Pine venture afloat after first year

A year ago, Haliimaile Pineapple Co., the employee-driven farm picked up the pieces of the failed Maui Pineapple Co., and reopened with a new name and renewed commitment to grow pineapple.

Vice President Rudy Balala confirmed, “We just finished the one year. We had some up-and-down times, but overall we’ve had good support from Hawaii customers. And our Mainland customers too, they have hung with us.”

The company employs 83 people.

Friday was an extra day for picking to accommodate a field that had ripened earlier than expected.

Pine venture afloat after first year – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News

Lack of Attention to Farming Is Catching Up With India

BAMNOD, India — The 50-year-old farmer knew from experience that his onion crop was doomed when torrential rains pounded his fields throughout September, a month when the Indian monsoon normally peters out.

For lack of modern agricultural systems in this part of rural India, his land does not have adequate drainage trenches, and he has no safe, dry place to store onions. The farmer, Arun Namder Talele, said he lost 70 percent of his onion crop on his five-acre farm here, about 70 miles north of the western city of Aurangabad.

“There are no limits to my losses,” Mr. Talele said.

Mr. Talele’s misfortune, and that of many other farmers here, is a grim reminder of a persistent fact: India, despite its ambitions as an emerging economic giant, still struggles to feed its 1.1 billion people.

Four decades after the Green Revolution seemed to be solving India’s food problems, nearly half of Indian children age 5 or younger are malnourished. And soaring food prices, a problem around the world, are especially acute in India.

Globally, floods in Australia and drought in China have helped send food prices everywhere soaring — on fears the world will see a repeat of shortages in 2007 and 2008 that caused food riots in some poor countries, including Egypt.

Carmaker Stocks In Cruise Control

U.S. Equities
In Friday trade, vehicle manufacturers among leaders.

In trading on Friday, vehicle manufacturers shares were relative leaders, up on the day by about 1.6%. Leading the group were shares of Tata Motors, up about 9.5% and shares of Ford Motor up about 2.8% on the day.

Also showing relative strength are real estate shares, up on the day by about 1.6% as a group, led by China Housing & Land Development , trading higher by about 9.4% and Maui Land & Pineapple , trading higher by about 9% on Friday.

Carmaker Stocks In Cruise Control – Forbes.com

TESTIMONY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL RELATING TO THE CACAO INDUSTRY

TESTIMONY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL TWENTY-SIXTH LEGISLATURE, 2011 ON THE FOLLOWING MEASURE:
H.B. NO. 1598, RELATING TO THE CACAO INDUSTRY.
BEFORE THE: HOUSE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
Friday, February 11, 2011
State Capitol, Room 312
TIME: 9 : 00 a. m.
TESTIFIER(S): David M. Louie, Attorney General, or Damien A. Elefante, Deputy Attorney
General Chair Tsuji and Members of the Committee:

The Department of the Attorney General has the following comments on this bill. If enacted this bill may be challenged as violating the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.

This bill creates a general excise tax exemption to favor products that are raised or produced exclusively in the State, specifically, domestically produced or processed cacao. “No State, consistent with the Commerce Clause, may ‘impose a tax which discriminates against interstate commerce . . . by providing a direct commercial advantage to local business.'” Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias, 468 U.S. 263, 268 (1984), citing Boston Stock Exchange v. State Tax Comm’n, 429 U.S. 318, 329 (1977) .

In Bacchus, the United States Supreme Court found that an exemption similar to the exemption proposed in this bill violated the Commerce Clause. At issue in Bacchus was the Hawaii liquor tax, which was originally enacted in 1939 to defray the costs of police and other governmental services. Because the Legislature sought to encourage development of the Hawaiian liquor industry, it enacted an exemption from the liquor tax for okolehao (a brandy distilled from the root of the ti plant, an indigenous shrub of Hawaii) and for certain fruit wine manufactured in Hawaii. The united States Supreme Court concluded that the exemption violated the Commerce Clause because the exemption had both the purpose and effect of discriminating in favor of local products. The general excise tax exemption for local agricultural products, as created by this bill, appears to have similar purpose and effect as the exemption that violated the Commerce Clause in Bacchus.

We recommend that this bill be held.

Support for the building of a cacao processing facility

AGRtestimony
nsato@maliekai.com
Testimony for HB1598 on 2/11/2011 9:00:00 AM
Testimony for AGR 2/11/2011 9:00:00 AM HB1598
Conference room: 312
Testifier position: support
Testifier will be present: No
Submitted by: Nathan Sato
Organization: Malie Kai Chocolates
Address: 60 N. Beretania St. #1908 Honolulu, HI 96817
Phone: (808) 599-8600
E-mail: nsato@maliekai.com

Comments:
I would like to voice my support for the building of a cacao processing facility on the island of Oahu. I believe cacao has the potential to be a "game-changer" for both Hawaiian agriculture and Hawaiian tourism. We know from participation in domestic and international food shows that Hawaii is capable of producing WORLD-CLASS chocolate. This was the opinion of executives from very prestigious chocolate companies (including Godiva, Vosges and Valrhona) who tried our Oahu-grown chocolate. Very few agricultural products have the cache of chocolate. There are legions of chocolate aficionados who follow chocolate as closely as wine connoisseurs study vintages and appellations. I can easily see in a few years new tourists coming to Hawaii for the first time who have no interest Hawaii’s traditional leisure activities – visitors whose only interest is in seeing how chocolate is grown and made.

Ivorian farmers fear cocoa to rot as buying halted | guardian.co.uk

By Loucoumane Coulibaly

ABIDJAN, Feb 10 (Reuters) – A halt to cocoa-buying in Ivory Coast is leaving beans to rot in farm warehouses, while smuggling through Ghana intensifies and some growers switch to other crops, farmers said on Thursday.

Economic sanctions, a cocoa export ban and a liquidity shortage since incumbent Laurent Gbagbo seized the central bank’s local branch has left the cocoa industry in chaos in the world’s largest grower as beans pile up in farms or are smuggled out.

Alassane Ouattara, who beat Gbagbo in a Nov. 28 presidential poll, according to U.N.-certified electoral commission results that Gbagbo refused to concede, last week called for a one-month cocoa registration ban to starve his rival of tax revenues.

Cocoa exporters, fearing sanctions by Western powers that recognise Ouattara’s win, have played ball.

In the western region of Soubre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, farmers and one cooperative manager said in interviews they no buyers were taking their beans last week and they feared the poorly dried beans stashed in their warehouses would rot. “Nothing’s moving, everything’s stopped,” said farmer Innocent Zamble, who runs a farm in the Soubre town of Meagui.

“Our stores are stuffed with beans and there’s no more space to stock them. We fear the quality is going to perish because we don’t have the capacity to stock big quantities long term.”

Hawaii offshore gambling approved by committee

Gambling would be allowed on large ships traveling between Hawaii’s islands under a measure approved by its first committee.

The House Economic Revitalization and Business Committee voted 10-1 on Thursday to keep the bill alive, but it still faces two more House committees, a potential full House vote and Senate consideration before it could reach the governor’s desk.

The legislation would create a board to create rules and manage offshore gambling. It doesn’t spell out exactly what type of gambling would be allowed.

Committee Chairman Angus McKelvey said his committee is amending the bill to require a minimum of 1,000 passengers on no more than two eligible ships.

Hawaii and Utah are the only states in the country without any form of legalized gambling.

Hawaii offshore gambling approved by committee – Hawaii News – Staradvertiser.com

4 Real Estate Stocks Outpacing Rivals

An exotic sounding play lumped in with the usually, urban-centric commercial real estate managers, is Maui Land & Pineapple(MLP), the holding company of subsidiaries that engage in agriculture, community development and resort operations in Hawaii. Its shares are up 10% so far this year.

The company, founded in 1909, operates through two segments: an agricultural unit, Maui Pineapple Co. with extensive land holdings; and the developer of the exclusive destination resort property, the Kapalua Resort in Maui, Hawaii.

According to TheStreet’s ratings summary, the one analyst who follows it has a “strong sell.”

After disclosing severe financial constraints at the end of 2009, the company has been in turnaround mode. In the first nine months of 2010, it reported net income of $1.23 per share, compared with a net loss of $92.9 million, or a loss of $11.57 per share, for the first nine months of 2009.

4 Real Estate Stocks Outpacing Rivals – TheStreet

U.S.D.A. Approves Pro-Ethanol Corn Over Food Industry’s Objections

U.S.D.A. Approves Pro-Ethanol Corn Over Food Industry’s Objections

A corn that is genetically engineered to make it easier to convert into ethanol has been approved for commercial growing by the Agriculture Department.

The decision, announced on Friday, was made despite objections from corn millers and others in the food industry, who warned that if the industrial corn accidentally got into corn used for processed foods, it could lead to crumbly corn chips, soggy cereal, loaves of bread with soupy centers and corn dogs with inadequate coatings.

“It is going to contaminate the food and feed system, and why they are going to take that risk over the objections of a major American industry, I just don’t understand,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has been critical of genetically engineered crops.

The corn contains a microbial gene that causes the corn to produce an enzyme that breaks down corn starch into sugar, part of the process for making ethanol fuel. Ethanol plants now buy this enzyme, called alpha amylase, and add it to the corn at the start of their production process.

Syngenta, the company that developed the new corn, asserts that corn containing its own enzyme will increase the output of ethanol per bushel while reducing use of water, energy and chemicals in the production process.