Any rumors on land use after sugar cane? (sales, real estate)

[Farmer Larry]

I have been watching this story with great interest and wondering if there are any ideas/rumors of how the land will be used. I have read they want to keep it in agriculture. I have briefly lived on Maui twice and would love to return. For the last several years I have been growing banana, guava, passionfruit, figs and many other things in the desert southwest. Its getting too hot here for this almost old man and we are running out of water. Less than 2" of rain at my house this year so far. I would love to run a small farm or estate there. Have owned homes for almost 30 years and can fix just about anything. This is my first post and I apologize for not setting up a profile yet.
Thanks for any tips
Larry

[whtviper1]

I'm sure they will try agriculture - eventually they'll say it failed for whatever reason - then become homes due to the prime location. I don't see how that prime real estate doesn't become homes someday.......

[davephan]

I assume you are referring to the land in central Maui for agriculture. When I was driving though that area when I visited Maui, the first thing I thought was that the land was way too valuable to be used for agriculture and I could easily envision the future for that area is probably going to become upper scale housing maybe built around golf a course. Over time, the value of the land is going to keep increasing and the owner will very likely sell large chunks to developers. The large profits from the land sales could probably make a much higher return on investment than the profit from soil based farming in an area of the world that has high labor costs. That's not good for the local workers, but it's very hard for those workers to compete with the low wage workers from the third world countries, working in agriculture. They could still use a portion of that land for agriculture if they set up greenhouses and grow crops hydroponically. Many crops can be grown hydroponically in greenhouses using only 20% of the land for the same production output.

Hydroponics could also be used in the desert SW where you live, to grow crops, since very little water is needed compared to conventional soil based growing methods. The main problem in the desert SW for growing might be too much heat. If crops won't grow with the triple digit temperatures, you might not be able to grow in the summers, or you'd have to cool the greenhouses with air conditioning, maybe powered by solar, which won't be cheap. Food production is being done in desert areas in other parts of the world that have extreme heat and very little water using greenhouses and hydroponics.

[hotzcatz]

If you want to do affordable agriculture in Hawaii, switch to the Big Island. Find a house near Pauuilo and then lease farm land from the nearby farm co-op. Not sure what the rainfall is in Pauuilo, somewhere between four to seven and a half feet or so. (fifty to ninety inches, if you're gonna do inches, I guess).

[es_em]

27,000 acres of that land will remain agricultural land, as prescribed by state law. Who knows how that land will be used - the soil is very unhealthy and it'd take work to get the "diversified ag" model going on it (like some groups are advocating). The only official announcement made so far is that HC&S will be leasing a tiny amount of land (want to say it was less than 100 acres) to the Maui Cattle Co. A&B and HC&S have not been forthcoming with any info on the plans for the land. They did a number of test plots where they studied how different crops did, but no word on the results or if they were even useful.

So, for now, more and more of the land is sitting fallow with no cover crop. And, pretty much every day I drive home through the valley I see huge dust clouds of top soil flying high into the air (I fear that this is going to be yet another stress to the reefs.). There are groups pushing for hemp and other energy crops on this land, but these are non-HC&S groups. I can't help but think they'll just lease all the land to some big agri company like monsanto.

About 10,000 additional acres do not have to remain agricultural land. I've never read where that land is exactly, but one would think they'd be looking at developing it.

[TGPILOT]

Hey Viper. did you get the PM I sent you?

[TwoByFour]

Sugar was an industry that was probably best suited for Maui. It was happening on an industrial scale and it had a very efficient process going. But even so cane was losing money. I just cannot see anything able to replace cane in a profitable way; if cane, that had been here for 100+ years could not make it, why would anything else be able to make it? If sugar production is cheaper in other countries, the same will hold for hemp or any other industry. The state would have been better off to just subsidize cane if it really wants to maintain an agriculture industry. Simply zoning land for ag business will not ensure a thriving ag usage.

As others have said, there will no doubt be some attempts at various things, just as there have on other islands that dumped cane, and they will have limited or no success and we will be left with desert and finally more condos. I hope the people who complained so loudly about cane smoke are happy with all of this as they have some complicity in this situation.

[hotzcatz]

There's a multiplicity of things to consider about what could be done.

1. After NAFTA, sugar died on Hawaii Island since it wasn't sustainable without subsidies. I'm surprised it continued for as long as it did on Maui. Relying on subsidies as a business model puts the success or failure of a venture in hands outside of the venture, so that's not a good business model.

2. As with any 'industry' in the islands, one of the major factors is shipping. The Jones Act requires all ocean freight be carried on US hulls, which just exacerbates the problem. If most of the product can be used in Hawaii or processed in Hawaii, that will increase the profit margins.

3. Most industrial farming methods rely on 'economy of scale' to make it work so the per unit price is pretty low and they make up for it by producing a bazillion of whatevers. Considering the cost of land in Hawaii, the ratio of land to produce needs to be skewed in the right direction.

4. Processing. Most processing plants require a LOT of whatever it is they are processing to be profitable. Back to that 'economy of scale' thing again. Unless a whole lot is continually produced by one entity or there are multiple entities producing smaller amounts, in order to mechanically process things you'll need a lot of them or at least a fairly steady supply of them.

So, in order for diversified ag to prosper, you'll need either farmers who can produce, process and market their own goods, or a farm co-op which will band together to help with the after harvest processing. What makes it harder for the 'farm to table' folks is that most restaurant chefs want a steady supply of things. They'll need twenty cases of lettuce each and every week. Most farmers don't have a steady enough supply, so the commercial facilities which would be the prime customers order mainland produce which they know will be there when they need it.

Diversified ag has been developing on the Hamakua coast now for several decades since our sugar died in 1996. What we have now after two decades are a lot of small producers who sell mainly to the local markets. There's a full scale dairy with Holstein cows, a several smaller goat dairies making cheese, several honey producers, quite a few coffee producers, several folks supplying 'exotic' foods to chefs that aren't usually covered by the usual suppliers such as quail, quail eggs, dragon fruit, lamb, etc.

The nice thing about diversified ag is that it is a more stable business model for a community. With thirty small producers, if one doesn't make it, most of the others will.