Gay & Robinson to plant sugar fields left by Amfac

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser KauaÎi Bureau

KEKAHA, Kaua'i — The sugar industry will live on in Kekaha, with Gay & Robinson farming 4,300 acres of state-owned land that Amfac's Kekaha Sugar Co. abandoned when it closed last year.

This mill once processed cane from Amfac's Kekaha Sugar Co. on Kaua'i. Gay & Robinson said it will farm 4,300 acres left fallow when Amfac closed its sugar operation on Kaua'i last year. Advertiser library photo • Jan. 13, 1997

Sugar was once the bulwark of the Hawaiian economy, but it is now represented in the Islands by just two plantations — G&R on Kaua'i and Alexander & Baldwin's Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co. on Maui.

Amfac's Lihu'e Plantation and Kekaha Sugar Co. were closed last fall, and the firm's Maui plantation, Pioneer Mill, was closed the year in 1999.

G&R president Alan Kennett said all of Kekaha's 7,700 acres of sugar land will remain in agriculture, though not all in sugar. The remaining 3,400 acres will be farmed by a group of shrimp, seed corn and diversified agriculture ventures, keeping all 7,700 acres of the failed sugar plantation's land in agriculture.

Gay & Robinson Farms has run some of the highest-yielding sugar farms in the world that enabled them to remain profitable when other lower-producing farms were going out of business. Company officials say they believe that the addition of the Kekaha lands in a sunny climate of Kaua'i that is favorable to sugar production, will make their operation even more efficient.

Sugar trucks should start rumbling through Kekaha again today.

Negotiating long-term leases

G&R is the largest partner in the new West Kaua'i Irrigation Cooperative, which is negotiating with the state through the Agribusiness Development Corp. for a long-term lease on the 7,700 Kekaha acres. The other members of the co-op are the shrimp firm Ceatech, the seed corn companies Pioneer and Syngenta and diversified farmer Wally Johnson.

In additional to using the former Kekaha Sugar lands, the hui is maintaining the company's irrigation system, and running the complex drainage system that keeps salt water out of the low plain between Kekaha and Mana.

G&R began irrigating limited parts of the plantation after Amfac closed Kekaha's doors last fall, in hopes it would be able to arrange with the state to lease those properties, Kennett said. The fields were planted by Kekaha, but abandoned when the plantation closed.

Kennett said that the negotiations and lease are not complete, but the businesses have needed to get started.

"All of us need to farm as we're organizing," he said.

Production to rise 50%

Kennett said his plantation plans to harvest 1,100 acres of cane from the lands this year, and to plant 2,200 acres. Next year, it will harvest another 1,100 acres and plant 2,100 acres. Sugar has roughly a two-year crop cycle in Hawai'i, and in subsequent years, G&R will be harvesting about half the acreage each year.

In 2003, the first year in which the plantation will be harvesting cane it has planted and cared for throughout a crop cycle, the additional cane is expected to increase G&R's sugar production 50 percent from about 50,000 tons to 75,000 tons, Kennett said.

The increase provides the firm with better use of its factory and other economies of scale that the company hopes to use to remain profitable.

Kennett said that by 2003, his company plans to have increased its work force by 60 people, from its present level of 225 bargaining unit and 40 salaried employees.

Harvested cane will be hauled from the Kekaha fields through Kekaha and Waimea towns to G&R's mill at Kaumakani. The company was able to buy some of Kekaha Sugar's equipment at an auction of the firm's assets, and has also bought equipment from other sources.

Kennett said its cane hauling trucks will be fitted with bottoms and sides, instead of traditional chain nets, to minimize trash on the roads.