Giving Compass' Take:

• This piece from the New Food Economy explores how milk supply chains for Hawaii differ from those in the continental U.S. and what one all-female enterprise called Naked Cow Dairy is doing to survive.

• Can other parts of Hawaii gain inspiration from Naked Cow's efforts at sustainability? What does it teach us about the agriculture system in the continental U.S.?

• Here's another example of how local farms are adapting to a changing market. 

“We’ve been having boys,” says Monique van der Stroom, pointing to a posse of animals at Naked Cow, the final remaining cow dairy on the island of Oahu, in Hawaii. “But we don’t need them.” She means she needs only the cows, on whose milk her business is built. But looking around the farmyard, she could also be referring to the goat, whose triplet kids nuzzle gently at her swollen nipples, the excited flock of more than 50 screeching chickens, or the ewe and her sister (that’s Laverne and Shirley to you), whose lambs don’t even seem to be able to tell them apart. Or, she could be referring to the farm itself — an all-female organization, except for one accountant.

Naked Cow Dairy, located just inland from Waianae on Oahu’s leeward coast, about 45 minutes from Honolulu, sits on a flat patch of land dwarfed by lush green cliffs. At the far end of the property, past the clucking and bleating, sits the creamery. It’s the key to how Naked Cow continues where no other dairy does. A few small rooms, a guava-wood smoker built from a converted restaurant display fridge with clear doors, and an aging room adapted from a 1963 freezer box truck form the cheese- and butter-making operation. “You have to recycle in Hawaii,” laughs van der Stroom, hinting at the difficulties of doing business on the island.

Today, diners at 20 restaurants around the islands and shoppers as far away as Colorado buy the 600 pounds of cheese and 800 pounds of butter produced by Naked Cow each month. But the path to survival for Oahu’s last dairy required a hefty amount of bushwhacking.

Read the full article on dairy farming in Oahu by Naomi Tomky at The New Food Economy.