If they charged that much money to the farmers, the farmers would fail and imported foods would take over.” “Good farm ground is coming out to go into solar energy farms because the people who own it can make more money in solar. “The problem is there’s no will here,” Jefts said. has failed in its mission to reinvent Hawaii’s agricultural sector, two recent reports say. It’s the state’s poor land use policy that has allowed some farmland to be developed, as well as society’s lack of commitment to local agriculture. The problem, according to Jefts, is not that the ADC is inert. Larry Jefts, one of the state’s largest produce producers, recently expanded his farm footprint with access to ADC lands in Central Oahu that had lain fallow since Del Monte stopped pineapple production nearly two decades ago. However, a scathing state audit in January said that the 25-year-old state agency has so far failed its mission because “the economic void created when plantations ceased production remains mostly unfilled.” Re-fashioning former sugar and pineapple plantations into viable food farms is what the Hawaii Agribusiness Development Corp. “But what paradise do you know of that brings in 85% of its food?” State Efforts Have Fallen Short “When you bring up Hawaii to anyone anywhere on earth, what they think of is paradise on earth,” said Vincent Mina, president of the Hawaii Farmers Union United. Putting more of this stagnant acreage into food production, however, is a worthwhile goal, experts say, because it could help the state wean itself off of a reliance on the cargo ships and planes that deliver food supplies to the islands. All of these challenges and more make growing food on old plantation acreage unaffordable for most farming operations. There are many reasons why this land isn’t being used for farming - inadequate infrastructure, soil erosion, the sky-high price of agricultural real estate. Hawaii has tens of thousands of acres of fallow former sugar and pineapple plantation lands. In doing so, the company is redeploying a scrap of neglected farmland into active agriculture in an attempt to buck an unsettling trend: Hawaii imports more than 85% of its food. Sensei Farms Lanai, a two-acre indoor farming pilot project by Larry Ellison’s Sensei Ag, produced 35,000 pounds of produce in less than three months last year. David Agus, a physician and medical researcher, is pioneering tools to produce affordable food in places like Lanai that - despite its history as an agricultural plantation - lack traditional farming essentials like water and fertile soil. The ag-tech company founded by Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder who owns nearly all of Lanai’s acreage, and Dr.
In fact, the hydroponic tomatoes and leafy greens grown here by Sensei Ag don’t depend on soil at all. It doesn’t matter that the red dirt below the greenhouse is eroded or peppered with plastic that once served as Dole pineapple plantation’s weed control.
In six high-tech greenhouses, a futuristic vision of food-growing is underway - one in which nutrient density and flavor are automated. On Lanai, where shreds of black plastic in the soil are the last vestiges of the island’s defunct pineapple fields, a sliver of long-abandoned farmland is getting an encore - and a reinvention.
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