bigwave – Page 163 – Hawaii Agriculture

January 29, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Double Digit Gainers Beating The Dow: MLP, OTIV – sourced PicksThatMove.com

Maui Land & Pineapple Co., On Track Innovations Ltd.

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Double Digit Gainers Beating The Dow: MLP, OTIV

The hot stock information of the day includes: MLP, OTIV

Maui Land & Pineapple Co. (NYSE:MLP) gained 11.60% to close at $2.79 on no news. Based in Maui, Hawaii, Maui Land & Pineapple Company, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in agriculture, resort, and real estate development in the US. The company operates through three segments: Agriculture, Resort, and Community Development. The Agriculture segment grows and packs, and markets pineapples under the Maui Gold and Hawaiian Gold brands. The Resort segment operates Kapalua Resort’s golf courses, a tennis facility, retail shops, and a vacation rental program, as well as provides certain services to the resort. It also engages in the mountain outpost and a guided zip-line business. The Community Development is a real estate development company.

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January 28, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

A&B to continue Maui sugar at least through 2010 – The Maui News

Maui Sugar Cane Tassels
CLICK for larger image
WAILUKU — Sugar production on Maui got a reprieve on Thursday, at least through the end of the year.

Alexander & Baldwin Inc.’s board of directors met in Honolulu Thursday morning to mull over shuttering its Maui subsidiary, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., after it recorded about $45 million in losses over the past two years. In a statement, the company said it would continue sugar operations through the end of the year, but that the company’s fate beyond 2010 would depend on a "favorable outcome" in water cases pending before the state Commission on Water Resource Management, as well as HC&S’s ability to increase its sugar production levels.

An attorney for the environmental and Native Hawaiian groups that are petitioning the state to order HC&S to return more water to Maui streams called the company’s announcement Thursday a "stunt" aimed at pressuring the water commission to give it what it wants.

Asked on Thursday when the board of A&B would reevaluate the sugar company’s fate, HC&S General Manager Chris Benjamin said, "It’s hard to say. No later than the end of the year, but (the review) could happen at any time. It will depend on whether there’s an adverse development, if it’s a water decision or something else.

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January 28, 2010 General Ag News and Notes, Maui Gold Pineapple Post a Comment

Hawaii Insider : Prickly issue of vanishing pineapple

Growing sugarcane and pineapple is hard work, as generations of plantation and farm workers in Hawai’i can attest, but making money at it these days may be even harder. While conditions have improved in modern times for the islands’ fieldworkers, the competition from Third World countries — with different standards of living and labor laws — has also increased.

One of the latest large landowners to cry uncle is Maui Land & Pineapple, which announced Nov. 3 that its pineapple subsidiary — renowned for its "Maui Gold" brand — would cease production at the end of the year. Citing losses of $115 million since 2002, along with $20 million in expenses for a new packing facility, the announcement continued: "The painful decision to close pineapple operations at MPC after 97 years was incredibly difficult to make, but absolutely necessary. We realize this ends a significant chapter in Maui’s history — an important part of many lives, over many generations."

The company’s last harvest took place two days before Christmas, but just before New Year’s, a group of investors came up with a plan to continue operations on about 1,000 acres — a third of the former farm — under the name Haliimaile Pineapple.

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January 26, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hawaii’s dry spell predicted to linger through May | The Honolulu Advertiser

Even the wettest spot in Hawai’i — Mount Wai’ale’ale — wasn’t so wet last year as the state experienced below-normal rainfall in all but a few spots.

Rain gauges at the Kaua’i mountaintop measured 308 inches in 2009, 73 percent of normal levels, and a scant 3 inches in December, only 7 percent of normal. It was Mount Wai’ale’ale’s third-driest December on record, according to National Weather Service data.

In Honolulu, only the O’ahu Forest National Wildlife Refuge experienced above-normal rainfall in 2009 — 214 inches. Totals for most sites in central and west O’ahu were less than 50 percent of their annual averages.

The December rainfall numbers were even worse, with most O’ahu gauges measuring a third or less of normal rainfall averages, a trend that has continued into the new year.

The U.S. Drought Monitor reports that 99 percent of the state is experiencing "abnormally dry" or worse conditions, compared with 37 percent at the same time last year. More than a third of the state is suffering "severe to exceptional" drought.

On Maui and the Big Island, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last month designated the two counties as natural disaster areas so farmers could seek relief for crop losses.

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January 24, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Local stock experts wary of market once again – Hawaii Business – Starbulletin

By Dave Segal

Hawaii investment experts aren’t expecting too much from the U.S. stock market in 2010.

Then again, they didn’t anticipate too much last year either, and the three major indexes posted total returns ranging from about 23 to 45 percent.

So with that as a backdrop, four local stock experts are back at it again for the ninth annual Star-Bulletin survey of best investment ideas.

Barry Hyman, vice president-managing team for the Maui branch of FIM Group Ltd., will seek to defend his title after an impressive 125 percent gain in his hypothetical $20,000 portfolio. That’s heady stuff for a self-proclaimed value investor, who calls the overall market fully valued and expects a lot of churning this year but little, if any, forward progress.

He said if there’s anything that was proven in the last two years it’s that passive investing in diversified index funds is "a loser’s game during volatile periods."

"While 2010 will likely have little upside for the major U.S. market indexes, there will be lots of money to be made both in the U.S. and, especially, overseas by astute investors through selective investing," he said.

Hyman is joined once again in the contest by Kauai’s Norm Caris (up 97.9 percent in 2009), managing director-institutional sales for Caris and Co.; Richard Dole (up 37.8 percent), chief investment officer of Honolulu investment adviser Dole Capital LLC; and Dwight Melton (up 29.5 percent), co-founder of the Hawaii Stocks and Options group.

The participants may have long or short positions in the investments they recommend.

"Selection is key," Hyman said. "Just investing in entire markets or sectors ‘dumbs down’ portfolios. Each sector will likely have winners and mediocre performers. Investors need to own the well-managed undervalued winning companies in these sectors."
Hyman said the best sectors to invest in this year are health care, energy, food/agriculture and companies that benefit from the emerging economies of Asia, east Europe, Africa and South and Central America.

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January 24, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hawaii and Related Agriculture Daily Charts for the week ending 01-22-2010

The annual charts have bee updated. CLICK HERE to view. The 360 day comparative price, line and histogram charts, page has been updated also. CLICK HERE to view.

Maui Land and Pineapple (MLP) 01-22-2010

Calavo Growers (CVGW) 01-22-2010

Alexander and Baldwin (ALEX) 01-22-2010
alexweek012210

Monsanto (MON) 01-22-2010

Syngenta (SYT) 01-22-2010

DUPONT E I DE NEM (DD) 01-22-2010
Syngenta (SYT)

January 22, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Central Oahu subdivision would create 5,000 homes – Hawaii Business – Starbulletin

Castle & Cooke needs approval to build its $2.2 billion community on agricultural lands

By Allison Schaefers

Castle & Cooke has asked the state Land Use Commission for permission to convert agricultural lands north of Costco in Waipio into its $2.2 billion master-planned communities Koa Ridge Makai and Waiawa.

The developer, which topped off a 16,000-home, 40-year project in Mililani in 2008, now seeks to reclassify nearly 768 acres in Waipio and Waiawa from an agricultural to an urban designation. Such a ruling would allow Castle & Cooke to move forward on its long-stalled project, which has been planned since the 1990s.

Koa Ridge calls for 3,500 housing units and 500,000 square feet of commercial development, an elementary school, parks, recreation centers and churches to be built on about 575 acres makai of the H-2 freeway. At Waiawa, Castle & Cooke would build another 1,500 homes on 191 acres mauka of the H-2 near Ka Uka Boulevard. The development, which would offer homes from $200,000 to $1 million, would bring more affordable housing to Central Oahu, create some 2,500 jobs and create millions in state and county revenue, said Bruce Barrett, executive vice president of Castle & Cooke.

If the commission agrees to the request, the developer still must go before the city to get subdivision approval, but it will have met all major hurdles, as the LUC approved Castle & Cooke’s environmental impact statement in June. With all approvals, the company could break ground at the end of 2012.

A series of public hearings, which could take months and no doubt will reopen old wounds and mend some old fences, began yesterday. The LUC tentatively approved the project in 2002; however, community opposition and legal battles sent Castle & Cooke back to the drawing board after a state judge ruled that a formal environmental review was necessary before the subdivision, with its planned medical and commercial development, could be built.

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January 17, 2010 General Ag News and Notes, Maui Gold Pineapple Post a Comment

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – The Maui News

SUPPORT NEW COMPANY BY BUYING PINEAPPLE

Well, it’s a new year and the first thing I would like to do is say thank you to all involved in the new Haliimaile Pineapple venture. Kudos to all for keeping this legacy alive and the jobs that go with it.

I will buy one pineapple a week, and I urge the rest of the Maui community to do so as well. We must help prove that agriculture can thrive here on Maui, so I ask all of you to join me in this.

Big mahalo to the Erdmans and everyone involved.

Just one pineapple a week: I will, will you?

Tim Garcia

Makawao

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News

January 17, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Monsanto grants help county schools, 4-H’ers – The Maui News

KIHEI – Three Molokai and Maui schools plus Maui 4-H’ers received a total of $4,620 from the Monsanto Hawaii Science Education Fund for science and robotics programs.

The Maui County grants were part of $12,000 distributed statewide to 14 schools and organizations.

"It’s gratifying to see how excited our youth get as they learn about their world – how it works, how it touches our lives each day, how much there is to know and explore," said Paul Koehler, community affairs director for Monsanto Hawaii."Through this grant program, we hope to open up wonderful experiences for dynamic learning."

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Author: bigwave