What It Actually Takes to Pass a Food Bill in Hawaiʻi - Reflections from inside the 2026 legislative session

By Beverly Patton| 2026 Hawaiʻi Food+ Policy Intern Recent graduate, UH West Oʻahu's Sustainable Community Food Systems

To become familiar with statewide efforts to advance sustainable agriculture in Hawaii. Further, I wish to learn the legislative process that advances bills for sustainable agriculture, and what the roadblocks are to achieving these actions.

When asked what my learning objectives were for the Food+ Policy legislative internship, I replied with the above goals. As the 2026 internship ends, I am reflecting on my experiences. As with any experience that one does not have a lot of knowledge about prior to starting, I was not quite sure what my objectives were. However, I would say that I have learned a great deal about the legislative process in Hawai’i, though clearly not the background politics that go into a successful bill passage—or failure.

The first meeting the interns had introduced the Hawai’i Legislature website—which was quite easy to navigate. Over the course of three months, we had many, many hours spent reading bills and their amendments, submitting testimony, and reading the testimony of others. Of interest as well, were the committee meeting notes and the live-streamed hearings. We each selected bills to follow—I chose what I would call all those related to social issues. As a dietitian by profession, I chose bills that were related to “feeding people’ or related topics: school lunches, taxation on groceries, ag statistics gathering, and the two bills which covered the legislative process to the House and Seante Conference Committees: SB 2802: relating to the University of Hawaii and HB 2208: relating to food security. One succeeded; the other did not complete the distance.

What happened with these bills that made one successful and the other not? The final committee reports do not give any hint as to what happened in conference. Both faced early opposition: SB 2802 sought to establish bachelor degrees in education and agricultural science at Leeward Community College—which testimony from the University of Hawai’i leadership deemed not part of the overall master plan. Furthermore, this early testimony noted that the University of Hawai’i, West Oahu (UHWO), had room for expansion of programs. Over the legislative session, the bill evolved quickly to support a bachelor of agricultural science at UHWO. This bill prevailed on the last day of the regular session. [NOTE: bills still need the governor’s signature or an appropriate time without the governor’s outright veto.]

HB 2208 which would have established State grants to food banks for the provision of Hawai’i grown produce and food products. This was truly a `twofer’ bill: both the food banks and the small agricultural industry would benefit from this bill. This bill had a real human `face’ in that one in every three Hawaiians is food insecure and the numbers are growing. The economic shocks the past six years (the covid pandemic, the Lahaina fire, the Federal shutdown, and the Kona Low storms) have pushed more and more individuals into food insecurity. Furthermore, 85-90% of all food consumed in Hawai’i is imported from the mainland. This bill literally received over 100 individual testimonies from social and hunger organizations as well as individuals, supporting its passage. At the outset, the bill did have opposition from the Department of Human Services who was to oversee the program. The latter stated that it did not have enough staff to administer this program and was focused on other issues related to the federal government’s Big Beautiful Bill. Still, the bill received approval from the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and covered the distance to House and Senate Conference. In the end, the bill failed. I found that my classes in Sustainable Community Food Systems taught me how critical it was to encourage and support local agriculture, and feeding people is what dietitians do. I was disappointed and saddened that this bill did not survive for passage.

The fate of these bills demonstrates several elements of the legislative process, and how important it is to become aware of how bills get introduced and passed. The knowledge of the bills, and engagement of the community and individuals are absolute requirements for the process to work. The Food+ Policy internship gave me an introduction to the legislative process and how critical it is to be engaged with supporting not only the process but lobbying for those bills.