Timing is Everything

This afternoon while driving through the banana farm, I thought back about the days when I arrived in the islands in the mid-1970's. The effects of the sugar plantations were widespread. The long lines of cars crawling the Hamakua Coast behind an over-loaded cane truck, the cane debris, mud and even rocks on the road which seemed to appear instantly as I would begin to pass one of these monsters, and the sight of low-flying helicopters looking for the dozens of clandestine pakalolo (marijuana) patches which were planted among the thick cane rows. 

Cane Haul Truck

Farmers like me were often relegated to marginal lands because the sugar plantations controlled most of the good cropland. After 4 years of growing bananas in what I would now call a "pile of rocks", Puna Sugar announced that it was closing.  Planting would stop immediately and the final sugar harvest would begin. As better farmland began to open up to small farmers, I began a search which led to our current location.

A brief summary on Hawaii sugar plantations:
Sugar plantations have been a staple in Hawaii since the first plantation was started in 1834, on Kauai. In order to satisfy America's sweet tooth, plantations were eventually thriving on Kauai, Maui, Oahu and the Big Island.

Workers Cutting Sugar Cane

Plantation owners brought in labor from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and other locations to keep the plantations running. Through the decades, the industry moved from hand labor to mechanized harvesting and processing. By the 1950's Hawaiian sugar growers were among the most efficient and highly paid agricultural workers in the world. The industry had a robust research program and as new methods of cultivation were combined with new varieties the industry began to share it's knowledge with the rest of the world. Eventually, government subsidized plantations in third world countries with low labor costs began to flood the market with cheap sugar. There remains only one plantation today, Hawaii Commercial and Sugar on Maui. They are currently studying the processing of sugar into jet fuel.

As it turns out, I had come to Hawaii Island at exactly the right time.