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Maui Land and Pineapple (MLP) 01-15-2010
Calavo Growers (CVGW) 01-15-2010
Alexander and Baldwin (ALEX) 01-15-2010
Monsanto (MON) 01-15-2010
Syngenta (SYT) 01-15-2010
DUPONT E I DE NEM (DD) 01-15-2010
Hilo, Hawaii — CHERIMOYA, calamansi, rainbow papaya. Puna ricotta, poha berries, lilikoi. Lava salsa, dinosaur kale, Hamakua mushrooms. This is the exotic-food litany on the lips of pilgrims who go to the Hilo Farmers Market, held twice a week on the lush eastern side of the Big Island.
Hawaii More Photos »
On a Saturday in mid-December I was in the greedy throng, caressing a cluster of longan, or “dragon eye” fruit; sampling a fresh, made-to-order green papaya salad; sidling up for a whiff of ripe, fragrant mango.
The Big Island, a k a Hawaii, is the biggest agricultural producer in the state. But its farming history is one of immigrant fruit — produce that is itself a pilgrim. Virtually everything that is grown in the Hawaiian islands today is an exotic, brought in from somewhere else by sailors, merchants and contract laborers; pineapple, long seen as Hawaii’s signature fruit, was introduced to the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1813 by Don Francisco de Paula y Marin, a Spanish adviser to King Kamehameha I.
On my December visit I set off in search of unusual agritourism experiences from a recent wave of Big Island farms. Though agricultural production has been geared largely toward industrial export and plantation-scale production over the last century and a half — entire crops of bananas, pineapple, macadamia nuts and sugar cane were shipped overseas, while almost everything else had to be flown in from the mainland — that mindset is shifting.
For Immediate Release
January 14, 2010
United States Attorney’s Office
District of Hawaii
Contact: (808) 541-2850Two Brothers Plead Guilty in Conspiracy to Hold Thai Workers in Forced Labor in Hawaii
WASHINGTON—Defendants Alec Sou and Mike Sou, co-owners of Aloun Farm, pleaded guilty on Jan.13, 2010, in federal district court in Honolulu, to conspiring to commit forced labor. The two defendants, who are brothers, each face up to five years in prison for their respective roles in a labor trafficking scheme that held Thai agricultural workers in service at Aloun Farm through a scheme of debts, threats, and restraint.
During their respective plea hearings, the defendants acknowledged that they conspired with one another and with others to hold 44 Thai men in forced labor on a farm operated by the defendants, using a scheme of physical restraint and threats of serious harm to intimidate the workers and hold them in fear of attempting to leave the defendants’ service.
Farm owners plead guilty to forced labor charges
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jan 14, 2010
Forty-four agricultural workers from Thailand were forced to work on Aloun Farm for wages lower than what they were promised and required by law, said Kevonne Small, trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Some were forced to live in a storage container on the farm, and none could leave because the farm owners kept their passports, Small said.
Aloun Farm owners Alec and Mike Sou pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to conspiring to commit forced labor in connection with the importation of the workers in 2004.
Each faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when they are sentenced in June. However, the government will ask the court for a lighter sentence because they have accepted responsibility for their actions, according to their plea agreements. The government also promises to seek further sentence reductions based on the value of the brothers’ cooperation in the ongoing federal investigation into the recruitment and employment of Thai agricultural workers.
Posted on January 11, 2010 by Genevive
Five former Maui Land & Pine (MLP) employees, headed up by Ulupalakua Ranch’s Pardee Erdman, formed a new company called Haliimaile Pineapple Co, and bought the soon-to-be defunct fields owned by MLP located in central Upcountry Maui. Darren Strand is HPC’s new president and CEO.
Maui Gold pineapple, a low acid variety, to be grown and sold by Haliimaile Pineapple Co
The new company has begun to harvest fields of “Maui Gold” brand fruit, a low acid variety, around Haiku that were ripening, but going neglected. They are also replanting the fields located behind Haliimaile General Store that were targets for land sale and redevelopment into a new subdivision. According to the blog site Hawaii Agriculture the leadership of the new company “brings over 150 years of combined expertise in growing and packing premium pineapple on Maui.”
Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle issued a statement on the new company’s plans December 31, 2009. She says, “I can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year than with preservation of 65 agricultural jobs and the prospect of creating more jobs for our residents in the long-term.” Jobs are important, but so is the preservation of green space.
HPC has purchased and licensed key assets, and leased farm land, equipment and buildings from ML&P with plans to serve the Hawaii pineapple market. According to Haliimaile General Store manager Tim McGraw, if locals and visitors buy one Maui Gold pineapple a week, HPC has a real shot at becoming a viable, profitable company.
A pineapple a day keeps the subdivisions away « 3-Minute Vacation
By LISSA FOX
Even the largest wildfires start small. The 1988 Yellowstone fire started with a single lightning strike. The 2002 fires in Colorado and Utah started from burning love letters.The blaze now burning on Maui and the fire on the Kohala Coast of Hawaii island both started with a single spark in the early 1980s.
What fire, you ask? Fireweed is burning across the hills of Upcountry Maui, and pastures are ablaze with little yellow flames. Fireweed, or Senecio madagascarensis, is a small shrubby plant from South Africa with a reputation for spreading like wildfire.
On Maui, the yellow daisylike flowers carpet the pastures around Makawao and Kula, creeping south into Ulupalakua and Kanaio. A survey of alien-plant populations along Maui roadsides done in 2000 and repeated in 2009 shows an explosion of fireweed. Forest and Kim Starr, who conducted the surveys, say fireweed has spread faster than any other alien-plant species they monitored and now covers tens of thousands of Maui acres.
Fifty years after statehood, most of the plantations have gone fallow or become "gentleman’s estates." There are 6,500 "farmers" in Hawai’i, but only half are full time. The average farmer is 59, with an annual income of $10,000.
Ignoring the need for food security, we import at least 85 percent of our food and send billions to faraway agribusinesses when we could keep the money here to strengthen our self-sufficiency, enrich our economy and employ our jobless.
We were once a world leader in agricultural production. Now farmers have overwhelming challenges in land, water, infrastructure, pests, NIMBY, encroachment, transportation costs and burdensome bureaucracy, not to mention cheap foreign competition.
Can agriculture survive in Hawai’i?
WAILUKU – Maui Land & Pineapple Co. sold its pineapple operation to the new Haliimaile Pineapple Co. for less than a third of its value, according to a report by ML&P.
In the filing dated Dec. 31, ML&P disclosed that it sold Haliimaile Pine its equipment, materials, supplies and customer lists valued at about $3 million for a price tag of $680,000, to be paid over five years.
The agreement, signed New Year’s Eve between the two companies, also granted Haliimaile Pine the exclusive rights to use Maui Pineapple Co. logos and trade names for a license fee based on sales volumes that would be around $20,000 to $30,000 each year.
By Rick Daysog
Advertiser Staff WriterA group that plans to restore pineapple growing on Maui will pay $420,000 a year to lease agricultural lands held by Maui Land & Pineapple Co.
Haliimaile Pineapple Co. also will pay $680,000 to purchase ML&P’s farm equipment, supplies and customer lists, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
ML&P announced in November that it was shutting down pineapple operations after nearly 100 years of plantation-scale farming on the Valley Isle. The company harvested its final crop last month and laid off 206 workers.
But Haliimaile — whose principals include former ML&P executives Doug MacCluer and Ed Chenchin and Ulupalakua Ranch owner Pardee Erdman — said last week they plan restore pineapple farming on 950 acres of ML&P’s 3,000-acre pineapple operations .
The new company said it also will take over ML&P’s Maui Gold brand and will hire back 66 displaced pineapple workers.