Waialua, Hawaii — The reddish-brown clay that choked the Pokungvan Ranch in Hawaii has hardened under the tropical sun. The irrigation pipes lie in a tangle where lemongrass, cucumbers and okra once flourished.
His niece, Jenny Palanai, also lost her crops – mustard greens called choy sum, bitter melon, and tomatoes. The leaves of the banana, coconut and mango I recently planted have turned yellow, and the trees are unlikely to survive.
Across the north shore of Oahu, an area famous for Surf big wavesSmall farms that help provide food for the island are struggling after back-to-back storms in March brought down the state’s crops. The worst floods in two decades. Officials are urging farmers not to give up, stressing that local agriculture is crucial to the isolated archipelago.
“In some cases, entire farms have been wiped out,” said Brian Miyamoto, executive director of the Hawaii Farm Bureau. “These are farmers who were just days or weeks away from harvest and now have to start over.”
According to data collected by agriculture advocates, more than 600 of Hawaii’s 6,500 farms are I mentioned Nearly $40 million in damage, including crops, livestock and machinery. But Miyamoto said the Farm Bureau estimates the full extent of the devastation is much broader — $50 million across nearly 2,000 farms.
For most of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Farmer-style farming Hawaii dominated, where companies such as Dole and conglomerates founded by descendants of missionaries cultivated vast fields of sugar cane or pineapple for export. The operations attracted large numbers of immigrants, mostly from Asia and Portugal.
But this large-scale monoculture faded by the 1990s amid international competition, and officials began promoting smaller farms — some, like Kungfan Farm, no larger than a few acres — with a wide variety of crops that could be sold to local grocery stores or at farmers markets.
Shipping disruptions around the world During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of having a local food supply has been reinforced in Hawaii, and in recent years the state has provided additional support to farms. This includes funds for infrastructure, the farm-to-school programme, and loans to those denied credit from banks.
But they still face challenges. Unlike many of their mainland counterparts, Hawaiian farms are often too small and diverse to afford or qualify for crop insurance.
Miyamoto noted that many of the farmers are migrants who were barely making a living even before the storms.
The majority of Hawaii farms have sales of less than $10,000 a year, according to a report US Department of Agriculture. The floods, combined with strong winds and power outages, killed or exhausted livestock and destroyed equipment, vehicles and infrastructure.
Without insurance, Kungphan, an immigrant from Thailand, is trying to get government assistance and figure out how to level land stirred up by floodwaters. His niece was helping him and other Thai farmers in the process. Available assistance includes federal disaster relief, one-time emergency grants of $1,500, long-term loans from the state, and Charitable fund Which raised about $850,000 in the weeks after the floods. Many farmers have too Online fundraising pages.
In an interview translated by Palanai, Kungphan described the floods as “very devastating,” but said he would continue working on the 5-acre (2-hectare) plot of land he has rented for five years, where he grows vegetables that he sells at farmers markets, and in stores and stalls in Honolulu’s Chinatown.
Kongfan pointed to a faint thigh-high line on a plywood wall showing where the water got inside his house, which he built from a shipping container. Inside, there is now a donated tent, but he usually sleeps outside.
Flies swarmed as he carried a dirty generator that he hoped to salvage. Nearby was a Toyota Yaris, covered inside and out with the same dried sludge.
Palanai, who learned to farm from her mother after the family immigrated to Hawaii, isn’t sure she wants to keep doing it. She remembered the torrent that reached her waist in seconds and wiped out her crops in the middle of the night.
“Will it happen again?” I asked. “When you look at the Earth completely destroyed, you want to give up.”
The floods are the latest crisis facing farmers in Hawaii, in addition to forest fires, pests and insects Volcanic tephra – Ash and debris from the Big Island volcanic eruption, said Sharon Hurd, the state’s top agriculture official.
“These are the farms we really need to start over,” Hurd said. “We can’t make them give up.”
She added that officials are conducting tests to reassure farmers that their soil is safe and to provide them with seeds and plant starts.
Some farmers were unable to access farmers markets, a major source of their income. Many have less to give, Miyamoto said.
Farmer Kola Olye said her family was bringing in nearly a quarter of their usual production. Instead of 200 pounds (90.7 kg) of tomatoes at weekend farmers markets, they might sell 60 pounds (27.2 kg).
She added that they lost starts that were scheduled to be planted this month and face months of limited harvest. She’s unsure about the status of her farm’s contracts with grocery stores, since they can’t meet demand.
She added that even taro that lives in water is lost after being submerged by pollutants carried by floods.
“It’s all gone,” Ollie said. “We can’t use any of it.”
___
Associated Press writer Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed.