Posted on: Friday, June 4, 2004

Hawai'i farm sales outpace nation

By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i farmers are faring well compared with the nation overall, with higher sales and increasing family-ownership, according to an agriculture census released yesterday.

Between 1997 and 2002 farm sales statewide rose about 7 percent to $533 million. That bucked the national trend where farm sales dipped about 1 percent.

"We're faring well," said Don Martin, state agriculture statistician. "Agriculture is a maturing industry and we're doing a different kind of agriculture — more value-added specialty crops."

The results of the Agriculture Department's census also show that since the last survey in 1997 the number of farms in Hawai'i owned individually and by families rose by 46 to 4,629, or roughly a 1 percent increase. Nationwide, the number of individually and family-owned farms fell slightly during the same period.

In another positive sign, 44 percent of farms in Hawai'i generated $10,000 or more in annual sales compared with 41 percent of farms nationwide.

The survey also shows how Hawai'i's agriculture industry continued to shift from large plantations of sugarcane and pineapple to smaller farms growing diversified products such as flowers and melons. The amount of land farmed in Hawai'i dropped 10 percent between 1997 and 2002 as sugarcane acres were fallowed or were developed for nonagriculture use. Nationally, farmland acreage fell nearly 2 percent.

At the same time Hawai'i lost fewer farms — just 1 percent compared with a 4 percent drop nationwide.

Farms in Hawai'i are significantly smaller than the national average, in large part because of limited space and the high price of land. Some 64 percent of Hawai'i farms were 10 acres or less, compared with 8 percent nationwide.

Nationally, just 3 percent of the farms — those with sales of more than a half-million dollars a year — are producing more than 60 percent of America's agricultural goods, according to the census. In 1997, when the last previous survey was done, that share was 56.6 percent.

The data offered new evidence that American farming is being powered more and more by size, such as bigger and more efficient equipment that larger producers can afford. Even though such equipment is expensive, the efficiencies accompanying them are driving down the cost of production.

Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8093.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.