Tropical crops reaped $7.5M for isle farmers, survey finds

Peanut butter fruit, mysore raspberry, moringa oleifera, tropical apricot and lulo.

You’re not likely to find these foods in the produce section of Hawaii supermarkets, but they were among an estimated 4.4 million pounds of tropical specialty and fruit crops — excluding pineapple — grown by local farmers last year.

For the first time in nine years, the Hawaii field office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service conducted a survey of tropical crop growers statewide. And earlier this month the agency, in cooperation with the state Department of Agriculture, estimated the value and production of the industry last year.

The report said tropical specialty and fruit crops produced last year in Hawaii generated $7.5 million in sales for farmers.

The top crop by value was ginger root at $1.7 million. Next was longan at $1.2 million, followed by lychee at $958,000. Turmeric and mango rounded out the top five, at $660,000 and $290,000, respectively.

By weight, the five biggest crops were ginger root, longan, guava, lychee and orange.

In 2008, the industry produced 2.1 million pounds of crops valued at $4 million.

Kathy King, the statistics service’s Hawaii statistician, said the survey-based reports were discontinued initially due to state workforce reductions in 2009 that were followed by federal cutbacks in 2012 and 2013. Resuming the reports, she said, is valuable because crop prices and production volumes are used in setting federal farm policy, grant programs, crop insurance payments and other government payments.

“The importance of the values obtained through NASS surveys cannot be overstated,” she said in a statement.

Ken Love, executive director of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers association, said the reports also help build awareness among consumers and store operators.

“We need these numbers and we need more awareness from local stores,” he said. “When we walk into the groceries we should be seeing what we grow up front and not Mexican avocados and apples.”

Love said the association has been trying to expand the industry by selling grafted fruit trees to farmers — about 7,000 trees in the last two years. A lot of the tree sales, he said, have been mango, avocado, citrus, fig, green sapote, mamey sapote, rollinia and durian.

Since 2008, several new tropical crops are being commercially produced in Hawaii, including cashews, which are the nut of a fruit.

The new report isn’t largely comparable with the 2008 report for individual crops because the new report lists names and production data for about 40 tropical fruits and specialty crops, whereas the old report only did that for five crops also listed in the new report.

For the five comparable crops, the reports showed that since 2008 two crops, mango and atemoya, declined while two others, lychee and longan, grew. The fifth crop, persimmon, changed little.

Mango production last year totaled 270,000 pounds valued at $290,000. In 2008, it was 660,000 pounds and $647,000. The price per pound was close to $1 for both years.

Farmers produced 3,400 pounds of atemoya last year that sold for just $1,300 based on a farm price of 38 cents per pound. Atemoya production figures disclosed in the 2008 report were for 2007 and totaled 22,000 pounds sold at an average $1.34 per pound for $29,000 in total value.

Longan, which was last year’s second-biggest crop at 540,000 pounds and $1.2 million, is up from 310,000 pounds and $992,000 in 2008. The average price per pound was $2.22 last year, down from $3.20 in 2008.

The production for lychee last year at 397,000 pounds and $958,000 compared with 230,000 pounds and $633,000 in 2008 with a small difference in the average price per pound.

The new report doesn’t disclose production volume or prices for many specific crops in order to protect that information when there are so few farms that the data could be used to figure out production volume for an individual business.

For these crops, data is combined into “other” and “unpublished” categories and included in the state total.