A dusty expanse of corn and cane fields. A dilapidated pig farm hidden among tall weeds. Dirt roads, some riddled with pits and holes.
All in all, not exactly the image that comes to mind when you hear the term “gated community.”
But some Kaua’i residents say that’s exactly what West Kaua’i’s Mana Plain has become.
Just one entity controls the lion’s share of the Kekaha land: The quasi-public Agribusiness Development Corporation. For more than 100 years, the land, most of which is owned by the state, was occupied by sugar plantations. But over the past year or so, the state Legislature and Board of Land and Natural Resources have made decisions that have effectively chipped away at the public’s access to farming opportunities on the land.
Act 47
Some 13,000 acres of ag land in Kekaha is owned by the state. For years, it was administered by the Department of Land and Natural Resources. Today, while the lands still belong to the state and are managed by a legislatively established and publicly funded agency, they are no longer defined as “public lands.”
After the Kekaha Sugar Company closed in February 2001, the remaining tenants, with help from the state Agribusiness Development Corporation, sought to take over the fallow lands.
In October 2001, the Board of Land and Natural Resources issued a master lease to ADC, which, in turn, administered revocable permits for existing tenants Gay & Robinson, CEATECH USA, Inc., Wally Johnson, Syngenta Seeds, Inc., and Pioneer Hi-Bred International. Those tenants eventually formed a co-op. Additional permits were later issued to Wines of Kaua’i and Senter Petroleum.
That master lease, however, was never executed, as the DLNR and the ADC were unable to agree on terms. So last July 11, the Land Board approved a set-aside of the 12,592 acres in Kekaha, subject to a memorandum of agreement.
Before going through with the vote, however, at-large board member Tim Johns questioned the wisdom of the board essentially forfeiting revenue-producing lands – the best ag lands, in fact, in the DLNR’s inventory – to a “quasi-governmental, quasi-independent” agency.
DLNR Land Division administrator Dierdre Mamiya responded that under a lease, the DLNR probably wouldn’t have received any revenue, as infrastructure and operating expenses would likely have been subtracted from the lease rent.
Scott Whiting, special project coordinator for the Land Division, added that a lease would not allow the ADC to take full advantage of “the autonomy that they enjoy under their enabling statutes.”
One of those enabling statutes, passed by the Legislature earlier that year, is Act 47.
Under state law, the term “public lands” encompasses all lands classed as government or crown lands before August 15, 1895, or otherwise acquired by the government since then. Public lands also include submerged lands, and lands beneath tidal waters that are suitable for reclamation.
Exempt from this category, however, are Hawaiian home lands; lands set aside to the United States; roads and streets; University of Hawai’i lands; Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawai’i lands; Hawai’i Community Development Authority lands; certain Department of Agriculture lands; and lands set aside or leased to the Aloha Tower Development Corporation.
Senate Bill 538, introduced into the 2003 Legislative session by Big Island Senator Lorraine Inouye, added the ADC to that list of exemptions. The bill passed and became Act 47. Under the new law, the ADC is no longer subject to Chapter 171, which defines public lands and requires that they be put out to public auction before being leased.
The Outsiders
“Shrimp farmers on O’ahu are salivating,” over the wounded beast that is the CEATECH shrimp farm. That’s according to O’ahu farmer Larry Jefts, who is also a member of the Agribusiness Development Corporation board and its Kekaha committee.
At a June 16 meeting of the committee, the ADC’s executive director, Alfredo Lee, confirmed that his office had received calls from O’ahu shrimp farmers who believe they can succeed where CEATECH seems to be failing. (Amid mounting financial troubles, CEATECH was hit earlier this year with a deadly shrimp virus that has halted production).
CEATECH’s land is covered in salty, circular ponds and hardly suitable for growing crops. If the company folds, it’s possible the ADC would issue a permit for a new shrimp farm to take CEATECH’s place. But as some Kaua’i residents interested in agriculture have found, the ADC doesn’t let just anyone onto its lands.
“From what I have heard about the ADC land, it’s a fairly industrial agriculture operation,” says Bruce Pleas, a west Kaua’i resident. “We have, since AMFAC [owner of Kekaha Sugar] went out of business, made requests and a lot of local people have asked to open up small areas close to Kekaha town for farming. But they [government officials] look at you, saying, ‘We don’t want to deal with anyone smaller than 300 acres.’ ”
Since the ADC has taken control of the lands, that position hasn’t changed. Pleas wishes it would.
“People here would love to have a half-acre or acre just outside of town to grow some local vegetables… There’s nothing out here for us to eat,” he says, referring to the fact that most of the current tenants in Kekaha cultivate crops, seed or shrimp for export.
Greg Holtzman, a Kekaha resident, commercial fisherman and cycad farmer, also supports opening Kekaha up to the locals.
“We’ve been trying to get the ADC to put small farm lots in the back of Kekaha,” Holtzman says. He feels that compared to “big agriculture,” which “needs a whole lot of mechanization,” smaller, intensive farms employ more people and incur less debt. By providing more onsite labor, he feels small farms allow “more money to go to the people instead of banks for loans and out of state companies for tractors and equipment to run large farms. We think Kekaha could be the breadbasket of Hawai’i.”
Earlier this year, the ADC’s Lee told Environment Hawai’i that when someone asks about getting a lease for Kekaha land, he tells them to write a letter, which he puts in a file for future reference. Lee said maybe one farmer had submitted a letter, and a review of ADC files revealed just a single letter.
But Holtzman believes there are many interested farmers. “I don’t think the ADC really knows who’s interested in the land,” he says, adding that the ADC has told him, “We need to study problems and the situation more and you should call back in a while, maybe a year or two, and we should be further along on that issue…”
In the meantime, Holtzman says his “fairly conservative estimate” is that between 25 and 30 people in Kekaha want to get on the land not now being farmed, especially that directly behind Kekaha town. Many of them are former Kekaha Sugar employees who “have a lot of ideas. There is a lot of land lying fallow. I could have an incredible place, but they won’t even consider me because I’m not interested in more that 300 acres…. Alfredo said it would be five to 10 years before people like myself can get on the land.”
Incubator?
Under a draft of the Kekaha Business Plan, prepared by ADC, higher priority will be given to intensive agricultural operations, leases for displaced sugar workers, other successful farmers, and farmers willing to participate in projects with the University of Hawai’i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) or the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center.
At the ADC Kekaha Committee’s June 16 meeting, UH got what many smaller farmers would kill for: a chance to pitch a project.
At the meeting, Andy Hashimoto, CTAHR’s dean, proposed establishing an incubator facility in Kekaha for CTAHR students that would help foster diversified agriculture on the plain. While the state was fortunate to have tenants on the land, he said, more new farmers are needed if agriculture in Kekaha is to be sustainable.
The incubator facility, which Hashimoto says could occupy between 100 and 500 acres at Kekaha, would allow the university to provide technical, business, and infrastructure assistance to start-up farmers.
“UH can provide intellectual property and federal grants to start programs, and the ADC can work with government agencies and farmers,” he said, noting that the university had acquired grants for Native Hawaiian programs and rural/community agriculture development from the USDA and the Kellogg Foundation.
The committee voted to “look favorably on this request,” but at least one Kekaha tenant seemed apprehensive. A representative of Gay & Robinson said he was “fine” with the idea of working with UH, but he was not willing to eat the school’s share of operating costs. (All current Kekaha tenants contribute funds – totalling as much as $20,000 a year – to the operation and maintenance of the basic infrastructure left over from the sugar plantation days.)
And while the committee may support the incubator concept, no land has been identified for the university’s use.
The ‘In’ Crowd
Hashimoto’s proposal could be a bridge between the dreams of people like Pleas and Holtzman, who want to develop small farms, and ADC’s broader goal of successful use of Kekaha’s ag lands. But while no one at the June Kekaha committee meeting argued with Hashimoto’s proposal to promote “sustainable agriculture” and a more diversified use of the land, some of the Kekaha committee members, as well as some tenants, agree that the fewer farmers, the better.
“Six is a lovely number for 7,000 acres,” said Jefts, referring to the current number of tenants farming the arable portions of Kekaha’s Mana Plain. Jefts, a successful O’ahu farmer, made that statement at an earlier, more intimate Kekaha committee held on the morning of June 16.
And Wally Johnson, a Kekaha farmer and owner of Far West Ag, agrees with Jefts.
“The more people out there, the greater the liability,” he said at the morning meeting, where representatives of Pioneer Hi-Bred, Gay & Robinson, and other Kekaha tenants met with Jefts, committee member Wayne Katayama, and Lee to discuss how to manage these lands in the future.
All of the Kekaha tenants, collectively known as the Kekaha Agriculture Association, are operating under revocable permits and will continue to do so while the association and the ADC hash out suitable lease or license arrangements.
In January, the Kekaha committee voted to allot 92 percent of the 7,758 arable acres in Kekaha to the six main tenants there: CEATECH, Syngenta, Pioneer, Johnson, Gay & Robinson, and Wines of Kaua’i. Previously, the six occupied a total of 5,604 acres.
But since Act 47, if any of the land they occupy becomes vacant, the public does not necessarily get a shot at leasing it. And so, last May, when sugar company Gay & Robinson forfeited 362.99 acres from its allotment, they were immediately picked up and split between Johnson’s Far West Ag and biotech company Pioneer Hi-Bred International.
The reallocation, requested by G&R at the Kekaha committee’s May meeting, was unanimously approved. But not everyone has come to the committee for such approvals. For months, the ADC was aware that CEATECH was allowing Syngenta to use some of its land – for free, according to the ADC’s Lee. CEATECH has never approached the committee for a reallocation, and the ADC has not required CEATECH to do so.
“Troubled Land”
All the land is taken except for the piggery, the hydroelectric pump site, and “troubled lands,” Jefts said at the June meeting. “Every acre has been subscribed,” he said, adding that the problem areas – anything that’s contaminated or otherwise unusable, or that doesn’t fit in with ADC’s plans – will be given back to the DLNR.
As Jefts went on to explain how a Global Positioning System can be used to map everyone’s boundaries, a DLNR deputy director, Dan Davidson, interrupted, “Did you say all troubled land goes to DLNR?”
Jefts, backed by Lee, explained to Davidson that under the Memorandum of Agreement with the DLNR that accompanied the set aside to ADC, any pre-existing conditions must be worked out with the DLNR.
Although Davidson seemed to think that didn’t exactly mean DLNR would take responsibility for those lands, Lee said, “We are not liable for pre-existing conditions.”
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 15, Number 1 July 2004
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