Future of diversified ag on Maui will depend on having enough water

Earlier this year, Alexander & Baldwin announced that we had made the difficult decision to halt our sugar operations on Maui.

We did so with great sadness but with the resolve to honor our plantation’s history by pursuing diversified agriculture to keep Maui’s central valley in farming.

Diversified agriculture is a challenge. If it were easy, we would see crops proliferating across the thousands of acres on Oahu, Kauai and Hawaii that were once in sugar cane and pineapple.

Instead, most of these lands lie fallow. No one has yet been able to execute on a large enough scale to make a dent in our food self-sufficiency or to fuel significant economic growth for our state.

Despite the many challenges, however, we are optimistic in our pursuit of diversified agriculture. We have some of the best agricultural resources in the state. Nearly half our 36,000-acre plantation consists of relatively flat land, and we have integrated power and irrigation infrastructure in place to provide the foundation for future agricultural ventures.

Many have asked about our plan for diversified agriculture. While we don’t yet have a firm roadmap, we do have a vision.

Our end goal is a patchwork of compatible agricultural activities blanketing central Maui — some farmed by HC&S, some by others.

We see biofuel crops that could provide electricity or transportation fuel to support the state’s renewable energy goals; irrigated pastures for local ranchers so their cattle don’t have to be sent to the mainland for finishing; food crops; evaluation of crops new to Hawaii, such as industrial hemp; and an agricultural park open to community farmers.

While we cannot say with certainty when our vision will be complete, we are determined to explore a number of different paths and assess their viability in a disciplined manner.

But for diversified agriculture to succeed, farmers need assurance that they will have access to water for their crops.

It is the East Maui ditch system and the waters it collects that make central Maui lands productive. Without this, there will not be enough water available of proper quality to farm across the central valley. Less water means less agriculture.

Some have asked why we can’t use our irrigation wells instead of stream water.

These wells are brackish, with salt content that most food crops cannot withstand. Reliance on well water would severely curtail the kinds of crops that we and other farmers could pursue.

We’ve also been asked if we will continue to use as much water as we did for sugar.

That is highly unlikely. The only scenario requiring the same amount of water would be the farming of tropical grasses or cane for biofuel across our entire 36,000 acres.

In the early years of our diversified agriculture operations, as new projects are still in their trial stages, our water needs will be significantly less.

During this time, we will divert only the water that we need, with the rest remaining in the watershed for other uses.

But it is our hope that our trial projects will prove viable, leading to an expansion of our agricultural activity and increased water use, but less than we consume today.

We recognize that the public interest is paramount in determining the use of water resources.

We hope that the public supports keeping central Maui in green open space, pursuing new ag-based jobs and industries for Maui, and moving the needle on our food and energy sustainability goals.

For us to realize this vision, we and other farmers in the central valley need continued access to state water resources in East Maui.