Ana Apatu: Land of plenty can provide for all

Kai Collective, food distributors, Flaxmere, Hastings. Photo / Duncan Brown

People are hungry. We could name it food poverty (the inability to obtain healthy affordable food) or food insecurity (consistent access to adequate food, limited by a lack of money and other resources at times during the year).

Needless to say, some of our people are just plain hungry. Good people struggling to make ends meet in Hawke's Bay, a district known for its primary produce and food production. More than enough for everybody.

Due to the vision of Vicky Bostock a U-Turn Trustee at the time, the seeds of Te Aranga Community Garden Flaxmere were sown in 2009. Her vision is to improve access to fresh nutritious food for the low-income families of Flaxmere. Cousin Mark brought his John Deere down to plough the 5.4ha block situated behind Te Aranga Marae. At that time, a home invasion in Flaxmere sparked a march, Enough is Enough. Post-march, the Flaxmere community suggested a community garden, "where we can meet and learn how to grow".

Recently the lease of this land block has been formally secured with the Office of Treaty Settlement for one dollar per annum. This agreement extends to a right to purchase. Last summer, the garden produced more than 1500 tonnes of tomatoes. Food from the garden is distributed throughout Flaxmere.

It is not only the food from this garden that flourishes, so do the partnerships. A partnership with local producer, J Bostocks, provides A Fair for Life funding stream that funds our community garden, gardens in schools and gardens in homes.

Onsite Horticulture private training establishment and EIT horticulture courses offer level 3, 4 NZQA courses with local employment opportunities. Expert Hanui Lawrence Aunty's Garden, Waipatu, provides a transfer of knowledge. This knowledge passed down from generations of growing Maori potato and kumara.

Pacific Island groups, Tongan, Samoan and Cook Island families request areas for their own plots. A citrus orchard, fruit trees, vegetable plots, 1200 natives for a shelter belt, but still the garden does not produce food that our community can access all year round. We ask local producers for bins of surplus food.

Onions, squash, apples and corn (when in season). No need to Facebook that, the bins of food have arrived. Magically, people come to pick up food under the watchful eyes of Pam.

This arrangement provides intermittent supplies of food. I receive a phone call from my mate Kevin B: "Ana, you guys need your own forklift." And he is right. It has been fine to pick up bins of food with a trailer but to ask the producers to free up their forklift to lift the bins of food to the entrance way of our garden is a big ask. What starts as a purchase of a forklift, soon progresses to a tractor with forks. We could also attach a bucket and mower for the garden. And at HB Tractor Dismantlers, there lies the David Brown (which after a facelift) will provide us with all of the above gear at the right price.

Partnerships extend to the Kai Collective food bank in Flaxmere.

A "food rescue" organisation with a vision that Hawke's Bay food goes to people not landfill. A dedicated group of charities, community groups and supporters run by a committee of volunteers.

The Kai Collective provides a single point of contact to organisations who want to donate food, co-ordinating the collection and storage of bulk food donations. The Kai Collective has 83 contacts from 56 organisations, including churches, MSD, Hastings District Council, Heinz Watties, McCains and Hawke's Bay Seafood.

Andrew Reyngoud, of Kai Collective and pastor of the Flaxmere Baptist Church, believes it is all about collaboration. "Right now is our peak time, the needs are huge." The seasonal workers are running out of their savings.

It's not good enough that children go to school hungry when there is so much food and so much is wasted. There is more than enough for everybody.

As Henare O'Keefe and Nigel Latta discussed during the documentary on TV1 recently, not only will Te Aranga Community Garden feed people it will galvanise. It builds trust and co-operation. It builds fractured communities from the ground up.

• Ana Apatu is chief executive of the U-Turn Trust, based at Te Aranga Marae in Flaxmere