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Sad for those losing jobs - fortunately unemployment is really low right now, so they should bounce back.
Good new for residents in Kihei with breathing issues from cane burning - although, this could mean a housing/population growth spurt.....
"Alexander & Baldwin Inc. said it will phase out sugarcane farming on Maui at Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. over the next 12 months and transition the 36,000-acre farm to a diversified crop model.
A&B said many employees will be laid off starting in March as their specific functions are completed, and that about half of the 675 HC&S workers will be retained through the end of the last harvest late this year.
Company leaders said the decision was reached with “great regret” and was based partly on HC&S losing $30 million last year."
Thank goodness they're going diversified ag instead of those incredibly stupid pulp paper trees that were the legacy of sugar on the Big Island. Hopefully there will be some jobs retained by the diversified agriculture, the pulp trees didn't keep very many jobs. If they can get the diversified ag going, that may even increase the amount of jobs since once stuff is produced it needs to be processed, packaged, moved and sold.
I guess it was bound to happen, just a matter of time and part of a changing world. Although I haven't been to Maui in probably about 20 years, just the mention of sugarcane there brings back memories. I remember going to visit my grandparents on Maui every summer and every time I smelled smoke in the air I knew they were burning cane. Ahh those days were carefree and fun.
Not particularly. There's a crew who operates a tree cutting machine which is way over the allowed sound levels and they do it at weird hours like three in the morning. Not sure why, nor sure why nobody's called them on the too loud part, either. But the crew is likely to be less than a dozen folks. Maybe two dozen people driving trucks full of trees to the port. Can't imagine they'd need all that many folks at the area they gather the trees. So, I'm guessing maybe fifty people may have jobs, versus however many hundreds if not thousands that sugar kept working. Plus supporting their families in housing and such. So, the whole paper pulp tree plantations were a huge mistake, IMHO. It's taking acres and acres of land out of food production. We can't eat trees. Cows can't eat trees, either. I guess goats, could, though. Maybe they'll get smart and run herds of goats around there before the trees resprout and make a mess.
I worked for a time at the Spreckels sugar factory, just across the road from the town of Spreckels, here in California. It was named after a German immigrant who, among other businesses, made sugar. He had ties to the Hawaii Kingdom and was big in the sugar businnes there. I believe there is a community on Maui called Spreckelsville.
The plant I worked at (and the other one in Modesto) used sugar beets rather than cane, which wouldn't grow in our climate. The beets would arrive in long lines of trains and as kids we would wave to the engineer and make the "pull the cord to sound the horn" motion. When I went to work there (after getting out of the Army) the beet processing had already shut down and it was just packaging already refined sugar. I moved down to Southern Cal for school and since then they shut down everything and closed it. Lot's of jobs were slowly lost as the plant wound down...
Hadn't thought about that in years...
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