FOCUS • HAWAI'I'S RURAL LEGACY
Planting a future

By Mike Markrich
Kailua-based writer and researcher

In 1972, Mabel Wilcox was 90 and the unquestioned matriarch of the Wilcox clan, one of Hawai'i's leading missionary families. She had grown up on Grove Farm, which in that year was still one of Hawai'i's leading sugar plantations.

A young worker ransports fertilizer on Kaua'i's Grove Farm plantation. Why don't we see that his and his colleagues' work contributes to the beauty that sells Hawai'i for the visitor industry? Advertiser library photo • 1973

The board members tried hard to convince her that she had to change with the times. After all, as they explained, people throughout Hawai'i, with the right political connections, were making fortunes, getting their agricultural land rezoned for residential and commercial real estate. All they had to do was upzone, leverage the land into real estate loans and develop. How could they lose? Sadly by the 1990s Wilcox's intuitive sense proved correct. Kaua'i was hit by two devastating hurricanes followed by nine years of continuous economic downturn. Grove Farm suffered serious financial setbacks. It was recently purchased by AOL titan Steve Case, whose grandfather, Hib, long ago, worked for Wilcox on the plantation.

What Wilcox objected to, the dramatic change in the Hawai'i rural landscape, is still taking place.

Each year since 1987, according to an estimate by the Hawai'i State Department of Agriculture, about 2,500 acres of agricultural land is rezoned for commercial real estate, condos, and residential subdivisions. This represents only a small fraction off the 1.9 million acres in Hawai'i that are designated for agriculture. But Hawai'i is a small place and as agricultural fields give way to homes and asphalt, Hawai'i loses the very thing tourists come here for from all over the world: its open space, vivid green beauty and subtle ecological balance.

Many of our new developments are Southern California-like, in their expansive use of concrete, their sprawling dimensions and use of land and water. However, our resources are finite and these developments are often built without acknowledgment of the basic limitations of island living.

Unfortunately, this basic truth is not reflected in official land classification records, which continue to classify land as rural, conservation, agriculture and urban.

"Officially 47 percent of the land in our state is designated agriculture," says Anthony Ching, the Executive Officer of the State Land Use Commission. "However I estimate that 5 percent or 100,000 acres of the designated 'ag land' in our agricultural district is being used for residential subdivisions. In some cases the densities of those parcels rivals those of the urban districts. In the long term, we face a challenge to maintain some capacity for agriculture in the state.

"Let's be honest and say land not really being used for agriculture anymore should be rezoned as rural," Ching says. "If you mix ag and rural subdivisions they may prove incompatible, and we lose the ability to establish new agricultural activities that can replace sugar and pine."

Some communities are happy to trade the loss of open green space for a source of quick jobs and investment. But those societies, which depend on tourism for a living have taken a a different view. Places such as Sonoma County, California, Tuscany in Northern Italy and parts of Provence in the south of France depend on the beauty of their landscape for their tourism livelihoods. They have a long term view of agriculture that acknowledges both its costs and benefits.

Sotero Agoot, manager of the Kona Pacific Farmers Cooperative, checks a cluster of coop coffee trees in Kona. Advertiser library photo • 2000

"The definition of ag activity is very generous. If I have one horse on a five acre estate, or a single fruit tree for personal consumption that might qualify me as engaged in agriculture," Ching says. Since zoning land as agricultural brings a tax benefit, those who can, claim farm status.

Agricultural production accounts for a small fraction (about $530 million) of Hawai'i's $40 billion dollar economy. However, it plays an important role in the food processing and restaurant trade. It also supplies things such as coffee, chocolate and macadamia nuts for tourists, Asian vegetables to restaurants, watermelons, organic vegetables, trees and exotic fruits. The extensive water infrastructure that was built for the plantations a century ago would likely take hundreds of millions of dollars to replace today.

The two large scale sugar plantations that still exist increasingly find themselves in conflict with recently built upscale communities whose new residents do not want to deal with the chemical spraying and burning that is associated with large-scale agricultural. But these are side issues.

Virtually none of the arguments surrounding new development recognize that in addition to the tremendous beauty agriculture adds to the landscape, Hawai'i, because of its ideal growing conditions, now attracts the top corporate agricultural scientists in the world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there is more advanced agricultural biotechnology breeding research done in Hawai'i than any other state. The scientists have been motivated in part by the tremendous gains in world population numbers that put a premium on new seeds and food sources. There is also a need to insure, in case of emergency, that Hawai'i has the land, water and capability to produce fresh food for its population.

Despite this, agriculture in the state has few advocates. At the University of Hawai'i, internationally recognized horticulturist Jim Brewbaker, says that the only students he has that are interested in agricultural biotechnology are haoles. Why is Hawai'i turning its back on perhaps its greatest opportunity? Why don't it's people care more about the future of the agricultural landscape that is the basis of their livelihood?

"Because many of the local people here want something better for their children," another UH professor says. "Their parents or grandparents grew up on farms or plantations and they want their children to be out of it. They want them to be orthodontists, computer scientists, lawyers, doctors or work in government. Anything but work on a farm. The problem is that that a small island community can only support so many doctors and lawyers and there is no future in an economy with such a narrow base."

Part of Hawai'is history

Mario Agnes on his leased plot in Mililani. Many parents or grandparents who grew up on farms in Hawai'i want something better for their children, says a UH professor — like orthodontry or government work. Advertiser library photo • March 1996

During the time of Kamehameha I, his personal advisor, Don Francisco de Marin, established huge gardens of orange, lime, avocados, mangoes, chinese plums, Tahitian coffee, bananas, grapes and medicinal plants. These planting, began about 1814. During the 1820s Honolulu became famous for its wines. There were huge vineyards in what is now Honolulu, hence the present street name.

When other groups settled in Hawai'i, there was a long search to match markets with potential crops that could be grown here: potatoes were grown for whaling ships or to sell to hungry miners during the California gold rush. Cattle were a successful west coast export for many years. Rice was grown by Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Filipino farmers brought their own vegetables. Today, Thai, Samoan, Tongan, Laotian, Mexican and organic farmers continue this process. There were also continual experiments with other potential export crops: coffee, tobacco, cacao for chocolate and others. But it was not until a plantation system for sugar was developed that wealth grew in Hawai'i.

Sugar was used in rum, and rum was consumed in massive amounts throughout much of the western world in the 19th century. After a treaty was worked out exchanging the strategic use of Pearl Harbor to the United States in exchange for special tariff status on sugar, venture capital poured into Hawai'i.

The sugar industry expanded onto all the main islands. The purchase or long term lease of land from Native Hawaiians below its true value, cheap imported labor from Asia and high prices for sugar in California made investors in sugar plantations wealthy.

However, the great wealth brought unexpected problems. Sugar plantations ended up using virtually all the available water and the best lands. There was little encouragement for the few independent entrepreneur farmers who might have wanted to do something else.

Seeds of change

After World War II, years of resentment coalesced. Japanese and Filipino plantation workers were mobilized to vote by the Democrats and when John Burns became governor in 1962, he responded to their needs. The Democrats didn't want to get rid of sugar; they wanted a better cut for workers.

Burn's appointment of Kenneth (Kengo) Otagaki made waves. Otagaki, who grew up in the tiny town of Laupahoehoe on the Big Island, was an unqualified supporter of diversified agriculture. After years of absolute control of the rural economy, the sugar plantation establishment could barely tolerate him. "They wouldn't even look at me," Otagaki said of those early days. Hawai'i is a traditional place, and it is difficult under any circumstances to be a visionary here.

But Otagaki had lost an eye, a leg and two fingers on the battlefields of Italy. He also had a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Berkeley.

The sneers of the sugar planters didn't bother him. He told them that if they didn't diversify and look for new ways of selling finished or value added products, instead of raw commodities, they would go out of business.

There was no way, he asserted, that in the long term Hawai'i could compete with the cheap land and labor in Asia to produce raw sugar. They thought he was mad. In 1963, Otagaki invited the first seed crop researchers to come to Hawai'i.

During the next forty years what Otagaki had predicted came true. The pay increases to sugar workers ultimately caused the costs for Hawai'i producers to go up as world prices for sugar slumped. The Japanese investment boom caused land values to spike. Caught between rising labor and land costs and declining cane sugar prices, most of Hawai'i's sugar plantations collapsed. Nearly 250,000 acres of sugar land were cultivated in the 1970s. Today only 68,000 acres remain. The balance of unused sugar lands lays mostly vacant, or in grazing. Hawai'i's most important new agricultural crops come, as Otagaki predicted, from diversified agriculture.

What needs to be done

• There must be a strategic recognition that the beauty of Hawai'i sells Hawai'i. Generous incentives must be found now for land landowners who want to keep land in agriculture and to grant long term leases to farmers. New developments should be in Sonoma County-style clusters that mix housing with open fields. In Maryland, this has taken the form of legislation called the Rural Legacy Act, giving land owners tax incentives for agriculture and developers tax incentives to build on land, already urbanized.

They call this approach Smart Growth. One of Hawai'i's problems is that even as developers seek new agricultural lands for development, whole neighborhoods of homes, particularly in Honolulu, are on the point of collapse because of old age and termite damage.

• Farming is an art. There are only 2,700 farmer entrepreneurs, and 5,500 farms in Hawai'i, and many of those risk everything every year to make a living. The State and County governments needs to look for models in the rural development activities of other states to help Hawai'i farmers lease land and market their goods. Not everything is going to work. Many things won't. But only by helping farmers experiment, helping them find markets for their goods and helping landlords defer the high opportunity costs of committing large tracts of land to farming will the rural economy prosper.

• The University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture needs a serious infusion of money. It has a new dean, Andrew Hashimoto, but is short on new faculty and modern equipment. There are a number of cases where communities have seized the possibilities in niche agriculture and made billions. Our niches are the world markets for tropical fruits, flowers, pharmaceuticals and marine organisms. And of course our tropical beauty on which so much of our tourism marketing depends. We will only be able to make the most of them if we give real support to the College of Agriculture and independent organizations such as the Hawai'i Agricultural Resource Center.

The tragic events of Sept. 11 have changed Hawai'i as it did everywhere else in the United States. What has not changed is our need to creatively adapt to changing circumstances. While it is true that the pain of the plantation experience still resonates in Hawai'i literature, the reality is that lifestyle and population is mostly gone. We have to look forward. As in Sonoma County, Hawai'i's beauty and rural landscape are its principal assets. When tourism returns, Hawai'i will need to be more beautiful than all the other island destinations that will compete with us. We should help our farmers make sure this happens.