Peppers for the mainland, asparagus for Hawaii. For decades,
isle researchers have worked to improve crops, most notably
sugar and now the alternatives to it. To the HARC, here's

WHAT'S HOT

By June Watanabe
Star-Bulletin

Robert Osgood, head of crop science at the center, shows off some peppers. Coffee, asparagus, forestry and forage crops for animals are leading sugar alternatives.

Photos by Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin

Stephanie Whalen looks out over the rolling fields of Kunia and sees the future of Hawaii agriculture in the rich, red soil. "This area is really ripe for a lot of research and development now," she said.

In many ways, it's a future that can be determined in large part by her employer, a 101-year-old organization that has its roots in sugar but is looking now at an array of smaller crops to eventually lay a new economic base for the state.

Whalen is president/director of the former Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, which changed its name to the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center in April with scant notice by the media.

That's probably because the end of the HSPA - even if by title only - was just the latest in a long list of signs that things aren't so sweet these days in Hawaii's fields.

Just 10 years ago, there were a dozen sugar plantations. By year's end, after Waialua Sugar harvests and processes its last crop, there will be five.

Whalen said that HSPA's broad mission has long been to better agriculture production in general.

The HSPA helped pineapple growers, for example, before that industry got its own researchers, and it has worked with the state in forestry and with farmers in bettering their crops, she said.

And every time you bite into sweet Hawaiian corn, chances are the seeds were produced by HARC. James Brewbaker, a University of Hawaii horticulturist/geneticist, developed a hybrid sweet corn and HARC produces all the seeds for it sold in the state. It's a symbiotic relationship in which Brewbaker gets a percentage of royalties every time HARC sells the seeds.

One of the first privately funded research centers in the world, HSPA was "able to make Hawaii grow more sugar per acre with less manpower than anybody in the world," Whalen boasted.

Haole koa, the scrub tree we love to hate, isn't a pest anymore. The improved leucaena is 25 percent protein and great cattle food, says HARCs Michael Austin.

"We don't see sugar disappearing," Whalen said, but the reality is that it just costs too much to grow and process sugar in the islands. The crop no longer can support the state, much less a research organization that's been devoted to its growth and production for more than 100 years.

HARC receives funding from the sugar industry based on production levels. With output expected to drop to 350,000 to 400,000 tons as more companies give up the crop, so too will industry funding. Already, support from sugar growers has dropped 60 percent in recent years, Whalen said. In two years, the staff has gone from 110 to 70 and the budget, currently $5 million-plus, will be about $1 million less in the coming fiscal year.

But as the plantations fold, "there's not going to be another sugar cane to take up all the acreage," Whalen said. Outside of possible housing development down the road, coffee, asparagus, forestry and forage crops for animals are among the most promising alternatives for former sugar lands.

Interestingly, among the big growers of these newer crops are the former/soon-to-be-former sugar planters themselves.

At Waialua Sugar Co., for example, diversification is the order of the day as sugar operations wind down. Jerry Vriesenga, president of Dole Foods-Hawaii, parent of Waialua Sugar, said his company continues to look to HARC, as it did to the HSPA, for help in coming up with crops that can be profitably grown - without the use of insecticide.

When agronomist Robert Osgood visits the 78-acre Kunia experiment station, he sees no reason why Kunia, once also covered with cane, cannot "become the center of vegetable production."

Osgood, chief of crop science, and other HARC researchers oversee plots of chili peppers, watermelon, asparagus, dwarf elephantgrass, dry-land taro, spring barley, coffee trees, neem trees, haole koa, banagrass and assorted other plants - edible or otherwise - in different stages of varietal and disease testing.

There's still some testing of sugar cane, albeit most of that work takes place at HARC's 80-acre experiment station in Maunawili. At one time, researchers produced 1 million seedlings a year for the plantations, Whalen said. That number is now down to 200,000.

Michael Austin points to scrub trees growing in the midst of the fields, waxing almost poetic about how they meet the crucial four "P's" for forage food: palatability, protein content, persistence and productivity.

It looks like that nuisance haole koa to plain lay people, but to Austin, it's "improved leucaena."

Nearby grows a crop of perennial peanuts, also being tested for cattle forage. It's not just peanuts to Austin, an agronomist/horticulturist hired last year to specialize in forage plants.

A crop of perennial peanuts is being tested for cattle forage. It's not just peanuts to Austin, an agronomist/horticulturist hired last year to specialize in forage plants.

Osgood who joined HSPA in 1969, when sugar was everything, shakes his head when he sees huge stalks of banagrass waving in the wind. "We didn't think about planting that (in the past) because it was bad for sugar cane," he said.

Now, banagrass is being sought as fuel for biomass-to-energy operations.

Much of the work at Kunia involves testing different varieties of plants, with mainland companies often hiring HARC to do the testing. Hawaiian soil is considered ideal for this because there is no real winter season.

One plot bursting with plump red peppers is for a company looking to improve the seed lines for its main salsa ingredient, while a watermelon grower is looking for sweeter, juicier fruits.

For local farmers, forget artichokes. HARC research has shown the weather's not right, nematodes are too pesky. But Whalen and her crew are high on asparagus as a potential money-making crop for the future. "It's one of those diversified crops that can take a big leap," Austin said.

Another potentially big industry - commercial forestry. The idea is grow trees either to provide chips for paper pulp or as lumber for construction.

"It takes just seven years (for a tree) to grow from a plant to a 100-foot tall tree," Austin said. "It's like crop production."

Prudential Timber Investments is leasing about 24,000 acres from the Bishop Estate, which bought the Hamakua Sugar lands in 1994, with plans to grow eucalyptus trees for wood pulp.

Whalen hopes forestry can become a new, substantial base of support for the research center, even if not on the scale sugar was.

Although the research center has suffered through downsizing and still struggles to find new sources of funding, it continues to think big. Austin, for one, looks at the forage crops being nurtured in Kunia and says with conviction, "We can be the leaders of the world" in production.