I’m looking back at the long, sustainability story of our farm and I see that we have come full circle.

When we started out, the objective was to farm and then, with the proceeds, eventually own land. At the time, we didn’t have any money and there wasn’t any land available, it was before the sugar plantations closed down, but we just kept on going and that was always our objective: to own land.

It’s what made us adapt and make change happen, all along the way, so we’d always be in the position we needed to be in 10 years later. We have always been comfortable with change, and it’s easy for us now. We like it and it’s a part of who we are.

The main reason we shut down the farm is that we saw what was coming. We knew the cost of farming was rising, rising, rising, and that in order to survive, at some point we would have to start cutting our employees’ pay and benefits.

The rise in farming costs was happening for external reasons, not due to any fault of our own. We were doing the best we could for our workers, but as hard as we’d tried over the years, we knew that eventually we’d be looked at as the bad guy for having to make cuts. And we didn’t want that. It just wasn’t an option to let ourselves get into that situation. That had a lot to do with why we closed the farm.

While we were in the process of closing down, this medical marijuana option came up. One of the most important conditions I placed on getting involved in applying for a medical marijuana license was that my workers get first shot at the new jobs.

So now, 30 years later, here we are. We own land, and though we shut down the banana operation, we still have a lot going on. It’s not like one day we closed and rode off into the sunset. It’s not the end, but a transition.

I want to make sure we are using the soil and land in a sustainable way. We have already signed leases with farmers to do some crop rotation. What we want to do is run one crop, then follow it with another crop and then possibly a third, and keep that going.

Once you get into that rotation, it’s sustainable. You’re not decreasing your soil. You rarely see that in Hawai‘i, though, for many reasons. If your business scale isn’t big enough to rotate, and if your market is not large enough, you cannot rotate your crops. But I can do this because we own the land.

If you’re trying to squeeze every last penny out of a deal, it might not be the most efficient move. In the long run it is, though, because it’s sustainable farming.

We did something different for our last banana harvest. Instead of leaving all the tall banana bunches, we used cane knives during the last harvest and chopped them all down. So by the time we got to the very last one, they were all down. We just harvested our last bananas about two or three weeks ago, and we already have the sweet potato farmer in there preparing the land.

We didn’t have to cut down the banana bunches like that. We could have just left them, because the lease says, “as is.” But it allowed us to keep our people employed as long as possible. They wanted to work until the last day, instead of leaving and getting unemployment. Shoot, you want to work? I’ll pay you.

It turns out we did a lot of work we could have left for, and passed onto, the next company, but I did that deliberately. I did it both to employ my workers as long as possible and also because now it’s easier for the new farmers to come in and start their rotation. There’s less material that needs to deteriorate.  It’s about getting to a point so when we transition to the rotating crops, it’s continuous.

Full circle, but not the end.

I met with my employees today to tell them our big news first, and now let me tell you about it:

We are shutting down the farm. The last bananas will be the ones we are bagging now, which will be ready around the end of March, and then that will be it.

The background, I explained to our workers, is that when we moved the farm here from Kea‘au, we were able to offer a good profit-sharing plan, and one of the best medical and dental plans you could get. It had vision and all kinds of extras.

But after a number of years, we started having a harder and harder time. First we couldn’t keep funding the profit-sharing plan and we had to discontinue that. Then we had to start cutting some of the medical benefits.

Then last year we had to cut wages one time. That was pretty desperate, and we always intended to raise them again, but we were never able to. And now, looking down the road, we see Banana Bunchy Top Disease, which is already in the gulches here nearby.

It’s all related to the price of oil. As the oil price has risen, folks that could pass on the cost did, but farmers cannot. When the oil price dropped recently, the cost of fertilizer, plastic, all sorts of things that have oil petroleum costs embedded in their prices, didn’t come down with it. Those costs stayed up.

The oil price will go back up again, and anticipating that we had to make a decision. It’s not that we’re going bankrupt – we’re not. We just need to do what we need to do before it gets to that point.

What Now?

We do have an option, as I explained to the workers.

A group that’s applying for a license to grow and distribute medical marijuana is interested in leasing some of our land, as well as the hydroelectric. Although I already knew we were shutting down when they first came to talk with me, I didn’t take it very seriously. But in the last few weeks, it’s become pretty serious.

My main concern is my workers. I told this other group that before I even considered leasing to them I’d need assurance they would give my workers first shot at jobs. They said they would. I also made some conditions regarding security. It’s not a sure thing, but on the outside chance they are granted a medical marijuana license, they will also have to take care of the community, especially in terms of security, so I can ensure that the community feels safe.

They are interested in me participating with their group because they know I know what I’m talking about when it comes to growing things, and about energy. We are talking but we haven’t signed any agreements about any of it yet.

I told my workers today that they can do whatever they need to do. If they want to take a layoff because feel they need to go out right now and start looking for a new job, they can. Or if they want to stay until the end of March, that’s okay too. They all said they will stick it out to the end.

I just heard the Alexander & Baldwin announcement that it’s transitioning out of sugar at its 36,000-acre sugar plantation on Maui. A&B’s Executive Chairman Stanley M. Kuriyama said, “The roughly $30 million agribusiness operating loss we expect to incur in 2015, and the forecast for continued significant losses, clearly are not sustainable, and we must now move forward with a new concept for our lands that allows us to keep them in productive agricultural use.”

“Transition” is the right word for what we’re doing, too. We don’t know exactly what the transition will look like, but we’ll still be around. The land that was in bananas is going to go into corn. A dairy that already leases land from us to grow corn is going to take the rest of that land and plant more.

We’ll see what happens with the rest, whether it’s the medical marijuana group or something else. There are options. Stay tuned.