Nā Māla Kaiāulu | Community Farm
In parternship with the County of Maui and the Maui Family YMCA, Grow Some Good is building a multi-storied, edible landscape in Central Maui — replacing fire-prone invasive growth with biodiversity, food, and community.
Overview
Nā Māla Kaiāulu (NMK) began with a simple idea: turn an underutilized, once dry and fire-prone piece of land in Kahului into a working food forest for the whole community.
Grow Some Good and the Maui Family YMCA partnered to lease the site from the County of Maui, and rather than planting a conventional garden, set out to build an agroforest — a multi-storied landscape of canopy trees, understory shrubs, and ground cover growing together. Cultivated with regenerative, organic agroforestry techniques suited to Central Maui’s climate and soil. The project is a grassroots response to challenges playing out on both a local and global scale: rising food insecurity, a warming climate, and the erosion of Hawaiʻi’s traditional relationship with the land, with a goal of modeling climate resilience for the Island of Maui and the State of Hawaiʻi.
Through hands-on workshops NMK empowers our community with the knowledge to grow resilient crops, while our free plant distribution program is sprouting home gardens all over Maui. Crops grown at NMK are distributed at no cost back to the community, roughly 3,000 pounds a year through the Maui Family YMCA, getting nutritious, locally grown food into the hands of those who need it most.
Today, having established a strong foundation, our focus is shifting from building the farm to deepening it — strengthening what’s already growing rather than rushing to expand further. Nā Māla Kaiāulu also doesn’t stand apart from our other work: the farm hosts intersession camps and afterschool programs for keiki from our Farm to School network, and produce grown here supplies workshops with our Food Basket program’s culinary partners, forming one continuous system of garden-based learning from the classroom to the community farm.
Nā Māla Kaiāulu’s goal is to cultivate food security, support cultural preservation, and encourage climate resilience, forging a future where Maui’s communities thrive in balance with the ʻāina .
Three Practices, Running Side By Side All Years.
We continually expand and tend the food forest, clearing fire-prone invasive species and planting biodiverse, edible trees and shrubs in their place. Regular soil health assessments help us track the land’s recovery and guide what we plant next.
The farm runs on people power. We host regular volunteer workdays throughout the year, welcoming the community to help plant, mulch, weed, and tend the growing forest alongside our staff.
Produce grown here is distributed directly to families in need through the Maui Family YMCA. We also partner with the UH Maui College Culinary Center, hosting workshops where students and chefs put the farm’s harvest to use.
Why It Matters
Central Maui faces real climate and food security pressures. Invasive, fire-prone vegetation raises wildfire risk and degrades local ecosystems, while nearly half of Hawaiʻi families with children experience food insecurity, with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander families facing even higher rates. Nā Māla Kaiāulu addresses both at once: replacing flammable invasive growth with biodiverse, edible plantings that reduce urban heat and fire risk while producing real food for local families.
The farm also plays a role in the county’s future workforce. As Hawaiʻi’s agricultural sector ages and shrinks, Nā Māla Kaiāulu gives young people direct, hands-on exposure to farm management and agroforestry. These potential career pathways that keep local food systems in local hands. This work is part of why Grow Some Good is named a primary Action Lead in the County of Maui’s Food and Nutrition Security Plan 2025–2030, a recognition that our farm and school programs are central to the county’s own food security goals.
Looking ahead, our focus at Nā Māla Kaiāulu is one of depth, not just growth: continuing the food forest’s expansion, deepening our soil health practices, and strengthening the partnerships with other Maui organizations that make this work possible.