These 2 Companies Are Putting Big Money Into Hawaii’s Agricultural Future. Will Their Bets Pay Off?

The ag-tech company founded by Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder who owns nearly all of Lanai’s acreage, and Dr. 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.

On Lanai, Sensei Ag is sidestepping many of the traditional high-yield farming requirements: lots of land, lots of water, lots of hard manual labor.

Sensei Ag CEO Sonia Lo projects the company will harvest 500,000 pounds of food for statewide consumption in 2021, including Swiss chard, basil, tomatoes, cucumber and eggplant.

Hawaii has tens of thousands of acres of fallow former sugar and pineapple plantation lands. 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. All of these challenges and more make growing food on old plantation acreage unaffordable for most farming operations.

On Maui, a partnership between a California farm management company and a Canadian pension fund is producing food on fallow land resulting from the 2016 closure of the state’s last sugar grower.

Since Mahi Pono bought 41,000 acres of Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.’s former sugar cane fields in 2019, the company has begun growing some of Hawaii’s top food imports — potatoes and onions — in hopes of winning over some of that market share.

But Mahi Pono is growing more than just root vegetables. The company planted over a half million avocado and breadfruit trees, as well as rows of trees to shelter crops from the wind. The company plans to plant its 1 millionth tree by the end of June, according to community relations director Tiare Lawrence.

The company is also growing produce ranging from tangelos and finger limes to broccoli and eggplants, and it’s leasing affordable land and water to small farmers for an annual fee of $150 per acre.

Ultimately, Mahi Pono’s staple crops will be citrus, papaya, macadamia nuts and coffee, Lawrence said.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/02/these-two-companies-are-making-big-investments-in-hawaiis-agricultural-future-will-their-bets-pay-off/?fbclid=IwAR2nHZ6kMYr4g1-WB1v-mMnqbNlgDZaRovmMjGlQSIFOlCq6rfPRy84jw0Y

Tagged with: