The Wayfinders

HONOLULU, HI

The Wayfinder Resilient Food Micro-Milling Hubs provide infrastructure for food security and improved community resilience through micro processing centers.

You may not realize that one of the most cherished visitor destinations that is Hawaii is tragically food insecure. We import more than 90% of our food supply and have less than 10 days of fresh produce on hand.

We need more shelf-stable food and high-fiber plants in the form of complex carbohydrates.

After the pandemic and Maui fires, the realization that communities need to build resilience in the middle of the food supply chain (value-added production) to provide more and better markets to small farms and food businesses and to support the development of value-added products for consumers and farmers,

The Wayfinders aim to strengthen regional and decentralized, processing for value added products such as cut vegetables, teas, low-risk fruits, and canoe-plant flour in a retrofitted container, farm kitchen paired with a passive solar drying unit.

We also offer skill sharing workshops, expanded capacity, and co-shared space on best practices for low-risk manufacturing and dehydration of plants.

The micro-mill system uses hand water meters corresponding to our Standard Operating Procedures based on HACCP and Food Safe protocol which all the co-sharing businesses will learn.

Processing should be closer to our smaller farms since it takes too much time and money to drive smaller harvests to the town kitchens. Spending $150 on gas to make $100’s worth of products doesn’t make economic sense. There are not enough micro commercial kitchens on the islands, especially in rural areas,

If farmer or small food maker needs a space to make shelf-stable goods like dried herbs or cut fruit or vegetables grown on their farm, make low-risk foods, the Wayfinder is available to allow for these producers to operate safely without having to pay city based commercial kitchen market rates or commit to 30 plus hours in the kitchen.

The dryer’s main purpose is to utilize the natural sources of air and temperature which removes the water in plants in just over two days. We have developed a passive solar drying system that removes the majority of the water in the plants so they are more shelf stable and reduce and even eliminate the need for electricity to power an electric dehydrator that usually takes 12-16 hours coupled with high costs of utilities to dehydrate a small amount of product. Our first protype walk-in dryer unit can potentially dry about 500-600 pounds of raw, sliced breadfruit and contains humidity meters attached to a cell phone with real-time readings of temperature and humidity levels per hour. The intent of our protype solar dryers are to capture the potential waste that breadfruit and other canoe-plants yield due to short shelf-life or farmer location, although any low-risk plants can be used.

Food insecurity has influence on health outcomes and disparities. The Wayfinder Initiative facilitates health efforts to address food insecurity as a social determinant of health.

Improving access to locally grown plant-based foods that support healthy dietary patterns is one method for addressing health disparities and population health. It also provides an avenue for people to support their local communities and neighbors.

The canoe plant foods connect core nutritional needs like high-fiber and complex carbohydrates tailored to personal preferences in the form of baked goods and dry mixes that contain cultural and traditional foods such as taro and breadfruit flour.

IMPACT:

Collaboration will lower prices for flour by creating more access, availability, and direct-to consumer opportunities. Access to these “canoe plants” is increasingly challenging to find at the store and even the farmer’s markets.

CSA FLOUR SHARE:

Through the community supported flour share we plan a quarterly production to distribute among the collective for more access and availability.

WORKSHOPS

Not only do we create more access and education for eating canoe plants but we skill-share how to pre-process them and integrate them into meals.

Educational workshops for skill sharing and creating jobs for operations and kitchen helpers.

Our fiscal sponsor:

Well Fed Ohana is an Integrated Wellness non-profit organization

Everything we do at Well Fed Ohana is toward the goal of promoting and achieving sustainable wellness for individuals, families and communities.

We do this by connecting people of all ages in Hawaii to the ‘āina, the living land.

We cultivate healthy soil, grow healthy plants, feed healthy food and connect generations of families and communities through growing, eating and celebrating our own food from Hawaiian land.

IF HAWAII HOUSEHOLDSSPENT JUST $65 AMONTH ON LOCALLYGROWN FRUITS ANDVEGETABLES, IT WOULDGENERATE OVER $300MILLION FOR OURISLAND ECONOM

Our beginnings:

Over 18 years ago, Voyaging Foods was founded based on a need to provide a gluten free, teething biscuit cookie for my toddler. From my home kitchen I started to make home-made kalo flour I made from our soured poi. I couldn't find what I needed at the grocery store, so I made it myself. This cookie recipe was inspired by a poi cookie my great-grandmother Harriet Wahineaea Kaho’opi’i gave me as a child as a way to eat more kalo. I believe this was a full circle gift from our ancestors as a way to reconnect to our culture through food with improved health and wellbeing.

Fast forward to today, Voyaging Foods has been making canoe plant flour from kalo and ‘ulu as healthy ingredients for baked goods and dry mixes sold in products located at Whole Foods, Foodland, and Down to Earth.

We aim to advocate for more canoe plant flour such as taro and breadfruit flour to be used as an alternative to grain, nut and starch ingredients in recipes.

The Wayfinders, a fiscal sponsoree of The Well Fed 'Ohana EIN: 931508483FSTW
4348 Waialae Ave. Ste. 241, HONOLULU, HI, 96816, US

The Wayfinders

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