The added costs of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on international imports has hurt some local businesses, but the state’s agricultural industry is working to capitalize on the administration’s support for “made in America” and homegrown products by pushing to remove some of the restrictions on produce that cost Hawaii an estimated $760 million a year.
Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke said for the last century, the USDA has prohibited most types of freshly cut flowers, fruits, vegetables and plants from Hawaii to the mainland and Alaska; and the ones it does allow sometimes require extra irradiation treatment and inspection that can make them unmarketable to mainland consumers.
That’s because of a U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation that stems from the 1912 Plant Quarantine Act, which gave the federal department the power to implement and enforce agricultural quarantines to protect the continent from disease and pest-carrying plants — most notably, fruit flies from Hawaii.
Hawaii Farm Bureau Executive Director Brian Miyamoto said that those protections are necessary to support farmers on the mainland, but the harsh regulation has limited opportunities for the fresh produce sector in Hawaii that he said “has true opportunity for growth.”
“It’s adding another market,” Miyamoto said. “Those are outside dollars, so even better. Instead of how we import and send our dollars to the mainland, why don’t we get their money here and diversify our economy?”
Luke said the Trump administration’s focus on “made in America” products opens the door to more opportunities for Hawaii to diversify its economy by growing its agricultural sector.
“So as there are a lot of things that are of concern that are coming out from the Trump administration, there are things where we can align and say, ‘If you guys are true to form and want to support U.S.-made, U.S.-produce, look to Hawaii as a partner,’” she said. “We want to continue those messages.”
In 2024, Luke hosted the first-ever Hawaii delegation to meet with the USDA to identify concerns and opportunities for agricultural growth. In March, the delegation of over 20 farmers and ranchers returned to Washington, D.C., to meet with the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and multiple USDA agency heads.
Two months later, Luke returned with a smaller delegation, which included Miyamoto, to meet with USDA and continue talks to modernize the 113-year-old USDA regulation. She said the “aggressive talks” about deregulating items from the restricted export list were “fruitful and meaningful.”
The state also is working to increase the federal government’s involvement in implementing harsher restrictions for items coming into Hawaii.
Currently, those efforts — such as filling out agricultural inspection forms on incoming flights to Hawaii — are the state and county’s responsibility, Luke said.
At home, officials are ramping up biosecurity efforts. In June, Gov. Josh Green enacted Act 236 that renamed the state Department of Agriculture to include Biosecurity and allocated $26 million to carry out biosecurity-specific positions and penalties for illegally transporting plants, animals and microorganisms into the state.
But Luke is trying to extend the same urgency to the federal government.
She’s ultimately asking for a two-way street, and said that “we want the federal government’s support in helping us to ensure that no invasive species or biosecurity threats come into the state.”
Luke said discussions that focus on lessening the restrictions on produce exports from the state have been commodity-specific, targeting to deregulate bananas, limes and avocados — produce that thrives in the state’s farmlands — from the restricted list.
Miyamoto said that state-level talks to increase collaboration with federal agricultural agencies are the “most effort focused on trying to address this one regulation” in his 20-year tenure at HFB.
“It’s not just a meet and greet; it’s how do we solve problems?” Miyamoto said.
Show me the money
The USDA regulation on produce exports have cost the state an estimated $760 million a year, according to economist and Vice President of Ulupono Initiative Jesse Cooke, whose organization financially invests in and advocates for Hawaii’s farmers, ranchers and growers of fresh local produce.
Cooke said while the annual $760 million in negative financial impact seems large, there’s a difficulty in identifying the true impact of opportunity costs.
“Why would investors want to come here and invest in crops that they can’t grow on the mainland? They’re not even going to think about doing it because of this USDA quarantine,” he said.
In 2021, the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, released a brief stating that despite active efforts at the state level to boost agricultural production on unused land, Hawaii’s agricultural sector has been in a steady decline for the last four decades.
Cooke said that the USDA regulation amplifies that economic outlook.
“It strangles the economic creativity of entrepreneurs that want to try new crops that can only be grown in Hawaii, while the huge market is on the mainland,” he said. “You lose a bunch of businesses that aren’t even able to develop because of this (quarantine).”
Cooke said that the regulation “has been in place for so long” that it’s “out of people’s memory banks.”
He said the regulation’s lengthy existence means that “people can’t even dream about certain types of businesses that they want to create and they want to grow because this (regulation) is just there.”
An open market
David Cox, who co-owns Kane Plantation Avocados and Kane Plantation Bed and Breakfast on Hawaii island with his husband, Michael, has sold Sharwil avocados from the couple’s 27-acre avocado farm since 2011.
For years, Kane Plantation Avocados and about 20 other local avocado farmers in West Hawaii used the same packinghouse to sell their harvests to local Costcos and Foodlands across the Big Island and Oahu.
But when the facility’s owner died, it left many West Hawaii growers wondering where they were going to sell their produce.
Around the same time in 2013, the USDA adjusted the federal regulation to allow the export of Sharwil avocados — which account for most of Hawaii’s commercial production of the fruit — to 33 designated northern states under strict conditions, after the department found that the avocado variety was a poor host for the oriental fruit fly.
In 2017, Cox opened up a new packinghouse on the Kane property in Honaunau with cooperation from the USDA’s Plant Protection and Quarantine division, which helped to ensure that it was in compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act and certified by the USDA and the National Organic Program.
A year later, Cox’s avocado packinghouse began selling Sharwil avocados, more than half from its own harvest and the rest from 20 local farmers, to distributors in Seattle and a few in Canada. The packinghouse remains the only one in the state that exports Sharwil avocados to the mainland.
“There’s no point in having a farm if you can’t sell your produce,” Cox said. “It allows us to diversify our customer base. You always want to be in a situation where demand exceeds supply.”
Cox said the farmers that are certified to export their Sharwil avocados work on a “Hawaii-first” basis, only shipping the surplus to the mainland or to Canada.
He said exporting from “the middle of the Pacific on a remote little island comes with enormous challenges.”
“There really is no incentive, other than having the comfort in knowing that there are more opportunities to sell your fruit,” Cox said.
Exporting from Hawaii also comes with an added transportation challenge since Cox may only ship avocados on commercial flights to the mainland from November to March.
“If we had to send to New York, for example, there’s no direct flights from Hawaii island. You’d have to go to Seattle first, change planes and be there for maybe three or four hours between flights, you’re in the middle of winter, it could be freezing conditions and therefore your product could be exposed to low temperatures and could be spoiled,” Cox said. “The risk is all on the packinghouse — it’s not on the customer who ordered it. The customer who ordered it, if they don’t like the quality when they pick it up, they just reject it, and we have to eat the cost.”
Dana Shapiro, CEO of Hawaii ‘Ulu Cooperative, which represents about 190 small and diversified ulu farmers across the state, said that even if the restrictions were lessened, the co-op’s choice to not export is intentional.
She said Hawaii imports over 99% of its staple foods, which include ulu.
“It’s not that we’re against exporting, but basically 100% of our staple foods are imported,” Shapiro said. “That is an extremely risky situation for Hawaii to be in from a purely food resilience standpoint.”
Cox said Hawaii’s avocados compete on quality, but they also have an emotional advantage when it comes to consumers.
“People that come to Hawaii, that have a connection to Hawaii, that love Hawaii, who say, ‘I remember when we were on vacation and we had this wonderful stuff, and I’m willing to pay $7 for an avocado just to bring back that memory,’” Cox said. “But that avocado has got to be good.”
Source: The Garden Island
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