Tulsi Gabbard keynote at the 2017 HFUU Convention: transcript

Key points

• Gabbard says she came home briefly because HFUU was being chartered by National Farmers Union.
• The convention theme is cultivating change, and she says it should come from love, aloha and a servant's heart.
• The Farm Bill comes before Congress every five years, and she invites farmers to give her team ideas for the 2018 bill.
• She says federal farm policy has long favored agribusiness over those growing food sustainably for communities.
• She says grassroots voices made a difference on major legislation this year.
• She calls the local farming resurgence in Hawaii exciting but in need of partners in government, business, education and healthcare to be sustained.

Chapters

1. 0:00Coming home and HFUU's national charter
2. 0:53Cultivating change through aloha
3. 3:17The 2018 Farm Bill and sustainable farming
4. 4:52Why grassroots voices matter
5. 5:25Sustaining Hawaii's local farming resurgence
6. 6:16Thanks to her parents and closing

Full transcript

0:00Aloha. It's so good to be home. I got back late Thursday night around 11 o'clock. I fly out at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. And the reason I came home for such a short period of time, other than to catch a few waves early this morning, was because of what you guys are doing here today and the reason that you have all gathered. It's a big deal. I want to say thanks to Vince from that day that I was in his backyard checking out his sprout farm a few years ago, and being able to work with him, the entire HFUU team on different islands, both here at home in Hawaii, during their visits to Washington, and to be able to be here on the day that HFUU is being chartered by National Farmers Union.

0:53This is going to help a lot in all of our efforts here. So thank you, Roger, and all of the leadership from across the country who have come here to recognize the great work that's being done, the great value, and how much stronger our efforts are when we come together. Yes, here in Hawaii, but across the country. Father Harmon and Tom really started this whole conversation out perfectly. In talking about love. You know, the theme today is cultivating change. There's a lot of change going on. Here and around the world. But it's up to us to make sure that we are cultivating the right kind of change.

1:44And the only way we can do that if that cultivation is coming from a place of love, of aloha. Coming from a servant's heart, saying, how can we work together to best serve each other, best serve our communities? Not only for the physical well-being of each other, but the spiritual well-being. making sure that we remember our interconnectedness, the aloha that brings us all together, and our connection to Mother Earth and our planet, and the responsibility, the kuleana that each of us has to do what we can in our own small ways, in our own small lives, to cultivate that positive change motivated by love motivated by aloha I'm always so grateful to come home even for a short time it always recharges

2:46my batteries before I go back to Washington my husband He told me one day, he noticed that, you know, here, I'm good, I'm home. He noticed that as soon as I land in D.C., like in the car driving from the airport, he's like, your shoulders hunch up. The stress kind of starts to come on. So I bring this aloha here in Hawaii back with me and do my best to inculcate it into work that we do in Washington.

3:17There are three things briefly that I want to talk about. First is, next year in 2018, the Farm Bill will be considered by Congress. This is the one bill dedicated to agriculture that comes across Congress every five years. so we get one shot every five years and what we're doing now and I extend this invitation to all of you if you're not engaging with my team already and you have ideas on how to increase what Tom talked about how to increase federal support and empowerment for real sustainable farming practices for local farmers who are actually growing food to feed our communities so that we can do our best to build those programs, those grants, those initiatives that may not exist or that may exist but need to be strengthened into the 2018 Farm Bill.

4:13For so long, as you know, for those who've been engaged in the federal process, it has been weighted heavily towards agribusiness, not those focused on growing food sustainably to feed people. So that's what we're working on now as we head into and prepare for 2018. So if you're not engaged, engage with us. Vince and his team are working closely with us, and we look forward to hopefully being able to see some progress in that area. Second thing is, even in what seems like an incredibly difficult political environment, there are opportunities for change, for good change.

4:52Those opportunities come about when we have strong grassroots engagement, when we have people and leaders in our community stepping up and adding your voice to the process. Sometimes I hear from people too often that they feel like their voices don't matter. But just in this year alone, on major pieces of legislation, we have seen where people's voices have made a difference either in stopping devastating legislation that would harm people or helping to move forward positive legislation that will help people.

5:25Your voices and your engagement matter now more than ever before. The last thing is how important this resurgence of local farming here in Hawaii is. We're seeing a lot of progress in our local communities, getting more schools involved, getting more community partners and leaders involved. This is something that is budding and growing and is very exciting, but it's something that has to be sustained. And with partners in government, partners in business, partners in education, in healthcare, in every sector of our community, we can actually do something historic here in Hawaii and show the rest of the country and the world how it can be done.

6:16There is nothing but opportunity here that will only come about when we work together in the spirit of aloha, motivated by love to bring about this positive change. I'm grateful to be here, to be a partner with all of you and carry all of your aloha back with me when I go back to Washington. I briefly want to recognize my parents who are here. My dad is Mike Gabbard, as you know, he's the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. I hear a lot of stories about how he's loving getting his hands in the dirt as he goes around and visits farms all across the state.

6:53He's doing what he can here in the Senate, and he can't do anything without the support of my mom, Carol. Thank you all so much for everything that you do. Have a wonderful day. Eat a lot of good food. Walk away from this inspired, challenged, and motivated. Together we will make a difference. Mahalo. We are so fortunate to have such a strong advocate in Washington. Thank you so much, Tulsi Gabbard, who embodies this idea of radical inclusivity because of her very own background and because of her strong values.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard keynote - 2017 HFUU Convention.webm by Hawai'i Farmers Union United (2017-10-10), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 3.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.