Our ag sector is wilting on the vine. Here's how to get it growing
by Rob Parsons
 |
 |
 |
It's
been distressing to witness the unraveling of once-viable agricultural
operations over recent years and months. The old paradigm of large
mono-crop plantations and export commodity crops is dying, but it still
hasn't yielded to new models that favor local food security and
sustainability. We spend about $4 billion annually on food imports
(amounting to 85-90 percent of our total food consumption) in Hawaii,
and yet the benefits of keeping even some of that money here continue
to be ignored.
In the interim, Maui Land & Pineapple has announced closure of some 2,500 acres still planted in pineapple, entailing layoffs of nearly 300 workers, with some to be retrained to work in resort operations (similar to the island-wide shift in 1992 on
Lanai, where once as many as 18,000 acres were planted in pineapple).
Ironically, high-end tourism and resort housing have shown similar
vulnerabilities, and ML&P's economic bleeding might not be over
anytime soon.
Maui's largest ag operation, Hawaiian Commercial
& Sugar, is the last remaining sugar enterprise in the state.
Kauai's Gay & Robinson plantation recently threw in the towel,
abandoning a plan to modify sugar operations to ethanol production,
which they believed would have doubled revenue. Instead, thousands of
acres will be leased for production of genetically engineered seed
crops, including corn, as well as possible woody biomass crops for
electric generation.
HC&S, with 35,000 acres still
cultivated throughout Maui's central valley, has launched a last-gasp,
divisive PR campaign to retain century-old water allocations. They are
claiming sugar's future—and 800 plantation jobs—depend upon their
diversion of dozens of Maui streams, some reduced to a mere trickle,
and that without water for sugar, Central Maui could become a dust bowl.
But
let's save that discussion for another day, and instead look at
alternative ideas that could restore Maui's connection with the land
while simultaneously boosting our agricultural sector and increasing
food security.
REGIONAL COMPOSTING SITES
Maui
produces a lot of green waste, including yard trimmings, grass
clippings, branches and palm fronds. The state Department of Health has
stringent rules about how these materials may be composted, and the
permitting process for such sites is rigorous and restrictive. Existing
operations are found only in Central Maui—EKO Compost at the landfill
and Maui Earth Compost (which runs a satellite site in Kihei).
With
County guidance and support, each community could create a regional
operation, where truckloads of carbon-rich materials could be dropped
off and recycled, and residents could drive home with a load of
finished compost to nourish their home gardens.
RE-BUILDING DEPLETED SOILS
Claims
that Central Maui could revert to a dust bowl if sugar dies off are
incorrect for a few reasons. Historically, the area was a dryland
forest, and the introduction of grazing animals by Captains Cook and La
Perouse, among others, altered the original ecosystem.
The
sugar-or-dust ultimatum also ignores the reality that current
industrial-scale ag practices already produce dust bowl conditions.
Absent windbreaks, HC&S's standard practice of disking hundreds of
acres at a time allows Maui's resident trade winds to whisk away any
remaining topsoil and drop it unceremoniously on the dying reefs in
Maalaea Bay.
Crop-rotation practices and tilling in
nutrient-rich cover crops would help restore degraded soils, which
require increasing chemical inputs after decades of mono-cropping.
Adding more organic material into the soil would greatly improve its
ability to hold and utilize the all-important water and, as one soil
expert quipped, would restore our "sense of humus."
EDIBLE LANDSCAPES
Lawns
are a 20th century luxury and status symbol—the bigger and better
manicured the lawn, the more prestige in one's neighborhood. Millions
of gallons of treated drinking water are used daily for landscape
irrigation, while millions more of treated "wastewater" from County
treatment plants goes unused, pumped into injection wells that
eventually bring excess nutrients into the ocean's near-shore waters.
Greater
efforts should be made to amend County landscaping ordinances and
neighborhood CC&Rs to allow for front lawns that feature fruit and
vegetable production. County Parks and roadway right-of-ways similarly
could benefit from planting food crops and fruit trees, not grass and
thirsty ornamentals.
PROTECTION FROM ALIEN SPECIES
State
budget shortfalls have brought a knee-jerk edict from Gov. Lingle to
cut vital Department of Agricultural jobs for inspection of incoming
shipments of plants, produce and other materials. This appears to be a
classic example of penny-wise and dollar-foolish. We cannot afford to
spend millions of dollars after the fact to try to contain accidentally
introduced pests that hold the potential for crippling our existing
agricultural operations.
NATIVE HARDWOODS REFORESTATION
Hawaiian
sandalwood was rapidly plundered in the early 19th century. Today only
tiny remnants remain of a once-thriving island-wide upslope dryland
forest ecosystem. Native honeycreepers and other birds have retreated
to wetter, less ideal habitats, and their survival is gravely
endangered.
Native koa, coveted for its beauty in furniture,
crafts and musical instruments, is similarly in decline. When biologist
Art Medeiros conceived and founded the East Maui Watershed Restoration
Partnership, he envisioned a growing, sustainable eco-forestry industry
that would support local residents as well as indigenous birds, plants
and creatures.
CONSTRUCTION GRADE BAMBOO
Bamboo is
widely used in other countries as a construction material. Though
Whispering Winds Bamboo and other Maui growers have made extensive
plantings of construction-grade bamboo, the only approved material for
bamboo housing must be imported from Vietnam. Maui imports virtually
all of its home construction materials. Creative building code
amendments and establishing local sawmills could create local jobs, and
keep construction material dollars circulating within the state economy.
HEMP
The
wide-ranging benefits of the hemp plant have long been dismissed as a
pipe dream of those who also advocate using its botanical cousin,
marijuana. The plant that once produced numerous products in North
America and elsewhere—paper, rope, textiles, protein-rich food, fuel—is
illegal to grow in the United States. Consequently, hemp products are
imported to the U.S from Canada, China and France. Over the past
decade, state Rep. Cynthia Thielen has attempted to introduce
legislation to test and develop a hemp industry in Hawaii. Perhaps its
time to rehash those efforts.
GOVERNMENT INCENTIVES FOR FARMING & SUBSISTENCE AG
Recent
collection efforts by the Real Property Tax office have relied on a
definition of agriculture that does not consider growing food for
family consumption as sufficient to earn an agricultural tax rate.
Every effort must be made to support political candidates who
understand the vital connection between ag incentives and true
sustainability.
RESTORATION OF HAWAIIAN COASTAL FISHPONDS
Early
residents of Hawaii devised intricate systems, greatly in harmony with
natural processes, for raising fish in coastal ponds. These highly
productive loko 'ia were community endeavors, and historical studies
estimate that well over 300 ponds were constructed throughout the
islands, with carbon dating going back eight centuries.
Modern
attempts at aquaculture have not integrated emerging technology and
science with traditional cultural knowledge. Proposals for open ocean
feedlots could create dire problems, as happened with salmon cage
operations in British Columbia and elsewhere. Restoring—and
updating—our past may prove more viable than trying to reinvent our
future.
AQUAPONICS
Onshore systems for raising fish
may also utilize the nutrients in the water for raising vegetable crops
in hydroponic systems. Local sustainability for such systems could be
achieved by developing a fish-food facility using local agricultural
and packing house wastes for fish food, and using solar energy to dry
the feed.
FAIR ALLOCATION OF WATER RESOURCES
Stop the
squabbling. Look to share, and to enhance all food production
operations equitably. Plantation politics have sequestered our most
valuable resource—water—for one company's near-exclusive use at a
hugely discounted rate. Much like those values learned in kindergarten,
the big landowners need to learn how to share.