Hawaiʻi's lands have always been in demand for their natural beauty and agricultural prospects. Tourism and sugarcane plantations have dominated their respective categories, often pushing out native Hawaiians and damaging the viability of the land.
But now the nonprofit Hawaiʻi Land Trust along with Island Harvest, a company dedicated to sustainable farming practices, are teaming up to protect food-producing lands in the Kohala community on the Big Island.
"We are thrilled to finalize the protection of these farmlands with values-aligned landowner stewards like Island Harvest," Lu'ukia Nakanelua, manager of ʻāina (land) protection at Hawaiʻi Land Trust, told Big Island Now.
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"And as the holder of the agricultural conservation easement, HILT is humbled by Island Harvest's commitment to forever protect and secure the true value in which the land holds — the ability to grow healthy food and respectable jobs for Kohala's families," Nakanelua added.
The conservation easement protects 28 acres of land through the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, a program from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The ACEP "protects the agricultural viability and related conservation values of eligible land by limiting nonagricultural uses," according to the NRCS website. That means the land will be available for local farmers to use rather than being snatched up for developments.
Island Harvest focuses primarily on growing macadamia nuts, native to the Hawaiian Islands, after taking over orchards set up following the less sustainable sugarcane plantations that were shut down in the 1970s and '80s.
Sugarcane production on the islands required the diversion of water from wetter areas to drier ones for irrigation, but according to CBS News, the rise in land values for tourism caused them to close down.
Their macadamia nuts are grown with no irrigation, and the husks of the nuts are reused to reduce their carbon footprint.
They also reinvest in the community, sharing 25% of the profits with their employees, and another 25% toward programs with organizations like the North Kohala Community Resource Center. The remaining 50% is focused on spreading compost and planting more trees, restoring the land's nutrients and water table.
Hawaiʻi Land Trust is a nonprofit that has been working with the NRCS since 2020, and the Island Harvest partnership is the second project completed so far, with 53 easements under their stewardship to date.
As the HILT website explains, they support companies by "holding and monitoring perpetual Conservation Easements and providing other support services and counsel through our network of relationships with government agencies and other conservation partners."
Together HILT and Island Harvest are ensuring a sustainable future for the Kohala area by supporting the land and the community, and they are hopefully setting an example for other companies to follow.
Jim Trump, president of Island Harvest, told Big Island Now: "Island Harvest is excited to collaborate with HILT and NRCS. This farming parcel, located at the makai end of Union Mill Road, has high-quality soil and receives sunlight and rainfall sufficient to successfully grow a variety of orchard crops. Orchard establishment takes time and funding to do it right. We look forward to sharing our success and learning from our challenges as we farm this potentially productive land."
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