Tag: kauai

November 19, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Hawaii utility receives $110M loan guarantee

HONOLULU (AP) — The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative has received a $110 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hawaii’s Democratic Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka said Thursday in a Washington news release that the loan guarantee will be used to expand renewable energy initiatives.

They say the guarantee includes nearly $73 million for hydroelectric plant improvements and a 10-megawatt naphtha/biodiesel fueled combustion turbine.

Inouye says the funds will help Kauai further harness the power of water and biofuel as part of the effort to lessen Kauai County’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Akaka says the homegrown energy sources keep dollars in Hawaii while reducing air, land and water pollution.

Hawaii utility receives $110M loan guarantee – Yahoo! Finance

October 13, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Reservoir owners, farmers contend proposed dam safety rules too costly

LIHUE » New state rules on dam safety could be too costly for landowners, several people testified yesterday at the first of four public hearings this week on proposed changes.

The main users of water from Hawaii’s reservoirs are farmers, and “farmers are struggling. It’s not a good time to tack on new fees,” said Howard Greene, representing major Kauai landowner Gay & Robinson.

Greene estimated that paying higher fees for dam safety requirements for its 13 reservoirs would cost Gay & Robinson $50,000 to $60,00 a year.

Proposed rules from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources will align the agency responsible for monitoring dam safety with laws on dam safety passed in 2007, said Edwin Matsuda, the department’s flood control and dam safety section chief.

The proposed rules include several new fees for dam owners, which help fund dam safety inspections, Matsuda said. There are also provisions for administrative fines and criminal penalties if there are violations.

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October 9, 2010 General Ag News and Notes, Vegtables Post a Comment

The Garden provides plenty at Common Ground

It’s an uncommon dining experience: you turn mauka off the highway in Kilauea, there are no advertisements, no string of cars looking for parking, no delivery trucks dropping off packaged food. No, it feels more like you have stumbled upon a 60-acre farm that happens to have a tranquil, open-air restaurant, where bananas and coconuts hang from the doors. A few feet beyond the tables are herb gardens. Beyond that is a massive garden, with rows and rows of vegetables. “You can sit down and look at where your food is coming from,” said Jay Sklar, chef and food-services director.

The Garden restaurant at Common Ground — a resource center for the community with many projects focused on sustainability — is leading the way to show what is possible for restaurants who embrace the “farm-to-fork” concept. When Common Ground — formerly Guava Kai Plantation — began the farming process over two years ago, the old guava trees, which were no longer able to produce fruit, were cut and chipped into a nitrogen-rich compost to make the soil healthy. They now continue to make their own compost with various materials on site, and mix it with oxygenated water in order to make a “tea” they spray on the crops. Sklar said they use no petro chemicals, and the practice of permaculture is used, meaning the landscaping is edible and plants are strategically placed in order to naturally benefit each other.

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October 31, 2009 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

The last haul – Hawaii Business – Starbulletin.com

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Gay & Robinson’s departure means Hawaii has only one sugar grower left

By Allison Schaefers

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Oct 31, 2009

The Last Sugar Mill in Hawaii Click for Larger Image
The Last Sugar Mill in Hawaii
Click for Larger Image
WAIMEA, Kauai » The sugar workers bringing in the last harvest at centuries-old Gay & Robinson had tears in their eyes, but this time it was not from the smoke and burning caramel smell that accompanies cane processing.

Amid a chorus of honking trucks, employees escorted Kauai’s last load of sugar cane from the field to the mill yesterday. Along the way, they paid homage to West Kauai, and the community responded in kind.

The convoy began at Makaweli Post Office and proceeded through Waimea Town, around the West Kauai Technology Center and into Hanapepe before stopping at Kaumakani Mill where the workers rode up the dusty drive like returning war heroes. They are the last of their kind on Kauai, the island that ushered in the state’s centuries-old sugar tradition with the opening of the first successful sugar mill in Koloa in 1835. They are the end of an era.

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September 24, 2009 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

The End of Sugar on Kauai – Is This the Beginning of the End for Hawaii’s Iconic Agricultural Products?

Thursday September 24, 2009

Yesterday, Gay & Robinson announced that they would cease sugar operations on Kauai this fall, a year earlier than they had previously announced. This will mark the end of sugar production on Kauai.

When Gay & Robinson first announced its intentions in July 2007, there was anticipation that a partnership with Pacific West Energy LLC would merely shift the sugar cane business from consumable sugar to the production of ethanol. Those plans never met fruition.

With the end of sugar production on Kauai, only Maui’s Alexander & Baldwin’s Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. remains as the only producers of sugar cane in Hawaii. Poor economic conditions and drought conditions on Maui have cast a shadow on the future of sugar on Maui.

It is not beyond comprehension that within a few short years, Hawaii’s two iconic agricultural products, sugar cane and pineapple, may be no more. Currently Maui Land & Pineapple Co. Inc. is the only remaining producer of pineapple in Hawaii. Cheaper sources of pineapple elsewhere in the world and huge financial losses have cast doubt about the future of that operation as well.

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September 2, 2009 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Monsanto Hawaii Science Education Grant Fund Applications Now Being Accepted – The Honolulu Advertiser

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Applications are now being accepted for the Monsanto Hawaii Science Education Fund. This Monsanto Fund grant program is open to public schools serving students at the intermediate, high school and college grade levels on the islands of Maui, Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai.

Established in 2005, the Fund helps provide Hawaii public schools with programs, tools, supplies and equipment to enhance science education in the schools, and encourage today’s students to consider a future career in the sciences.

Monsanto’s recent round of grants supported a wide variety of educational endeavors such as alternative energy solutions, forensic studies, biotechnology studies, an aquaponics facility, solar powered cars, hydroponic lab, robotics competitions, and supplies and equipment for courses in chemistry, biology, and agriculture.

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