An $18M grant would have drastically reduced food waste. Then the EPA cut it.

Once a little girl roaming the vibrant fields of an organic lettuce farm in Kealakekua, Hawai’i, Ella Kilpatrick Kotner learned how to live in harmony with the land before most kids learn how to tie their shoes. Nourishing the soils that gave her a regular supply of leafy greens was just a part of life. As was playing with the piles of compost on her family’s farm. 

“Composting, for me, is a lot about community,” said Kilpatrick Kotner. “It’s about connecting people to food and soil...