Census shows 28 percent of farm jobs lost in 1990s
| • | Special report: Hawai'i Census 2000 |
By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Staff Writer
The downward spiral of Hawai'i's sugar industry is reflected in the latest data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the 2000 Census, the agricultural industry lost 28 percent of its workers during a decade when plantations closed on every major island.
The job losses likely contributed to the rising number of islanders who reached poverty status during the 1990s.
"A lot of breadwinners (in the industry) lost their jobs,'' said Collette Rapozo-Yamamoto of the Hawai'i County Department of Research and Development.
According to census figures released yesterday, the number of Hawai'i residents who reached the poverty level rose by 43 percent, from 88,408 a decade ago to 126,154 in 2000.
Experts said yesterday that agricultural job losses could have been even greater had it not been for an expansion of diversified farming in crops such as coffee as well as flowers and nursery products.
"Diversified agriculture isn't going to overtake tourism,'' said Don Martin, state agricultural statistician. "But it did grow a steady 3 percent a year during the '90s, and it continues to grow.''
The first sugar plantation started in Hawai'i in 1835, ushering in an era in which sugar and pineapple dominated the Islands. When statehood arrived in 1959, that's when tourism began to take over.
Since then, sugar plantations experienced a steady decline and, on the Big Island and O'ahu, came to a screeching halt during the 1990s.
Statewide, workers in agriculture — which includes those in forestry, fishing, hunting and mining, according to the census — declined by 4,713, to 12,119 in all.
O'ahu, which saw the closing of the O'ahu Sugar and Waialua Sugar plantations during the decade, lost the greatest number of jobs: 2,042. That left 4,046 agricultural workers on the island.
The Big Island, which endured the closing of the Hilo Coast Processing, Ka'u Sugar and Hamakua Sugar plantations in the middle of the decade, lost 814 jobs — down to 4,600.
Rapozo-Yamamoto said more than 2,000 jobs were lost in the shutdown of the Big Island plantations. But, she added, new ventures in diversified agriculture likely made up some of the difference. "Lots of them went to work for the hotels, but others continued as farmers,'' she said.
Some 530 jobs were lost in Kaua'i County, where the McBryde plantation closed in 1996. The Kekaha and Lihu'e plantations closed in 2000; Gay & Robinson's Olokele plantation continues to operate.
Maui County took one of the biggest hits, by proportion, losing nearly 1,000 jobs, or 31 percent of the agricultural work force. This happened despite being home to the sugar industry's strongest remaining outpost, the 37,000-acre Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar plantation, and the largest pineapple grower in the state, Maui Pineapple Co.
Maui County lost not only Dole's pineapple operation on Lana'i in the early '90s, but Lahaina's Pioneer Mill sugar plantation in 1999.
Douglas Schenk, president of Maui Pineapple, said even his company got smaller during the 1990s, producing 1.5 million fewer cases of canned pineapple by the end of the decade. Schenk said Maui Pine will continue a planned gradual reduction expected to end by 2006.
While there will be fewer jobs, he noted, the company continues to bring in workers from Pohnpei, a Micronesian island about halfway between Hawai'i and the Philippines, and to contract for Maui prisoner labor.
PingSun Leung of the University of Hawai'i and Matthew K. Loke of the state Department of Agriculture recently estimated that agriculture contributes 38,000 jobs to the state's economy, including indirect work such as in transportation, wholesale and retail businesses.
Reach Timothy Hurley at thurley@honoluluadvertiser.com or 808-244-4880.
