Growing HOMES
In the wake of the Lahaina wildfire, Eddy Garcia’s regenerative farm is nourishing a rebuilding community with fresh food and innovative housing solutions.
by BEAU FLEMISTER photographs courtesy of EDDY GARCIA
/ DIRTY BOOTS SPR UT
“Basically, we teach people agriculture, stewardship, and homesteading,” he explains, leading me to an opening behind the large containers where tanks of aquaponic-grown plants are being cultivated, among other setups that look like the work of a mad scientist. “It’s going to be a couple years before permanent housing is built, so we’re providing creative ways for folks who lost their homes to live. And not even just housing but off-grid, self-sufficient homesteads.” “Homesteads?” I ask. “Yeah, that means we’re also about regenerative teaching them how to grow food around those areas and help them utilize the land that they’re on, so that they can continue to live sustainably for years to come. With regenerative agriculture, we’re approaching this all from a place of, How are we gonna repair or regenerate? The main point is giving people the tools to restore a balance so that this land serves the environment, community, and everything around them.”
On a particularly soggy Hawaiian morning in West Maui, just off the Honoapi‘ilani Highway in Olowalu, a few miles south of Lahaina, Eddy Garcia greets me with a smile. He’s barefoot and shin-deep in a flooded parking lot, the giant puddles brought in by summer showers overnight.
TENTATIVELY FOLLOW THE MAN through a swamped maze of Matson containers, hoping there are no live electrical wires anywhere, while Garcia, bubbly and talkative, couldn’t be more confident. Largely self-taught, Garcia has lived off-grid on the islands most of his life, growing or catching almost all the food he consumes. It was a choice he made not long after reading Masanobu Fukuoka’s seminal “The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming” as a young man. I’ve come to meet Garcia and have a look at his operation — which, at the moment, feels a little underwater, although he seems unfazed. A regenerative farmer with the suntanned, board-shorted look of a guy who’s just gone surfing, Garcia is the executive director of the nonprofit Regenerative Education Centers. (He’s also the founder of Living Earth Systems, an agricultural cooperative that designs and builds regenerative farms and offers online courses.) Garcia is renowned on the island for being instrumental in providing organic produce and housing solutions to families affected by the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, the deadliest in modern U.S. history that took the lives of more than 100 people and burned down 2,200 homes, buildings, and other structures.
ARCIA HAS BEEN TEACHING folks in the community how to build tiny homesteads since well before the wildfires. But after Lahaina burned, Regenerative Education Centers received donations to feed people and build them small, temporary homes, which are intended for families to keep as a secondary housing unit on their property once they’re able to rebuild permanently on their own land. With a list of nearly 500 people whose homes burned down, Garcia’s nonprofit is turning 100 shipping containers into houses for folks most in need, retrofitting each one with a solar energy system, bathroom, and kitchen — all completely self-sufficient. These homes can be set up on agricultural land until families are allowed to return to their properties. So far, 40 have been given away, with new families added to the list every week.
“The main point is giving people the tools to restore a balance so that this land serves the environment, community, and everything around them.”
ABOVE: TEMPORARY HOUSING PROVIDED TO RESIDENTS WHILE THEY REBUILD. RIGHT: THE MAHINA RAPA NUI GROUP VISITS GARCIA (FAR LEFT).
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ISSUE 02
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