After Kohala Sugar Co. went out, a task force cropped up. After Pioneer Mill closed, a long-range plan was produced. After Oahu Sugar Co. shut down, a new city named Kapolei began to grow.

As history has shown, farming has often failed to continue on prime agricultural lands vacated by Hawaii sugar plantations over the last 50 years.

Now that the last and biggest of them, Hawaiian Commercial &Sugar Co., plans to quit the business at the end of this year because of financial losses, the owner of the 36,000-acre Maui plantation wants to find viable ways to keep the vast green area of Central Maui in productive agriculture. Local government leaders quickly expressed optimism when HC&S announced as much Jan. 6.

Gov. David Ige called the intent by Alexander &Baldwin Inc., the kamaaina owner of HC&S, to pursue a new diversified agriculture model a “golden opportunity” for the state to focus on renewable energy and food security.

State Rep. Kaniela Ing (D, Kihei-Wailea-Makena) issued a statement expressing fondness for sugar cane and hope for replacement crops.

“As a born-and-raised product of our plantation history, I love the sugar cane vista as much as anyone,” he said. “But imagine a diversified island with sunflowers for energy, kalo for food, and hemp for a variety of uses. A&B could lease out plots to a new generation of farmers for regenerative and organic crops. The possibilities are exciting. The silver lining is that we can start from a fresh slate, form new unity, and plot an agricultural future that we can all be proud of.”

Others, however, say the realities of farming in Hawaii offer little hope for such a transition on a major scale. They cite a weighty list of factors: high costs for land, labor, water, fertilizer and other inputs; the need to heavily invest in infrastructure such as irrigation, roads and processing equipment; the cost to transport crops to market; risks that include weather, pests and disease; relatively few young people interested in farming; and rising opposition to farming from encroaching residential neighbors.

“The idea that you can put 30-some-thousand acres into many small farms is crazy,” said Stephanie Whalen, executive director of the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center.

A&B, Whalen believes, will do its best to productively use the HC&S land, but the area is one of the windiest corridors on any island, and putting in road and water infrastructure for many small farms would be a huge undertaking.

Whalen also said the HC&S announcement came on the same day that one of the biggest banana farmers in the state, Richard Ha, said he would cease production on his 600-acre Hamakua Springs Country Farms on Hawaii island.

“So one of the biggest and oldest agricultural businesses and one of the smaller, very entrepreneurial agricultural businesses in the state called it quits,” Whalen said. “What does that tell you? … All those that are cheering and have some pie-in-the-sky idea of agriculture need to ask what became of all the 150,000 acres or so that came out of sugar and pineapple in the last decade or so.”

Don’t bet on the farms

Local economist Paul Brewbaker said Hawaii’s existing landscape with thousands of acres of fallow farmland already paints a dismal picture.

“If there is something that somebody could grow commercially, at scale, on Maui, surely it would already be grown,” he said in an email. “What, West Maui is not big enough? Let me get this straight: the amount of agricultural land on Maui that is not being used by HC&S is larger than all of the urban land in the Hawaiian Islands combined, and it’s not enough for alternate agriculture on Maui?”

Brewbaker added that two-thirds to three-quarters of the consumer market for food is on Oahu, which makes it more economical to enhance food self-sufficiency with farms on Oahu.

“I might imagine, and I probably won’t be too wrong, that as in the case of most of the former sugar cane lands that have been withdrawn from production over the last 50 years, a lot of what HC&S farms will be taken over by the volunteer ironwoods and haole koa, certainly once the water is removed, but I don’t begrudge anybody with a good idea, good enough to convince investors to give her a shot, from leasing some land from A&B and chancing it.”

A&B says it will take several years to plan and implement much of its diversified agriculture initiative.

“Looking ahead to the post-sugar model for HC&S, while we have a path forward to a diversified agricultural model and know some of its components, we’re not yet in a position to give detailed descriptions or financial parameters because we are still evaluating various options, identifying ideal land configurations, working with potential partners and generally refining our plans,” A&B President and CEO Chris Benjamin told stock market analysts in a recent conference call.

A&B has identified some potential uses for its HC&S land: biofuel crops, cattle grazing, orchards, agroforestry and an ag park with farm plots for lease.

The company said it has several tests underway to further assess opportunities, including crop trials for energy-producing plants such as sorghum, Bana grass and Napier grass. Preliminary discussions with entities to produce biodiesel from other crops such as sunflower, safflower and soybeans also are underway, A&B added.

A test planned for this year will create an irrigated pasture to explore the feasibility of having Maui Cattle Co. raise grass-fed cattle for the beef market.

“Transitioning HC&S to a diversified agribusiness model underscores A&B’s commitment to the community and our intention to keep these lands in active agricultural use,” Benjamin said in a statement. “It will take time but, if successful, these efforts could support the goals of food and energy self-sufficiency for Hawaii, preserve productive agricultural lands and establish new economic engines for Maui and the state.”

Targets mentioned by A&B, such as forestry and biofuels, have been tried before on other former sugar plantation lands but did not work as planned.

For example, a 21,000-acre forest of eucalyptus trees was planted on much of the old Hamakua Sugar plantation on Hawaii island decades ago, but efforts to build a mill to harvest the crop have faltered.

A spotty track record

Hawaii’s second-to-last sugar plantation, Gay &Robinson on Kauai, announced plans with renewable power firm Pacific West Energy LLC in 2007 to convert its roughly 7,500-acre plantation into a bioenergy farm by producing ethanol and electricity from sugar cane juice, molasses and bagasse, the fiber left over from sugar cane stalks.

Then-Gov. Linda Lingle saw a bright future in that transition plan. “The company’s transition from sugar to renewable energy signals a new chapter for Kauai and will help position the island for a more secure, clean energy future that is less dependent on imported oil,” she said at the time.

Former Kauai Mayor Bill “Kaipo” Asing expressed similar optimism for what he viewed as the horizon of a “new era of agriculture” in Hawaii.

Yet despite a 100 percent state tax credit available for construction of the plant, G&R abandoned the $120 million project after ethanol prices plummeted. The plantation closed in 2009, and G&R leased large chunks of its land to seed-corn growers.

A&B does have things going for it that some observers believe could put it in a better position to keep its sugar lands in agricultural use. One thing is past experience — namely, closing McBryde Sugar Co. on Kauai.

A&B closed McBryde in 1996. Like some other Hawaii sugar plantation operators that had struggled to compete with cheaper foreign competition, low sugar prices and occasionally unfavorable weather, A&B searched for a replacement crop and settled on coffee.

But unlike at HC&S, A&B established McBryde’s alternative crop long before the plantation closed, with initial coffee plantings in 1987. In 1995 McBryde had 4,000 acres of coffee trees in cultivation on the 15,000-acre plantation, compared with 3,500 acres in sugar cane.

Some of the McBryde land also was converted by A&B into a luxury residential development at the 1,010-acre Kukui‘ula subdivision on which land-use approval work began in 1985. A&B last year through September sold 10 residential lots for $1.2 million on average and four homes for $3.4 million on average at the community, which is approved for 1,200 homes and has a golf course, spa and shopping center.

As for the coffee farm, A&B developed the business initially as Island Coffee Co. and then Kauai Coffee Co. In 2011, with coffee on about 3,000 acres, A&B sold the operation for $14 million to Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA Inc. The sale produced no financial gain or loss for A&B, which leases land to Massimo. Some other former McBryde land is cultivated in seed corn and used for pasture.

Other past experience includes studying dozens of crops and business models as well as biofuel research A&B financed with $12 million from federal agencies.

Jimmy Nakatani, executive director of the Agribusiness Development Corp., a state agency, said he anticipates there will be pressure to convert some HC&S land for urban use.

A&B did restrict most of its Maui farm — 27,000 of the 36,000 acres — from being urbanized under a state Important Agricultural Lands law.

However, this law allows subdividing protected land and building a home on parcels as small as a few acres provided the landowner has a farm plan approved by the state Department of Agriculture. Examples of these so-called “farm dwellings” subdivisions include land where residences are integrated with pastures and fruit trees.

That’s what happened on Maui at Pioneer Mill where former owner Amfac/JMB Hawaii began establishing a 600-acre coffee farm in 1991 in a move to diversify its sugar operation. Amfac closed the plantation in 1999, announcing that it would put some of its 6,000 acres into diversified crops. A few years later Amfac abandoned its coffee fields, and not much came of the diversification effort despite work on a long-range plan dubbed Kaanapali 2020.

A&B could be exception

Another company that later acquired the Pioneer Mill property, Kaanapali Land Management Corp., subdivided about half the coffee farm into 51 lots with 1-acre home sites and coffee trees on 3 to 6 acres. The trees are leased to James “Kimo” Falconer, a former plantation manager who restored the coffee fields and operates MauiGrown Coffee Inc. Initial lots were priced from $1.2 million to $1.8 million. Since sales began in 2006, 36 farm dwelling sites with coffee trees have been sold. Remaining lots are on the market for $800,000 to $1 million. Two more phases with 100 more lots are planned.

Some observers note that A&B, which from 2010 to 2014 earned between about $20 million and $65 million a year in profit, has the financial strength to back a successful transition to other farming. However, Benjamin said on the conference call that A&B expects other parties will likely invest much of the capital required.

Of course, having capital doesn’t ensure success in reviving agriculture on former sugar cane plantation lands.

In 1973 after Castle &Cooke pulled the plug on Kohala Sugar Co. on Hawaii island, the state and county formed a task force that loaned money to five replacement farm businesses. The venture was dubbed a fiasco after four companies folded, though the 87-acre Kohala Nursery, which grows decorative palms, remains in business today.

On Kauai, billionaire Steve Case bought Grove Farm, a 21,600-acre former sugar plantation once managed by his grandfather. Case bought Grove Farm in 2000, and the next year he bought another 18,600 acres of Lihue Plantation land from Amfac, which had recently shut down that farm.

In 2001 Grove Farm President David W. Pratt said farmers on small plots of land and cattle owners would likely be initial tenants, while the bigger hope was to find some kind of new crop to take substantial acreage and create more of a plantation again for the two adjacent properties Case acquired.

Three years ago Grove Farm indicated that it leases close to 5,000 acres to ranchers raising cattle and that it intended to lease 10,000 acres to a partnership for growing eucalyptus and Bana grass to burn and generate electricity for Hawaiian Electric Co. on Oahu within five years. A Grove representative did not provide a requested update on the effort last week.

Scott Enright, chairman of the state Board of Agriculture, agrees Hawaii has a bleak history of transitioning sugar cane plantation lands to other agricultural uses, but he believes it can be different for HC&S because of A&B’s stature and commitment.

“I would be encouraged,” he said.