Sweet and sour - Hawaii and its sugar industry

Hawaii's sugar industry is about to be reduced from two companies to one, and what's happening on Kauai is a lesson to people who live on Maui - figure out what goes on that land next, if you don't want it to be townhomes. Gay & Robinson announced Wednesday that by late October it will have sent the last of the sugar cane from its final harvest to the mill. And that will be that, for a company that had grown cane since the 1890s. Dow Agrosciences has leased some of the land to grow seed crops, and has hired some of the Gay & Robinson employees. Pacific Energy wants to grow ethanol on some other Gay & Robinson land, though this does not ensure a continuation of sugar cane - other crops may be more efficient for fuel-growth. The Robinsons, who own the island of Niihau and did so much to rescue Hawaiian culture from extinction, also have some plans for hydroelectric power on some of the land. Gay & Robinson sold sugar on the commodity market and could not compete with sugar plantations in other countries with lower labor costs and favorable currency exchange rates. High energy prices in recent years didn't help. That's the story on Kauai, but circumstances are different on Maui. Alexander & Baldwin, which converted Kauai's other big sugar plantation to coffee years ago and now has America's largest coffee plantation there, owns Hawaii Commercial & Sugar, which grows cane on Maui's central plain and the bottom of Haleakala's western slopes. In a brilliant marketing move, HC&S years ago secured a contract to become sole provider of the turbinado sugar, lightly refined to retain an overtone of molasses, that comes inside packets of "Sugar in the Raw." The California company that makes it now puts a made-in-Maui label on every packet. This makes HC&S sugar the "Kona coffee" of sugars, a special premium brand with a special taste. Yet HC&S often loses money, and has had a rough time of it in recent years due to high energy costs, which have raised the cost of fertilizer - commercial fertilizer is made through a chemical process that requires petrochemicals - and, through fuel surcharges, the cost of shipping. Stock analysts who write about Alexander & Baldwin have been known to write that its agricultural operations are valuable because of the development potential of the land they're on. In other words, they assume that one day Alexander & Baldwin will plow the sugar under and start growing townhomes. If this is not to be inevitable, Maui residents need to start thinking now about what they want in the central plain. It would be foolhardy to simply wait until a future generation of A&B management, or a later owner of the land, submits a proposal for a gazillion homes and then go to a hearing and wave signs. What do you want to see there? If it is green, start agitating for parks in the plains now. By the time you get consensus for it the economy might be improved enough for the state or county to afford it. Selling some land for parks will generate revenue that could ease development pressure, and if done right it could avoid prime agriculture land, so that the move would not force an end to the farming operation. And if sugar cannot be grown profitably, what else can be grown there? What if some of the land were sold to small farmers to grow food for the island? You might find that even Alexander & Baldwin itself will co-conspire with you, especially if a little bit of its land can be held out for development. And of course it goes without saying that any open space, be it farm or park, will be good for the property values of those who live nearby, and who have a view of it.

Comments

[Chris]

I would truly like to see something growing on the central plain of Maui that DOESN'T require routine torching of fields as part of the regular cultivation process...