LIHU‘E — A bill seeking to encourage local agriculture by allowing Kaua‘i farms to subsidize employees’ pay by providing on-site housing was pushed back two more weeks on Wednesday without any amendments introduced or voted on, leaving some farmers feeling
LIHU‘E — A bill seeking to encourage local agriculture by allowing Kaua‘i farms to subsidize employees’ pay by providing on-site housing was pushed back two more weeks on Wednesday without any amendments introduced or voted on, leaving some farmers feeling frustrated.
Draft Bill No. 2318 garnered testimony and discussion during the County Council’s Planning Committee, but members determined they needed to get additional information from Bernard Carvalho’s administration — including the Planning Department, Building Department, the Office of the County Attorney and maybe even the Department of Water — before moving forward.
“I’m feeling very frustrated with a system that seems to be so convoluted that we can’t insert common sense into it,” said Moloa‘a farmer Scott Pomeroy during testimony. “It’s my job to grow food and protect the soil, and in my opinion, it’s your job to write a law that supports us and makes it legal.”
Farmer David “Makana” Martin said the bill had largely been tied up in trying to determine enforcement and closing loopholes rather than making life easier for farmers.
“This sounds more like a policing mechanism than a support,” he said.
Council members, however, said they want to balance their commitments to farming and those who work the fields against the need to write the ordinance carefully by defining in the law who qualifies as a farmer and who is eligible for the additional building permits in order to preserve agricultural lands for agriculture and prevent them from being abused by “speculators.”
“We can’t just look the other way,” said Planning Committee Chair Jay Furfaro. “I sense your frustration but I want you to see the line we’re attempting to walk.
“We’re trying to get to a point that is reasonable to support the efforts of the agricultural community on ag land within the boundaries” of the law, Furfaro said. “We want to see agriculture successful, but we have to look at the existing rules. … I’m still committed to making this happen somehow.”
Council Chair Kaipo Asing, a non-voting member of the committee, told farmers how important it was that the bill be a good one, saying the process is “not simple” and describing the potential impact across the island as “tremendous”
“You may not understand it … I’ve been around a little bit, I know what happened to Kilauea when the lands were taken out of ag,” Asing said. “I know what happened to those lands and I know the effect it had on the entire island.”
Roy Oyama, head of the Kaua‘i County Farm Bureau and a longtime farmer, expressed support for the bill but agreed that it needs to be administered carefully.
“Abuse of agricultural lands has gone on for my lifetime as I farmed. You can not let that go on, because every time there is abuse, you need to tighten the belt and it’s only the farmer that suffers more,” Oyama said, adding that if the council does not do the job right, “the farmer could be an endangered specie.”
