LIHUE — The state is up, but the county is down. While Hawaii saw an increase in the number of farmed acres for the first time in decades, the County of Kauai found itself in a hole. From 2007 to
LIHUE — The state is up, but the county is down.
While Hawaii saw an increase in the number of farmed acres for the first time in decades, the County of Kauai found itself in a hole.
From 2007 to 2012, about 8,000 additional acres were put into production statewide, while Kauai lost 7,400 acres during the same period, according to census data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
During that five-year period, the number of farms on Kauai dropped from 748 to 591, with total acreage declining from 151,534 to 144,127. The number of smaller farms, ranging in size from one to nine acres, dropped 28 percent, from 483 to 348, according to the data.
“I don’t know where those acres went, but I’m not baffled that farming’s not doing well on Kauai,” said Jerry Ornellas, president of the Kauai County Farm Bureau. “We’ve known for a long time that we’re not getting the job done here.”
Mark Hudson, a statistician for the state Department of Agriculture, could not be reached for comment Monday to discuss the Kauai numbers. However, he told the Associated Press that the census shows that farming statewide was healthy during the five-year period, which included the recession, rising production costs and pressure from urban growth.
One reason for Kauai’s drop could be the shuttering of a former landmark.
County spokeswoman Mary Daubert said the decrease in agricultural acreage on Kauai could be attributed to the closure of Gay & Robinson’s sugar operations in 2009.
“This marked the end of sugar production on Kauai after over a century,” she wrote in an email.
Daubert wrote that seed companies have taken up a significant amount of the lost acreage and the county is working in collaboration with different entities on various efforts to boost agriculture on the island.
She noted there is the Kauai Grown program co-sponsored by the Kauai County Farm Bureau and a stewardship agreement was just signed with the Kilauea Agricultural Park Committee and Malama Kauai to develop the 75-acre Kilauea Agricultural Park.
“And we are in discussions with the Agribusiness Development Corporation regarding the leasing of 1,000 acres in Kalepa for farming,” she wrote.
The market value of Kauai’s farm land and buildings in 2012 was estimated at $1.09 billion, up from $942 million five years earlier, while the average farm’s value jumped from $1.26 million to $1.85 million, according to USDA.
Total cropland on the island increased from 22,300 to 30,200 acres, while harvested cropland dropped from 10,800 to 6,800 acres. That means about 24 percent of the island’s total cropland was harvested in 2012, compared to 60 percent statewide.
One possibility for that difference, Ornellas said, is bigger seed companies only use a small portion of their total at any given time.
Regardless, the fact that Kauai’s overall numbers are dropping is a concern, he said.
“It’s amazing how little land we actually farm,” he said. “The sad part is we’ve got the resources. We’ve got the water and we’ve got the land.”
What Kauai doesn’t have, according to Ornellas, is enough farmers, especially those in the 50-plus acre range.
In 2012, only 52 Kauai farms — 8.8 percent — ranged in size from 50 to 259 acres, according to the USDA data. Nearly 110,000 acres, 76 percent of all the island’s farm land, was controlled by the eight largest farms (those 2,000 acres or larger).
“We don’t have mid-sized guys,” Ornellas said. “Between the small guys and the seed producers, there’s nobody.”
Ornellas said the big problem in Hawaii is that 75 percent of the locally grown food is being produced by only 5 percent of the farms.
Between 2002 and 2007, 180,000 acres were lost statewide. And Hawaii’s farmed land area has declined by about 800,000 acres since 1982.
The growth between 2007 and 2012 occurred largely on Oahu, where about 8,700 additional acres were farmed. There also were increases on Maui and Hawaii island, which each gained about 3,000 acres of farmed land. Overall, about 1.129 million acres were being farmed in Hawaii in 2012, up from about 1.121 million acres five years earlier.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
