• Alternative crops Alternative crops Two successful Kaua‘i-based agricultural companies are in the news. Alexander & Baldwin’s Kauai Coffee is apparently doing well, with a call out for 120 seasonal employees to assist with this year’s harvest, in addition to
• Alternative crops
Alternative crops
Two successful Kaua‘i-based agricultural companies are in the news.
Alexander & Baldwin’s Kauai Coffee is apparently doing well, with a call out for 120 seasonal employees to assist with this year’s harvest, in addition to the their 50+ staff of regular employees.
The company is making its mark as the largest coffee company in Hawai‘i and in the United States. Its drip-irrigation system is considered world-class, and visitors have come from as far away as Brazil to observe it.
Gay & Robinson’s Alan Kennett is working hard to make the Westside sugar company a leading producer of ethanol in Hawai‘i.
State laws due to be enacted over the next 20 years mandate that a growing percentage of the materials in our gasoline be an alternative product like ethanol, which is produced from the waste left behind during the manufacture of refined sugar from sugar cane. With the right equipment, G&R will be able to fuel our vehicles with their by-products. This is good news from an environmental viewpoint, as well as a possible way to give long-term viability to Kaua‘i’s last remaining sugar company.
Both of these companies have had sizable risk factors as they’ve developed over the years. Kauai Coffee saw a major distributor drop out when the plantation was first launched, yet the company has hung on to become profitable and a solid employer for Kaua‘i agricultural workers. G&R has diversified into sugar tours of their fields and plant, adding some tourism dollars to their coffers. Now they are ready to diversify into a much bigger industry, that of creating a product that replaces oil.
Other agricultural businesses are getting there as they attempt to fill the vacuum left behind by the closing of most of the sugar plantations on Kaua‘i. Lumber, aquaculture and other industries are trying to make it. They face having to pay relatively high wages to agricultural workers, especially when compared to third-world nations, as well as stringent environmental regulations.
On a smaller scale, truck farmers are providing produce to hotels, selling it alongside roads and at farmers’ markets. This contribution to the agricultural industry, while small compared to Kauai Coffee and Gay & Robinson, add important public faces to our agricultural growers.
With the continued growth of tourism and high-tech companies on Kaua‘i, we need to remain attached to our roots, to a field of work that goes back hundreds of years to the arrival of the island’s first settlers. County, state and federal government agencies should be encouraged and praised for the work they are doing with agriculture on Kaua‘i, and for keeping alive the hope that much of Kaua‘i will remain rural while still providing a living for its residents who thrive on agriculture.
