6 minute read
Food for Thought
from Plenty 13
WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY ANDY TAYLOR & IMAGES SUPPLIED
You’re going to be hearing a lot about Kai Rotorua in the coming years. They have big plans for a food hub, a seed bank, a café and more, all built around the dream of reconnecting whanau with the land. And to make that dream a reality they have turned to the humble kumara.
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When Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea says that this is a story with a million moving parts, he isn’t joking. Having worked in television and the telecommunications world, when he chose to retire Te Rangikaheke decided to come home, back to Rotorua, but he hasn’t exactly been taking it easy. Instead, as volunteer facilitator at Kai Rotorua he and Jasmin Jackson founder, have had a very busy year that culminated this month with more than 150 volunteers gathering at Te Puea near the Rotorua- Whakatāne turnoff to plant 3500 kumara seedlings. The volunteers were students from Tauranga, Rotorua and Taupō, they had a bit of help from Māori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Rotorua Mayor Steve Chadwick, and as the saying goes, many hands make light work.
“3,500 tipu (seedlings) is a lot,” says Te Rangikaheke, “but when you have people with passion and vision, you can achieve a lot. The planting was done in about an hour and a half. And then we had a cup of tea, some kai time to talk and socialize.”
Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea
Image: © Plenty Ltd
Passion, vision and cups of tea will feature a fair bit in this story, but before we go there, let’s go back a ways to kind of where this all began.
Though there are different traditions relating to the introduction of the kumara to Aotearoa, Te Arawa tradition speaks of their female ancestor Whakaotirangi tasked with its safe passage on Te Arawa waka that landed at Maketu more than 800 years ago. Thus the whakatauki, “te kete rokiroki o Whakaotirangi”. “The secure food basket of Whakaotirangi”. The first kumara plantation was made there, at Kiokio and from little Maketū a legacy was set in motion as the kumara became a staple diet of Te Arawa and an important trading food before and after the arrival of Europeans; its cultivation became something of an art form, and it’s fair to say that without the kumara New Zealand would be a very different place.
Te Rangikaheke’s father was born on Mokoia Island, which was well known for growing kumara, but he never felt a part of that tradition. Until recently.
“Strangely, one of the first jobs I worked on in television was a story on kumara for Country Calendar, but I never, ever thought I would pick up on something like that in my own life. But one day about six years ago we were sitting around talking over a cup of tea and I said, ‘You know, I think I might do a bit of gardening,’ and right on cue in walked Bernie Hornfeck, who is a bit of an icon in Rotorua, and we went to one of my marae, Waiohewa at Rangiteaorere – and our mahi and journey began”.
Te Rangikaheke soon became involved with the Rotorua Local Food Network, a programme launched by Healthy Families Rotorua, and Rotorua Lakes Council where he began helping others to get gardening. Then, just over a year ago, Jasmin Jackson, Te Rangikaheke and a number of others decided it was time to take things even further and Kai Rotorua was incorporated.
“The vision we have for Kai Rotorua,” says Jackson, “is that it will promote a more resilient, well-nourished, well-connected community. We want to reconnect whānau with Papatūānuku (mother earth), and teach people to create sustainable food sources.”
And that is where the kumara comes in. “Community gardens are great,” says Te Rangikaheke, “but they tend to come and go. It’s hard to keep some continuity. So what we wanted to do was create a narrative, a story that people would want to be a part of, something that they would want to build into their own journey. And the kumara loomed large on our horizon. It’s pretty hard to feel connected to a carrot, but the kumara has a history. Our people connected with it back in the day journeying to South America and returning with it to Hawaiki then on here to Aotearoa. It is in our tribal narratives, our moteatea (song poetry) our whakapapa. And it has been a constant source of nutrition throughout our history, for both Māori and Pākehā, and it connects us to the land.”
Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea - Project Lead, Food Hub - Kai Rotorua committee member with Jasmin Jackson - Founder, Kai Rotorua and committee member
“There is also a whakataukī [proverb] that says, ‘Kāore te kumara e kōrero mō tōna ake reka - the kumara never speaks of its own sweetness,’ and that reminds us we need to stay humble, but also that we need to speak up for the humble kumara. And that’s what Kai Rotorua is going to do.”
They are doing much more than just speaking up. “When we first decided we wanted to create a food hub, we thought about using shipping containers,” says Te Rangikaheke, “but Scion (the Crown research institute in Rotorua) heard about our plans and we are now looking at a living building that will incorporate a seed bank, a café, a commercial kitchen, and a kumara bank, which will be an interactive miniature museum telling the story of the arrival of the kumara here to Rotorua. We are also partnering with Rotorua Lakes Council and Toi Ohomai, so there are a million moving parts to this story, but it is going to be an exciting journey.”
Scenes from the Te Puea planting day
That journey has included a two day deep-dive workshop in August with facilitator Jerome Partington of Jasmax Architects that involved mixing and mingling with a room filled with professionals and experts in the building industry, getting to grips with the complexities of the Living Building Challenge, a concept created in 2006 that seeks to promote sustainable buildings and building practices. Living Buildings can be found in Tāneatua, at Tūhoe’s Te Kura Whare, but it was the village complex in Ruatahuna that most inspired Te Rangikaheke. “A general store, a café, radio station, art gallery, administration, service station, three chalets, and a laundromat. Driving the 1.5 hours from Rotorua through Murupara, past Minginui and along an awful bloody gravel road, then out of nowhere the amazing township of Ruatahuna. I have been there on numerous occasions, but it was different this time. I took several students from John Paul College and we were amazed.
The entire complex made from natural materials and certified products. But what stood out is how the natural flow of the environment has been incorporated into the buildings providing that real sense of oneness with nature”.
And if Kai Rotorua are adamant that their building has to be sustainable, they are also very serious about making sure their business model will go the distance. “Each part of the Food Hub – whether it is the café, the seed bank or the kitchen – has to have a sustainable business model,” says Te Rangikaheke. “Kai Rotorua has to have independent income streams if it is to last, we can’t constantly look to grants for funding. We will be working with corporate sponsors, but we want those to be partnerships. So while we are teaming up with Scion and Lakes Council and Bay of Plenty Regional Council, we are also working with groups like Rotary as well as Rotorua Boys High. So we are really seeking to develop capability. This is about shared values incorporating public and private funding, and though there are a lot of people involved in this project, that’s what it’s all about – He tangata, He tangata, He tangata.”
It is people. And the people at Kai Rotorua are making something really special a reality.
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