Autumn Ness

Beyond Pesticides
Maui, HI

Autumn Ness, director of Hawai’i organic land management program for Beyond Pesticides, is an organizer and policy advocate based in Maui. With the impacts of COVID-19 related hotel and restaurant shutdowns, Ms. Ness helped found a new nonprofit, Maui Hub, that has linked arms with Maui’s small farms to support them through the crisis, while also laying the foundation for long-term food system change. She was instrumental in generating broad political support to begin the process of converting pilot sites on Maui, Kaua’I, and Big Island (playing fields and parks) to organic land management. She organized organic land management trainings for county landscaping staff and provides ongoing support to communities throughout the islands. Ms. Ness has been a policy consultant to state and county legislators on agriculture, pesticide, and housing policy. Specific projects include: expanding organic land management practices in the public and private sector, better regulation of pesticide-heavy industrial agriculture and the chemical companies conducting outdoor genetic engineering (GE) crop testing, and the promotion of small scale sustainable agriculture that produces food for the Hawaiian Islands. Autumn was a leader in the historic citizens’ initiative for a moratorium on GE crops in Maui County, which won at the ballot box in 2014, but lost in courts when the chemical industry sued the County of Maui. She works with a statewide coalition of environmental groups, to engage average people in the political process, amplify their voices in government, and drive policy.