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Comment by manachar | Hacker News Reader

From my perspective on Maui I think the fate of this factory shows a problem for any business.

Had they modernized their equipment and methods years ago when profits were good, they very likely could have continued to operate at a profit and with the support of the community.

Instead, they kept the field burning, the impossibly ancient mill equipment, and didn't adapt to the dropping price of the sugar to focus on more secondary goods like rum, organic sugar, etc.

By the time they realized they'd either have to change or go out of business they were too ingrained to change and didn't have the profits to invest in changing anyways.

It's a bittersweet change for Maui. The real fear is that all of this ag land will increasingly be converted to inefficient subdivisions as has happened on O'ahu and is happening at Maui Lani and up in Kula.

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> By the time they realized they'd either have to change or go out of business

Sugar production in Hawaii peaked 40 years ago but even then had already been in decline for decades, there were no surprises for any of these companies and I'm skeptical they could have turned that train around.

> kept the field burning

Not burning the fields was certainly not going to help the bottom line, there's a reason these companies fight it.

> the impossibly ancient mill equipment

New mill equipment wasn't going to fix the real problem, that third generation kids didn't want to work in the fields for low pay.

> focus on more secondary goods like rum, organic sugar

It's called secondary market for a reason, it's small. Puerto Rico has (had?) ~70% of the US rum market but only employs ~700 people directly. That's the same number of people that HC&S just let go on Maui but that only produced 4% of cane sugar sold in the US.

The real fear is that all of this ag land will increasingly be converted to inefficient subdivisions as has happened on O'ahu and is happening at Maui Lani and up in Kula.

Inefficient in what sense?

Edit: Thanks for the reply.

I imagine if you have lots of small, different plots, tilling it becomes less efficient. You need ways to move between plots, you have to leave space to the fence / side of the plot, you cannot drive straight for long distances.

O'ahu has some of the worst traffic in the country hugely because of spread out neighborhoods/subdivisions rather than investing in density. We don't have enough land to build large enough highways, subdivisions, and the standard car-based strip-malls.

I will admit, from a certain economic standpoint, ag land in Hawaii is much less efficient than low-density housing. I do believe that the negative externalities not included in that point of view should be considered (e.g. environmental cost, harm to the tourist industry, the ever nebulous quality of life, etc.).

The economic pressures to build subdivisions are huge as the cost of housing is way out of proportion to the incomes of locals, but demand continues to outstrip supply and with as limited of land as we have, we're just not going to be able to ever reduce costs by trying to supply demand with subdivisions. Unfortunately, we also tend to pass laws limiting height and density and don't have enough mixed zoning areas.

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