Farmers are among the community's hardest-working members and get very little respect or just compensation for keeping stomachs full and yards and homes filled with beautiful plants. Without their efforts, nothing else could be achieved by our society.

As a horticulturist and a longtime participant in the agricultural business in Kamilonui Valley, I speak from personal knowledge about the long hours that the members of this farmers' co-op work.

The farmers of Kamilonui Valley lease, not own, the land. The current owners, Kamehameha Schools, who claim to be protecting the land for the benefit of Hawai'i's future children, have indicated that they are willing to sell the land to a developer if the leaseholders want to sell out their leases.

The farmers are having a golden carrot dangled in front of them. This is their jackpot for all their years of work. Our society should reward these people, but not at the expense of open space.

As Hawai'i Kai fills to the breaking point — housing literally pouring out on to the sidewalks and huge view-blocking buildings rising quickly — I ask you to recall what open space was like.

Those of you with your sidewalks, streetlights, close neighbors and breeze-blocking fences, how many of you have walked in a valley listening to the wind rush through the trees and grass, or have seen a chicken or pig or two ambling along a road? Have you ever watched an owl float down over a field or heard them hoot at night? Have you ever stood in a field of new crops and watched your salad for next month grow?

There are streetlights on our road and — hallelujah! — they don't work. I can really see the stars at night.

Maybe you don't really care if you have another subdivision; perhaps your salad can grow elsewhere. People adapt to the most awful conditions and don't even know that life can be better. The development in Hawai'i Kai is sucking the very life force from the land and we all seem to get by on less and less air.

But what happens if your children, or your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren would like to be a farmer? What if they want to see an owl or watch the streams run wild and free after a storm? What happens if they never even know that there was this kind of life, that this option doesn't even exist?

When Hawai'i is finally paved over, the streams in tidy concrete culverts, the streetlights eliminating all shadows and dinner created in a laboratory, where will they go then?

The farmers want their bit of gold to retire comfortably in Hawai'i's outrageous housing market.

The developers and landowners want their money now and will then be able to buy their own paradise elsewhere. I wonder if they will even include a kitchen in the new homes since it would be a waste of money when there is no food to prepare and eat.

I understand everyone's desire for a financially happy ending for themselves.

But their one-time happiness will mean a future of woe for us as a whole. If you love Hawai'i, care about your fellow humans, love your children and want the Spirit of Aloha to thrive into the future, allow some open space for things just to "be." Give the future the "Gift of Possibility."

Gina Maria Lay is a horticulturist and owner of a plant nursery and animal shelter in Kamilonui Valley. She's worked in the valley for about 20 years and lives in Nu'uanu. She wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.