Ag proposal targets North Kohala revival

Close to 40 years have passed since Kohala Sugar Co. shut down and left the rural Hawaii County community of North Kohala with a traumatic void in farming and jobs.

But recent efforts are advancing a plan to establish a 500-acre agricultural park that, if realized, would achieve a long-languishing goal of restoring major farming activity and employment to the area encompassing Hawaii island’s northern tip.

The state Office of Planning released a master plan last week for developing a $4.2 million facility to process taro, meat and other crops.

The plan was prepared by the Hawaii Future Farmers of America Foundation and community nonprofit Kahua Pa’a Mua Inc. for the Office of Planning and Hawaii County’s Department of Research and Development using a $20,000 grant from the federal Economic Development Adminstration.

Project proponents say the processing facility, if built, would bolster efforts to develop the planned Hoea Agricultural Park that would offer land with water and power for lease to small farmers.

New farming and processing operations also would help meet a North Kohala Community Development Plan goal to produce 50 percent of the food it consumes.

"It would be a big boost not only for us, but for the community at large," said Marc Kinoshita, manager of Hualua Land LLC, which owns about 460 acres of former Kohala Sugar land long envisioned for the agricultural park.

Jesse Souki, director of the Office of Planning, said the processing facility called the Agricultural Resource Center of Hoea will help continue North Kohala’s farming history and improve the area economy.

"This master plan will help the residents of North Kohala move closer to their goal of strengthening this rural area’s local economy by developing a sustainable agricultural industry," he said in a statement. "The resource center envisioned in the plan will support small farmers and ranchers to ensure the future of agriculture and ranching in the region."

However, developing the processing facility on a proposed 5-acre parcel within the park site will be challenging, given that plan authors expect to finance the project with financial contributions from federal and state agencies, grant programs and private organizations.

Prospective funding sources identified in the plan include the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Kamehameha Schools and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Preliminary cost estimates include $2.3 million for a first phase comprising infrastructure and a produce processing facility. A second phase for natural farming and meeting facilities is priced at $1.2 million. A third phase with meat processing facilities and a caretaker’s residence would cost $751,000.

Projected annual operating costs total $377,000, which would be covered by projected revenue of $519,200 largely from taro and meat. Kahua Pa’a Mua would operate the facility.

David Fuertes, a rancher and retired high school agriculture teacher leading Kahua Pa’a Mua, said the plan is promising. "Hopefully it can benefit the community," he said.

But Fuertes and Kinoshita emphasize the tentative nature of the processing facility and ag park plans, given failures of past development plans that raised community hopes in the wake of Kohala Sugar’s shutdown.

Previous efforts included the Kohala Task Force, which was formed by the state and county in the 1970s and provided loans to startup companies that mostly failed.

Castle & Cooke, which harvested Kohala Sugar’s last crop in 1975, provided some land to small farmers. But a larger vision to establish an ag park was never realized.

Chalon International of Hawaii Inc., a resort development firm led by Japanese investor Shoichi Kamon, bought much Castle & Cooke property in North Kohala and prepared a draft environmental assessment in 1993 for a nearly 800-acre ag park.

Chalon’s project, which included about 250 acres of state land and spending $3 million to $5 million to establish the park, anticipated leasing farm lots in 1995 and reaching full occupancy by 2000. But Chalon did not carry out its plan.

Hualua Land acquired 460 acres of Chalon land in 2009, and is trying to advance the ag park plan.

Kinoshita, of Hualua Land, said the processing facility effort will help the ag park plan advance, and vice versa.

"It’s a really good plan," he said of the processing facility. "The only way to keep the rural atmosphere of Kohala is to keep it in ag."