Sweetening the Loss of Sugar
The crop that defined Hawaiian agriculture for more than a century vanished this year from the islands of Oahu and Hawaii as workers hauled in their final harvests of sugar cane.
For those who had spent a lifetime on the plantations, saying goodbye to sugar was like losing a relative. The pain continues to show in the high unemployment figures in rural areas. But a silver lining is beginning to glint through the gloom.
The demise of so many sugar plantations in the last few years has freed up tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land for other crops. These include exports such as macadamia nuts and coffee, as well as fresh produce for local consumers, who depend on imports for 70% of their vegetables. And it has opened the way for a promising new enterprise, one with perhaps the most potential for covering huge tracts of land: timber.
Across this island chain, the number of acres planted in sugar has been cut in half in the last five years, from 162,000 acres to 84,000 acres. Three plantations closed this year, leaving only the most efficient growers still in business--two on Maui and two on Kauai. While sugar remains Hawaii’s most valuable crop, with pineapple second, Hawaiian agriculture has shifted dramatically in recent years.
In 1992, sales of diversified crops exceeded the value of sugar and pineapple for the first time. The big contributors to diversified-agriculture sales have been tropical flowers and foliage, up 75% over the last decade, and macadamia nuts and vegetables, both up 36%, according to state statistics. Sales of coffee, a much smaller crop, have more than doubled over that period.
“The transition is proceeding much more rapidly and much more successfully than even I envisioned, and I’m known for my optimism,” said J.W.A. Buyers, chairman and chief executive of C. Brewer & Co., Hawaii’s oldest company and one of its largest.
C. Brewer, which harvested its last crop of sugar cane this year, has led the state’s effort to diversify its agricultural base. It pioneered macadamia nuts as a commercial crop in Hawaii three decades ago. (The nuts are now the state’s third-largest crop.) The company’s guava orchards produce juice for national consumption.
In addition to such large-scale efforts, more individuals and families are getting into farming, as major landowners offer leases on small plots of idle sugar land. The move bucks a national trend, Buyers noted.
“On the mainland, there has been more and more corporate farming, where once there were family farms,” he said. “In Hawaii, it’s just the opposite. Corporate farming has dominated, and now all of a sudden, with land coming available, you have all these little family farms growing niche crops.”
Among the produce being grown locally: sweet potatoes, zucchini, Chinese cabbage, green beans, sweet corn, ginger, green onions, bell peppers, taro, basil, cucumbers and watercress. Bananas, all for state consumption, are spreading onto former sugar land near Hilo on the island of Hawaii. On Kauai, seed corn growers are taking advantage of Hawaii’s climate, which allows as many as three generations in a single year.
“They’ve wanted to expand, but up until now the only lands available were not really high-quality, prime ag land,” said Don Martin, state agricultural statistician. “Now that’s changed.”
Even with such diversification, however, niche crops such as those are unlikely to absorb the huge expanses of land left empty by sugar’s decline. But one new “crop” on the horizon--commercial forests--shows promise for greening the landscape the way sugar once did.
“There is a limit to how many string beans the market will accept,” said Peter Simmons, senior land manager for forestry and natural resources for Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate, the state’s largest private landowner. “If the state of Hawaii is looking at 100,000 acres of very-good-quality land, that’s probably too many string beans, too many carrots.”
Timber may be the solution for extensive land holdings formerly in sugar, especially in wet areas. Although sandalwood was Hawaii’s first cash crop, in the early 1800s, the state now imports virtually all its lumber. That equation may be ready to change, as demand for fiber and timber grows in the Pacific Rim.
“The supply of hardwood timber in this region has decreased sharply over the last five years and is predicted to drop even further,” Michael Buck, state forestry and wildlife administrator, wrote in the October issue of the Journal of Forestry. “Hawaii is in a position to join other countries, for example New Zealand and Fiji, that are marketing forest products from relatively small land bases.”
In March, Bishop Estate leased 24,000 acres of former sugar cane land on the island of Hawaii to Boston-based Prudential Timber Investments Inc. PruTimber’s project, Hamakua Timber, began planting eucalyptus seedlings in field trials this fall, and the company expects to cover 16,000 acres by late 1998, with harvest coming seven years after planting. The wood will be used for high-quality fiber for paper or fiberboard, Simmons said, or may be allowed to mature to higher-value uses such as plywood core, utility lumber or even architectural detail.
“We have a year-round growing environment,” said Steve Smith, who manages business and community affairs for Hamakua. “Experts tell us we can grow our trees twice as fast as they can, say, in the Pacific Northwest or the Southeastern United States.”
And, for a change, Hawaii’s location is not a drawback. “In terms of world markets,” Simmons noted, “we’re actually closest to the importing places. Japan, for example, imports a significant amount of its hardwood chips from the Southeast United States through the Panama Canal.”
A second forestry project is getting underway on Kauai. Bill Cowern of Hawaiian Mahogany began planting two species of eucalyptus this week on land that went out of sugar production this fall. He expects to have 60,000 to 80,000 seedlings in the ground by March, covering 200 acres, then expand into another 800 acres. Many of the trees will be ready for harvest in seven or eight years.
Cowern hopes the reddish wood, which resembles mahogany, will be made into flooring, door frames, cabinets and furniture--high-end products that can boost the local economy.
“If you grow a green bean, there is only so far you can take that bean in terms of value and jobs,” he said. “If you grow wood, the value can be multiplied many times over.”
The change in Hawaiian agriculture is evident on a personal level to Smith, who grew up in a sugar family on Kauai. As he works to establish tree farming on the island of Hawaii, his father, a retired superintendent with McBryde Sugar Co., is helping dismantle a sugar mill at the other end of the state.
“Timber is a different world commodity,” Smith said, “but we have the same hope as the original sugar pioneers that it will do well.”
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Prickly Pair
The combines sales of sugar and pineapple have declines markedly since 1986 as Hawaii’s agricultural sector has moved away from these mainstays and toward other crops. Pineapple and sugar sales versus sales of other agricultural products, in millions of dollars:
Diversified agriculture* (1995): $275.6
Sugar and Pineapple (1995): $215.1
* Includes all crops and livestock produced in Hawaii other than sugar and pineapple.
Source: Hawaii Agricultural Statistics Service.
