Island Excursion
Farm Fair aims to draw bigger crowds

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Illustration by Martha Hernandez • The Honolulu Advertiser Hawaii State Farm Fair 6 p.m.-midnight today, noon-midnight Saturday and Sunday; also Aug. 10-12, Aug. 16-19 Aloha Stadium parking lot $3 general, $1.50 children 5-12, kids under 5 free Also: Free admission for two with empty half-gallon Meadow Gold or Viva milk carton today. Unlimited rides with $15 wristband noon-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 485-1770 (fairgrounds), 848-2074 (Hawaii Farm Bureau)

It's the fair's 2001 transformation from a continuous 10-day event into three convenient bite-size weekend packages beginning today and running through Aug. 19. The new schedule mirrors the successful longtime formula of the 50th State Fair, which runs on four consecutive weekends in May and June.

Farm fair co-chair and Hawaii Farm Bureau treasurer Joy Kono says there were several reasons for the schedule change.

"First of all, we couldn't get enough people to volunteer to help out during the weekdays because everybody works," says Kono. "That was always a struggle."

Then there was a slight problem with attendance, which regularly dropped to one-quarter of weekend turnstile numbers on any given weekday evening.

"On weekends you had people staying at the fair until midnight," says Kono. "On weeknights, everybody was leaving by 10."

Farm fair attendance, in general, had been slipping since the event's move from centrally located McKinley High School to the Aloha Stadium parking lot in 1995. McKinley principal Patricia Hamamoto banished the fair from its longtime home on school grounds after parents and faculty complained it disrupted summer school and campus repair and maintenance projects.

After dipping below 100,000 for the first time in 1999, attendance rebounded somewhat last year, creeping just beyond the number. By comparison, the fair hosted crowds of up to 165,000 during its McKinley High heydays.

"We knew we needed to do something to change ... (the downward attendance trend) if we wanted to make this fair profitable" for the sponsoring Hawaii Farm Bureau, says Kono, who says she hopes the schedule change will push attendance past 130,000 this year. "The fair is an important fund-raising effort for our organization. We have a lot of legislative lobbying that we do and a lot of programs that we put on for farmers" with the money raised.

The farm fair's mission of increasing people's understanding of Island agriculture — while noshing ono grinds, sampling thrill rides and playing carnival games — hasn't changed.

"People need to understand what ag contributes to the economy," says Kono, who is also a vice president at Brewer Environmental Industries. "It's important that people know that ag is not going away because the sugar companies shut down. It actually needs more support because there are land and water issues that need to be resolved with the plantations leaving. That one farmer with 30,000 acres is going to be replaced with 30,000 farmers."

And besides, who said there was anything wrong with reeling in a few open minds with flying Floridians and PlayStation2 giveaways, anyway?