Hawaii Food Industry Association

6 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 3 companies send several representatives, and they bring their whole family for activities including games, educational content, and our awards ceremony. This event gives attendees the chance to get to know food industry leaders at a higher level. We also provide a fun environment for member companies to showcase new products,” Zirbel describes. Today, the association focuses on three strategic objectives aligning with its mission, vision, and values: food security and affordability, energy affordability and resilience, and addressing workforce shortages. “One of our main priorities this year is helping families with food insecurity. We would love to see taxes removed from groceries. The average thrifty-spending family ( a USDA metric) spends approximately $1,794.60 a month on groceries in Hawaii. At our current 4.5% tax on groceries, this means residents are paying approximately $969 dollars a year in grocery taxes. Hawaii is one of only a few states that still impose a highly regressive grocery tax on residents.” “Many residents are struggling with their grocery budget due to inflation, but the State has pulled in a lot of extra revenue due to inflation. In the first three quarters of 2022, The state of Haawii’s General Excise Tax revenues increased by $532.6 million or 19.8 percent from the same period of the previous year. Considering that the State has a nearly $2B surplus, now is the time to get rid of our most regressive tax and help the middle class,” Zirbel affirms. “Removing taxes on groceries would put Hawaii on par with the 37 states that don’t pay taxes on groceries. There are only six states that tax groceries as much or more than Hawaii, yet all of them have a much lower cost of living than we do. It wasn’t difficult to implement this tax exemption in other states, and most states agree that taxing groceries and medication is extremely regressive and unethical,” she adds. “That said, we understated the political willpower may not be where it needs to be HAWAI I FOOD INDUSTRY ASSOCIAT ION to reduce grocery taxes this year, so we are also tackling Hawaii’s food affordability and security issues by supporting increasing the double up food bucks’ program that provides additional SNAP benefits for the purchase of locally grown produce as well as increases to SNAP funding in general,” Zirbel says. Another of the HFIA’s priorities tackles the labor shortage which took off during the pandemic and is still far from being corrected. A lot of our members are operating understaffed and under capacity,” Zirbel comments. “ This food industry workforce shortage impacts everyone in the state of Hawaii and has serious consequences for the people of this State that depend on our industry to supply food. To address this issue, one of our key legislative issues this year is a new-hire tax credit, to offset the expense of adding employees to the payroll. We are also strongly supporting workforce training and development programs.” Energy resilience is another priority issue for HFIA because everyone in the State depends on the food supply chain in times of crisis. Streamlining the permitting process for renewable energy and energy storage would help more companies be operational in the event of grid failure “A lot of our members have had to wait up to two