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A city agency focused its effort to preserve prime farmland on Oahu earlier this year, but one large landowner, Monsanto, doesn’t like the plan and wants to preserve less of its land than the city recommends.
The industrial seed producer filed a petition last month with the state Land Use Commission to designate 1,550 acres it owns in Kunia for protection under a state law that puts long-term restrictions on prime farmland to keep such lands in agriculture.
But the city Department of Planning and Permitting objects to the move, and suggests that Monsanto is trying to sidestep a recommendation the department made earlier this year to designate all 2,151 acres of Monsanto’s Kunia land for protection under the state’s Important Agricultural Lands (IAL) law.
In response, an attorney representing Monsanto said in a letter to the commission on Wednesday that the company has the right to voluntarily seek protection for its land under an incentive in the law that precludes a county from imposing such protection if a landowner voluntarily protects more than half of its property in the same county.
Monsanto’s IAL petition to the commission is the fourth on Oahu and 12th statewide since the IAL law was enacted in 2005 and amended in 2008. But it’s the first to come after a county has identified lands for involuntary protection.
Other landowners that have obtained voluntary IAL protection include Alexander &Baldwin on Maui and Kauai, Parker Ranch on Hawaii island, Castle &Cooke on Oahu, Grove Farm on Kauai, Robinson Family Partners on Kauai, and Kamehameha Schools on Oahu and Kauai.
Monsanto also recently filed a petition with the
commission to designate 1,084 acres it owns on
Molokai as IAL. That
represents 60 percent of 1,817 acres the company owns in Maui County.
In its Kunia petition, Monsanto said its effort would protect about 75 percent of its Oahu land. The company also said it “fully intends” to continue using the other
25 percent for agricultural production and related agricultural facilities, but doesn’t want IAL restrictions on the roughly 600-acre balance so it can “preserve flexibility” that would be limited under IAL restrictions.
DPP responded in comments to the commission that Monsanto, which plans to give about 20 acres to the National Park Service and another small parcel to the Board of Water Supply, didn’t offer a compelling reason for not preserving 558 acres that DPP said includes land that produced the highest levels of sugar cane during Hawaii’s plantation era.
Monsanto calls DPP’s argument “erroneous” and said there is no requirement for the company to justify why it isn’t applying to designate more land for voluntary IAL protection.
“There is no obligation for any private landowner to submit any of its property for IAL designation,” Jennifer Lim, a local attorney with Carlsmith Ball LLP representing Monsanto, said in a letter to the Land Use Commission. “Petitioner (Monsanto) is not a real estate developer. Petitioner is part of a successful and economically viable seed business that has been active in Hawaii for over 50 years. Petitioner has no intention of pursuing non-agricultural activities on the excluded land along Kunia Road. There is no requirement, or even suggestion, under the IAL law that petitioner should offer a ‘compelling reason’ for not offering certain lands for IAL designation. In that respect, we respectfully submit that the DPP comments are misguided.”
Lim also noted that under the law, private landowners can submit IAL petitions to the commission at any point before a county completes its protection process.
DPP has been working for several years to select prime farmland that meets criteria for protection under IAL law, and in January identified 52,575 acres on Oahu intended for protection. Before any private lands are involuntarily designated as IAL, the City Council must vote to approve what should be protected, and then whatever is approved would be presented to the commission for a final ruling.
The work by DPP represents the furthest progress among all counties, and the agency expects to submit its list, which affects about 2,000 private landowners, to the City Council by the end of this year.
Monsanto’s petition is scheduled to be decided by the Land Use Commission on Wednesday.
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