Hawaii, sugar, and biofuel

There is a lot of excitement in Hawaii about using agricultural lands to grow fuel. This excitement is not unwarranted, provided everyone keeps a clear head. Otherwise we could go through the old rollercoaster cycle of exaggerated promises, disappointment, and cynicism about real prospects. Gay & Robinson, the Kauai sugar producer, is looking at growing sugar for fuel. Alexander & Baldwin's Hawaii Commercial & Sugar, the Maui grower of turbinado cane for "Sugar in the Raw," sees potential in burning sugar cane waste to produce biofuel or electricity. There has been active discussion of biofuel production on Oahu. This has run parallel to mainland enthusiasm about ethanol made from corn. On Wednesday, the largest European oil company, Shell, announced it was launching a venture to explore the use of sugar cane to make gasoline. Hawaii has some things going for it, and some things going against it, if this sort of thing goes further. First the negatives:

• Land is scarce, land costs are high, and any company growing fuel in Hawaii will find that some of its costs are higher than in Iowa.
• Farmers in Midwestern states have political clout because of their numbers and their big contribution to breadbasket economies. Here, farmers are a minority economic sector.
• We seem to be married to the idea that if we grow fuel we will do it with crops that we traditionally grow like sugar and pineapple. I hear certain grasses may actually be more efficient here.

Here are certain things working in Hawaii's favor:

• While the whole country frets about "energy independence," we also are concerned with "food independence," which leads us to feel protective toward all local agricultural operations. This can offset the small size of the ag sector and bring legislative support.
• The fact that land is scarce, and that a great deal of very nice land is under heavy development pressure, has made support of farming a strategic maneuver for land use planners: tying land up with farming puts it off-limits to development, and usually farmland looks almost as scenic as land left well and truly alone.
• We're a tropical clime and can grow several crops a year on the same field, while a similar farm in a temperate zone is fallow in winter.

I note with interest that corn, wheat and certain other agricultural commodities cost several times what they did a year ago, because of growing global demand for these crops for human food and animal feed, combined with the added demand of biofuel operations. The whole idea that ethanol was a viable idea was based on cheaper prices, and the only reason this hasn't been more of an issue is that oil prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange have been soaring along with the stuff they buy and sell on the Chicago Board of Trade. Proponents of biofuels always stress that existing engines can safely switch to the new fuels. At this point I'd be equally concerned that a biofuel plant at Campbell Industrial Park can safely switch from burning sugar cane chaff to something else if sugar prices skyrocket.