Daniel Anthony’s Food Security Vision Starts With a Place to Grow

BrotherLee Time Episode #94 | Guest: Daniel Anthony | Format: Explanatory Feature

The food Daniel Anthony brought to the BrotherLee Time studio was not the color Kenji Lee expected. Kenji had pictured purple poi. What sat in front of him was made from ʻulu, and the small surprise opened a much bigger conversation about what Hawaiʻi grows, what families can afford, and who gets the chance to take part.

In Episode #94, Daniel returns to the Lee brothers with a campaign underway, but some of his clearest ideas begin far from a ballot. They begin with a box of food, a patch of ground and a person who would like to grow something but does not yet know where to start.

Kenji asks about the relationship between Daniel’s work with food and his move into politics. He remembers an image from their earlier conversation: individual pieces of kalo becoming one food that nourishes people. Here, he wonders what that image asks of a government made up of individual people. Shouldn’t the result nourish the community too?

Daniel brings that question back to everyday decisions. In his view, food security has to become part of the way land and public resources are managed, rather than a concern brought up after other priorities have already been settled.

Daniel Anthony on Making Room for Local Food

Daniel describes being asked how he would make local food affordable. He understands the familiar comparison: a family sees a higher price for something grown here, then buys an imported option because it fits the budget. His response shifts the question toward participation. What opportunities does that family have to help grow food in the first place?

He imagines food forests where someone could arrive with a box, pay an accessible amount and take home what they pick. Kenji recognizes something similar in community workdays where people help care for land and leave with produce. Daniel’s point is that he wants public systems to support more of those opportunities, alongside the work already happening through private farms and nonprofit organizations.

That is a proposal in the conversation, not a program readers can assume is available. Its appeal comes from how easy the exchange is to picture. A person brings time and effort. A place provides the chance to contribute. Food comes home with them, and the work helps something continue growing.

Daniel extends the idea to a farm operating throughout the week, where someone who needs food could volunteer. Kenji follows the practical exchange immediately: a little labor becomes something a household can use. The discussion treats access to food as connected to access to meaningful work, rather than leaving a person only with the choice of what they can buy.

A Small Plot Should Lead Somewhere

The conversation turns to community gardens. Daniel describes small plots with access to water and says demand exceeds the space available. His account of waiting lists leads him to another question: after someone has learned to grow food in a small plot, what happens next?

He lays out a progression from a modest garden to a larger one, then to more land and eventually a place to live while farming. Kenji puts a word to it: graduation. The person has developed a skill, and there should be somewhere for that skill to go.

The larger housing-and-land arrangement Daniel describes would require decisions well beyond this conversation. He does not present a completed operating plan here. What he makes clear is the connection he wants people to see. A community can say it needs farmers while making it difficult for a person to become one or remain one.

Kenji raises the obvious objection about space on an island. Daniel challenges the assumption that every possible growing area is already in use. His response returns to the idea of people living on land while caring for it and producing food for others. The acreage figures mentioned in the episode would need separate verification; the story’s central question does not depend on treating those estimates as a settled inventory.

For Daniel, the person growing food is creating something other people need. The value continues through the people who handle, distribute, cook and eat it. He wants that whole chain to matter when decisions are made about the future of a place.

Growing Is Only Part of the Work

As the discussion continues, Kenji tests the idea against a familiar shopping destination. Could locally grown produce replace something people already buy at a large retailer? Daniel’s answer is that farmers and retailers do not have to be imagined as permanent opponents. He sees a possible relationship in supplying the food a store already needs.

But the conversation also recognizes a difficulty: a farmer’s ability to deliver can change with weather, labor or health. Growing a good crop once does not automatically create a reliable supply. Daniel argues for farmers in different areas working together so that a disruption in one place does not leave everyone depending on the same source.

He also calls for processing centers where farmers could wash and package their crops. Kenji connects the idea to a fish market, somewhere the product can enter a trusted system and move toward the people who need it. This part of the discussion gives the vision necessary detail. Food access involves the work between the field and the table, too.

The exchange keeps widening, but its starting point remains close enough to hold: the food Daniel brought into the studio, and Kenji’s curiosity about it. From there, the conversation makes room for people who might want to plant, farmers who need support and families making decisions at the checkout.

Daniel’s vision leaves a practical question open for the community: if someone is ready to help grow food, what would it take to give them a place to begin, and a way to keep going?

Watch the Full Conversation

This story follows one part of Daniel’s conversation with the Lee brothers. Watch BrotherLee Time Episode #94 with Daniel Anthony for the full discussion of food, family, community and the responsibilities he is working through.

Watch on the BrotherLee Time YouTube channel. You can also find BrotherLee Time on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and support the brothers’ independent work through Patreon.

Leeward born. Globally felt.

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Episode source note: BrotherLee Time Podcast, Daniel Anthony, Episode #94.

Accuracy Note

Adapted from the BrotherLee Time Podcast conversation with Daniel Anthony, Episode #94. Agricultural proposals and assessments are presented as Daniel’s views, not established programs or independently verified findings. Specific facts, names, dates, figures and events mentioned by the speakers may require independent verification. Cover image is an AI-generated editorial depiction.