What Hawaii Lost When Tourism Replaced Agriculture

I’ve lived on Oahu for more than three decades. I’ve watched the last sugar mill close. I’ve driven past thousands of acres of abandoned cane fields that once fed families and communities. And I’ve talked to enough kupuna (elders) to know what we really lost when tourism became our only industry – and why getting it back isn’t just hard, it’s basically impossible. Let me share what I’ve learned about the Hawaii that used to be, and why locals mourn what can never return.

The Sugar Empire That Built Modern Hawaii

Sugar wasn’t just a crop here. It was everything.

In the early ’90s, you could still smell molasses in certain parts of the island. That sweet, heavy scent would hit you on humid mornings, mixing with the salt air – thick enough that you could almost taste it on your tongue, coating the back of your throat. HC&S on Maui was still grinding cane. Oahu Sugar was limping along. The Big Island had a few operations hanging on by their fingernails.

By 2016, it was over. Completely over.

Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company – the last sugar plantation in all of Hawaii – harvested its final crop after 145 years. Rising labor costs, cheap imported sugar, and corn syrup in soft drinks killed an industry that once defined these islands. Between 1971 and 1982 alone, four major plantations shut down, including Kahuku Sugar right here on Oahu.

I remember driving up the Hamakua Coast on the Big Island in the late ’90s with my uncle, who’d worked the cane fields as a young man. He pointed out the window at mile after mile of overgrown fields. “All sugar,” he told me. “Now look at it.” Just guinea grass and ironwood trees are taking over what used to be 32 miles of productive coastline.

Here’s what most visitors don’t understand: these plantations employed thousands of people. Not just field workers – everyone. Mill operators, mechanics, truck drivers, administrators, and store owners in plantation towns. When Hamakua Sugar closed in the mid-’90s, 800 workers lost their jobs in one shot. And it wasn’t just a job. It was housing, community, identity.

The plantation camps had their own stores, schools, churches, and community centers. Different ethnic groups – Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Korean, Puerto Rican – all lived in separate camps at first, but they created something unique. They made pidgin English. They shared food. They married across ethnic lines. That’s where modern Hawaiian culture really comes from

But sugar wasn’t the only thing we lost. The sweet industry that once rivaled sugar had an even faster collapse…

Pineapple Paradise Lost 🍍

If sugar were king, pineapple was the crown prince.

James Dole showed up on Oahu in 1899 with big dreams. By 1922, he’d bought the entire island of Lanai for $1.1 million and turned it into the world’s largest pineapple plantation – 20,000 acres, eventually growing to over 16,000 acres in cultivation. The red volcanic soil stained everything it touched – workers’ hands, their clothes, their boots – a rusty badge of honor that marked plantation life. They called Lanai “The Pineapple Island” because that’s literally all it was.

In 1930, Hawaii exported nine million cases of pineapples from eight different canneries. We supplied 80% of the world’s canned pineapples. Let that sink in. This tiny island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean fed pineapple to the entire planet.

Then it all collapsed. Fast.

Dole closed its Oahu cannery in 1991. Del Monte shut down in 2008. Maui Land & Pine closed in 2009. Lanai’s last pineapple harvest happened in 1992, ending a 70-year tradition. Today, only two small operations remain – Dole Plantation produces fresh pineapples on a small scale as basically a tourist attraction, and Maui Gold up in upcountry Maui.

I’ve been to Dole Plantation probably fifty times over the years (it’s literally on the way to the North Shore). It’s the second most visited attraction on Oahu now. Tourists pay to walk through a garden maze and ride a little train while eating pineapple soft serve. The signs barely mention the brutal work of actually harvesting pineapple or what happened to the Native Hawaiian lands that got swallowed up.

Pro tip: If you want to see what real pineapple farming looks like, drive up to Kunia on Oahu’s central plateau. There are still a few small fields up there, and the contrast between those dusty red-dirt acres and the massive abandoned stretches is stark.

Meanwhile, one agricultural industry managed to survive – barely. But the numbers tell a devastating story about what happens when tourism takes over…

Coffee Keeps Fighting, But It’s Struggling ☕

Coffee is one of the few agricultural industries still alive in Hawaii. Barely.

Kona coffee on the Big Island generated about $62 million during the 2021-2022 season. That sounds impressive until you realize tourism brought in $20.68 billion in 2024 alone. We’re talking about 300 times more revenue from tourists than from one of our most successful agricultural products.

Coffee farmers are getting crushed by the same problems that killed sugar and pineapple. High labor costs. Climate change is messing with rainfall patterns – the clouds that used to roll in predictably at 2 PM now show up sporadically, leaving trees stressed and vulnerable. Pests like Coffee Berry Borer and Coffee Leaf Rust are destroying crops, turning perfectly ripe cherries into hollow husks. Most coffee farms fly in workers from Mexico, Central America, and California for about 12 weeks each year because locals can’t afford to do that work for what it pays.

Many small coffee farmers make less than $50,000 annually. Think about that. In a state where the median home price is… well, let’s just say you’re not buying a house on $50,000 a year.

I’ve visited coffee farms in Kona, and the farmers will tell you straight up – they do it for love, not money. One farmer told me, “If I calculated my hourly wage, I’d be better off working at Costco.” But he keeps farming because it’s what his grandfather did. Because the land matters. Because someone has to.

The economics are brutal, but there’s something even more alarming happening behind the scenes. The dependency we’ve created puts the entire state at risk…

The Numbers Don’t Lie About Food Dependency

Here’s where it gets scary. Hawaii imports 90% of its food.

Ninety. Percent.

We’re one of the most import-dependent states in the entire United States. Everything comes on boats and planes – the lettuce wilting in your fridge traveled 2,500 miles across the open ocean to get here. If shipping stops for even two weeks, we’re in serious trouble. A 2024 study found that just 12% of Hawaii households have enough food, water, and medical supplies stashed to survive for two weeks in an emergency.

Hawaii lost 82,000 acres of farmland between 2017 and 2022. That’s roughly twice the size of urban Honolulu, from Kaimuki to Pearl Harbor, just… gone. Not being farmed. Not producing food. Often, it sits empty while landowners figure out if they can develop it into condos or resorts.

The state keeps talking about increasing local food production and reducing import dependency. Politicians give speeches about food security and sustainability. But the trend is going in the opposite direction. We’re farming less, not more.

Walk through any Foodland or Times Supermarket and check the labels. California strawberries. Washington apples. Idaho potatoes. Australian beef. Thai rice. The local produce section? Maybe some lettuce from Waianae, some tomatoes from Kula if you’re lucky.

You might wonder why locals don’t just start farming again. The answer reveals the impossible trap we’re caught in…

Why Locals Can’t Get Agriculture Back

This is the hard truth that breaks hearts around kitchen tables across the islands.

Land costs are absolutely insane. In 2023, cropland rent in Hawaii averaged $295 per acre – the third highest in the entire nation. If you want to buy agricultural land? Recent purchases in 2024 ranged from $75,000 to $110,000 per acre. Show me a young farmer with that kind of capital. I’ll wait.

The economics simply don’t work. Farmers pay retail prices for supplies and equipment, then sell their produce at wholesale prices. You’re losing money before you even plant seeds. Transportation costs to get products to market are brutal because we’re on islands. Storage is expensive. Everything is expensive.

Meanwhile, importing food from California or Asia is often cheaper than growing it here, even with shipping costs factored in. Why would someone pay $8 for locally grown lettuce when they can get imported lettuce for $4?

I talked to a farmer at the KCC Saturday morning market a few years back who grows beautiful heirloom tomatoes. She told me she charges $6 a pound because that’s what it costs her to break even. “People complain it’s too expensive,” she said, wiping soil from her weathered hands. “But if I charge less, I’m working for free.”

Tourism revenue completely dwarfs anything agriculture could generate. The tourism industry brought in $20.68 billion in 2024. Total visitor spending. State tax revenue from tourism alone was $2.41 billion. The entire coffee industry – our most successful agricultural export – generated $62 million. That’s not even 0.5% of what tourism brings in.

You can’t compete with those numbers. You can’t convince investors to put money into farms when hotels and vacation rentals generate exponentially more profit.

But the story of what we lost goes deeper than economics. The plantation era created something unexpected that tourists never see…

What The Old Plantation Life Actually Meant

Here’s something that gets romanticized way too much. The plantation era wasn’t a paradise.

Working conditions were brutal. The pay was terrible. Different ethnic groups were segregated into separate camps. Early plantation workers faced exploitation, debt bondage, and basically indentured servitude. Native Hawaiians saw their land taken and their traditional agriculture destroyed.

But… and this is important… those plantation communities created something real.

People who lived through that era talk about joy, belonging, and strong community bonds. Multiple generations of the same family working the same plantation. Everyone knew everyone. The “Old Gym” on Lanai wasn’t just for sports – it was where people gathered for hula performances, celebrations, and music. The sound of ukuleles drifting through warm evenings, kids running barefoot between houses, the smell of rice cooking in every kitchen. Portuguese shared malasadas. The Japanese shared mochi. Filipinos shared adobo. That mixing created the local culture we have today.

My friend’s grandmother grew up in a plantation camp on Maui. She’ll tell you it was hard work and they didn’t have much money. But she also says everyone looked out for each other. If one family was struggling, neighbors brought food. Kids from different ethnic backgrounds played together. That community support system was real.

When the plantations closed, those towns often died. On Kauai, roughly 1,000 plantation cottages existed across 10 camps in the early to mid-1900s. Today, only about 350 remain, and most are falling apart. For decades, when longtime residents died, bulldozers would literally flatten their homes because zoning laws made repairs and rebuilding illegal.

The empty cottages stand like ghosts now, paint peeling in the tropical humidity, roofs caving in under the weight of abandoned dreams. What replaced those tight-knit communities changed Hawaii forever…

The Tourism Trade That Changed Everything

Tourism didn’t just supplement agriculture in Hawaii. It replaced it completely.

By the 1990s, sugar plantations were closing left and right, and tourism was the only game in town. Landowners looked at their fallow cane fields and saw condos, resorts, and golf courses. On Oahu especially, the pressure to reclassify agricultural land for urban development was (and still is) enormous.

Here’s what happened: as agriculture died, resort development exploded. Former plantation land became a tourist destination. Workers who used to harvest cane or pineapples now clean hotel rooms or serve drinks at beach bars.

The jobs aren’t comparable. Plantation work was hard, but it was stable, often multi-generational, with company housing and tight communities. Tourism jobs are often part-time, low-wage service positions without benefits or housing. You can’t raise a family on $15 an hour in a place where studio apartments rent for $1,800 a month.

Resident sentiment surveys from 2024 show complex feelings. About 75% of residents agree tourism “has brought more benefits than problems,” up from 69% the previous year. About 80% say tourism supports local businesses. But those numbers also reflect resignation – tourism is literally our only major industry, so what choice do we have?

In May 2024, visitor numbers were actually down 4.8% compared to the previous year. For the first five months of 2024, total arrivals declined 4.1%. But visitor spending still reached massive levels. The industry is so dominant that even small declines cause panic about the economy.

Yet beneath all these statistics lies a truth that’s even harder to swallow. The dream of a self-sufficient Hawaii? It died for reasons that go beyond simple economics…

Why The Dream Of Self-Sufficient Hawaii Died

Ancient Hawaiians fed themselves completely before Western contact. The population was probably around 80,000 people, and traditional agriculture – kalo (taro) in wetlands, dryland crops, fishponds – sustained everyone.

Today we have 1.5 million people. That population density is the first problem. Even if we converted every available acre to farming, we couldn’t feed everyone. We don’t have enough arable land for that many people.

We also don’t produce artificial fertilizers, which require natural gas refineries we don’t have. Modern agriculture depends on synthetic fertilizers. Traditional Hawaiian farming methods were sustainable but lower-yielding. You can’t feed modern Hawaii with traditional methods alone.

Climate change is making everything worse. Unpredictable rainfall – droughts that stretch for months, then flash floods that wash away topsoil in muddy torrents. More severe droughts. Hurricanes and tropical storms damage crops. Invasive species are destroying ecosystems and threatening native plants.

Government programs to support agriculture are underfunded and ineffective. The Agricultural Development Corporation was created after the plantation era to help expand agriculture, but it hasn’t provided nearly enough support. Programs get announced with fanfare, then quietly defunded.

Some people are trying. Organizations like Kahua Pa’a Mua on the Big Island work with families to set up small farms using traditional Hawaiian techniques. Sensei Ag uses hydroponics to grow crops efficiently. MA’O Organic Farms on Oahu’s Waianae coast trains young farmers and supplies local restaurants.

But these are drops in the ocean compared to what’s needed.

And if you drive through the areas where agriculture used to thrive, you’ll see exactly how dramatic the transformation has been…

The Land That Tourism Swallowed

Let me tell you about driving upcountry Maui in 2017, right after HC&S closed.

I was up there for a friend’s wedding. We drove through the central valley, and I saw 36,000 acres of former sugarcane land just sitting there. Empty. The wind swept across those barren fields, kicking up red dust that settled on the windshield like rust-colored snow. Alexander & Baldwin, the parent company, had sold it to a venture called Mahi Pono with vague promises about “diversified agriculture”.

Some of that land is being farmed now, but nothing like the scale of sugar operations. It can’t be. The economics don’t support it.

On Oahu, abandoned cane fields near Waipahu became shopping centers and housing developments. The North Shore still has some small diversified ag – lettuce, bananas, papayas – but it’s tiny compared to what used to be there.

Insider tip: If you want to see the ghost of plantation Hawaii, drive Highway 19 up the Hamakua Coast on the Big Island from Hilo toward Honu’a. You’ll pass mile after mile of overgrown former cane fields. Small plantation towns like Paauilo and Laupahoehoe are hanging on, but they’re shadows of what they were. Stop at one of the little stores and talk to the old-timers. They’ll tell you stories.

The infrastructure is still there in some places – irrigation ditches choked with weeds, mill ruins where metal beams jut toward the sky like broken bones, camp houses falling apart with vines creeping through shattered windows. But nobody’s maintaining it because there’s no economic reason to.

What tourists encounter today is a sanitized version that hides the real story…

What Visitors See Versus Reality

Tourism has literally repackaged plantation history as entertainment.

Dole Plantation on Oahu calls itself “Hawaii’s Complete Pineapple Experience”. You can ride a train, walk through a garden maze, eat pineapple whip – that artificially sweet soft-serve that bears little resemblance to actual pineapple. The gift shop sells tchotchkes made in China. There’s almost nothing about the actual workers, the labor conditions, or what happened to the industry.

Hawaii’s Plantation Village in Waipahu does a better job – they’ve preserved and restored buildings representing different ethnic groups, and they host cultural festivals. But it’s a museum. A historical curiosity.

When tourists stay at hotels built on former plantation land, there are rarely markers explaining what was there before. The cane fields are gone. The mill is demolished. The workers’ camps are bulldozed. It’s like that history never existed.

I’ve seen Reddit posts from visitors feeling uncomfortable about plantation culture in Hawaii. They sense something’s wrong with how it’s presented – the glossing over of harsh conditions, the pretending that immigrant workers “traveled” here voluntarily when many were deceived or coerced. That discomfort is valid.

But the deeper issue is that we can’t have both worlds. We can’t preserve plantation history honestly while also papering over it with resort development. We can’t honor agricultural heritage while simultaneously making farming economically impossible.

The question everyone asks is why Hawaii let this happen. The answer reveals something most people don’t want to accept…

The Choice Hawaii Never Really Had

Here’s the thing nobody wants to admit. Hawaii never really chose tourism over agriculture.

Economics chose for us. When sugar and pineapple stopped being profitable due to global competition and changing markets, plantations closed. Workers lost jobs. Landowners had massive empty acreage and huge property tax bills. Tourism was the only industry that could absorb that labor and generate revenue from that land.

A University of Hawaii report looked at diversifying Hawaii’s economy beyond tourism. Their conclusion? It’s “theoretically possible but economically unrealistic”. Hawaii’s small market size, geographic isolation, and high costs make it extremely difficult to develop industries that can compete globally.

The report suggested gradual diversification into niche industries that align with Hawaii’s strengths – ocean-related industries like fishing and maritime, specialized agriculture like macadamia nuts and tropical fruits, and creative fields like video production. Notice what’s not on that list? Large-scale sugar and pineapple farming.

Locals express frustration constantly on social media and in community meetings. “We should focus on industries Hawaii excels at naturally,” one Reddit user wrote. “Tourism is one, but astronomy, geothermal, marine biology, specific agriculture like coffee, cocoa, mac nuts… are better avenues”.

That’s realistic thinking, small-scale, high-value agricultural products. Not feeding ourselves completely, but supplementing imports with local crops where it makes sense economically.

But there’s something deeper at stake here than just crops or revenue streams. What really disappeared cuts to the heart of island life…

What Actually Gets Lost In Translation 💔

The saddest part isn’t the crops. It’s the culture and community that came with them.

Plantation towns had identity. They had generations of families who knew each other – kids whose great-grandparents arrived on the same ship, who grew up in houses separated by a chain-link fence and a shared clothesline. Kids grew up together. Grandparents passed down skills and stories – how to sharpen a cane knife on a whetstone, where the best mangoes grew wild, which families made the best andagi. When the plantations closed, that social fabric was ripped apart.

People had to move away to find work. Families scattered to the mainland. The kupuna who remember plantation life are dying, and with them goes that living memory.

What replaced it? Tourist-oriented service jobs that don’t build community the same way. Seasonal work. Multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet. People working two or three jobs don’t have time to coach Little League or volunteer at church, or play music together at community gatherings.

I see this erosion happening in real time. The local families I knew when I first moved here in the ’90s? Many of their kids left. They’re in Las Vegas, Portland, and California, looking for affordable housing and better jobs. The people moving in are wealthy transplants and retirees who can afford Hawaii’s cost of living.

That’s what locals want back and can’t have – not the backbreaking work in cane fields, but the community stability, the multi-generational continuity, the sense of shared purpose and belonging.

So what does all this mean for Hawaii’s future? The reality is more complicated than anyone wants to admit…

Living With What Remains

So where does that leave Hawaii? Living with reality, which is messy and complicated.

Tourism generates the money that keeps the state running. Period. The $2.41 billion in state tax revenue from tourism pays for schools, roads, and hospitals. There’s no replacing that revenue source, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling fantasy.

At the same time, we desperately need more food security and local agriculture. Not because we’ll ever feed ourselves completely, but because resilience requires multiple options. When supply chains break down – during a pandemic, natural disaster, or shipping strike – having some local food production could mean the difference between hardship and catastrophe.

Small steps are happening. More farmers’ markets where you can taste sun-warmed tomatoes that were picked that morning, still smelling of the vine. Farm-to-school programs connect local producers with public schools. Ag-tourism that actually educates visitors about agriculture while supporting small farms.

But these remain tiny compared to the massive tourism industry. And land costs keep rising, pushing agriculture further out of reach.

The Hawaii that existed before mass tourism – the one powered by sugar, pineapple, and coffee, the one with thriving plantation communities and local food production – that Hawaii is gone. Completely gone. No amount of nostalgia or wishful thinking brings it back.

What locals mourn isn’t just the crops or the jobs. It’s the loss of economic diversity, the loss of community stability, the loss of connection to land and food. It’s watching empty fields that once fed people now sit vacant, while grocery stores import everything from thousands of miles away.

And maybe the hardest part? Knowing that our children and grandchildren will grow up in a Hawaii where tourism is literally the only option, where serving visitors is the only path to economic survival, where the skills and knowledge of growing food and working the land have become historical footnotes instead of living traditions.

That’s what Hawaii lost. That’s what can never come back. And every time I drive past those abandoned cane fields – watching the guinea grass sway in the trade winds where sugar once grew – every time I see another “For Sale” sign on agricultural land that’ll probably become condos, I feel that loss all over again.

The sweet smell of molasses is gone from the morning air. The rhythm of plantation life is silenced. What remains is a beautiful tourist destination built on the bones of an agricultural empire that once fed the world – and can barely feed itself.