Editorial: Ag land agency needs a reboot

The ongoing dogfight playing out at the Legislature between state Auditor Les Kondo and House Majority Leader Della Au Belatti is either embarrassing or amusing, depending on your tolerance for dysfunction in high places. Clearly on the plus side, however, is the way it has kept critical eyeballs focused on the state audit of the Agribusiness Development Corp. — one of the more alarming dissections of a state agency this year.

Here’s the quick take: The ADC was founded in 1994 as the sugar and pineapple industries were dying out, to help to create an “aggressive and dynamic” program to fill the economic void. Envisioning that 75,000 acres of land and millions of gallons of irrigation would be freed up by plantation closures, the idea was that those assets could be shifted to commercial diversified agriculture. Although founded as a state government entity, the ADC was exempted from jumping through certain bureaucratic hoops so that it could most efficiently acquire and sell land, or lease or it to agricultural enterprises and farmers.

Great idea, but the execution?

Skip forward: The state House mandated a performance audit of the agency, and Kondo’s office delivered in January. Its key findings were brutal: After 25-plus years the agency had done little to support the development of diversified agriculture, its record- keeping was abysmal and the board of directors barely provided oversight. Worse, criminal activity — not farming — was rampant on some properties.

This audit and another of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources are ostensibly the reasons that Belatti, as head of a House Investigative Committee, has Kondo in the hot seat. Regarding the ADC, exchanges have been prickly when they focused on how the audit was conducted, but committee members have also sought answers on the audit’s most troubling findings, and the reform needed.

Then came the fire. Two weeks ago, a brush fire torched 50 acres of ADC land in Wahiawa. Left exposed: an illegal dumpsite of some 1,000 junked cars. The images on the TV news were a striking indictment of the agency’s neglect of the parcel. The audit pointed out that ADC spent $63 million from 2013 to 2019 to acquire more than 2,300 acres in Central Oahu — would-be farmland that remains 75% vacant and vulnerable to criminal uses like this one.

How did the commendable mission of this agency get so far off course? ADC Executive Director James Nakatani, in a formal response to the audit, cited the shifting aims of five state administrations, as well as legislative mandates that have changed the core purpose of the agency. It has gone from managing the once-private Waiahole Water System to banking land, providing infrastructure such as irrigation to make that land farmable, then managing leases. The process, he wrote, “is not simply a matter of digging up pineapple plants and planting lettuce in its place.”

True, but after all these years the agency should have more to show for itself. The Legislature seems motivated to enact a fix, although it’s hard to discern the priorities amid the bickering. Legislation is pending, including a bill that would dissolve the agency entirely. Next session they’ve got to step on the gas.

In the current hearings, committee members seem to be poking around, looking for something; or they already know something and seek to solidify it by poking at Kondo. We can only hope that all this blathering will lead us somehow, some way to the original purpose of the Agribusiness Development Corp.

Our state needs a more diverse agricultural base, a thriving farming community and a sustainable food supply. These vital concerns need to be in more responsible hands.