work. A movement that must win a grant to exist is a grant program. This one is not.
So if you want to give, give like a neighbor: land access or an ag lease, a working truck or tractor, seed and slips, fencing, a building, cold space, an introduction to someone who holds any of those. Gifts with no reporting chain — hoʻokupu, the giving form this island has always used. The honest inventory of what exists is Paper 03; how the movement pays for itself is Paper 06.
The gift that matters most is ground
A patch of land someone is welcome to plant — a yard, a field corner, a church or school plot, a fallow acre — costs the giver nothing and starts food the same week. Landholders: the alignment conversations this month are with The Food Basket, Kamehameha Schools (the ag-lease conversation — KS is the island's great agricultural landholder), and Ulupono — allies, landholders, givers. Take the meeting — via pureknf.org.
What your gift joins: input-making days where farmers leave with finished fertility and the recipe; staple beds going into yards and leased acres; a producer map of neighbors who know each other's fields; metrics published quarterly whether they flatter us or not. Seeds in the ground are the unit of progress, and the first ones are already planted.