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Pesticides In Paradise Pacific Islands Monthly, December 1988 Michael Moriarty looks at the toxic legacy of agriculture in the Aloha State
Hawaii's fine weather and benign climate are famous the world over: however, year-round warmth and the crowd it attracts produce some problems. A 1968 report by the State Department of Agriculture titled "Evaluation of Pesticide Problems in Hawaii" concluded that Hawaii used pesticides at a rate fully 10 times higher than the national average.
Hawaii's pesticide consumption is three and a half times the per capita national average and six times that of its nearest neighbour, California- a major agricultural state. Meanwhile, dry stream beds on Oahu are kept clear of weeds with herbicides and, as one visitor to the islands said recently, "I've never seen a road gang spraying herbicides from a tanker... with a fire hose."
The almost unchanging climate in Hawaii means that there is no cleansing frost; pests are not killed or controlled by the rigours of winter, and breed happily all year around. Add six million visitors a year and an economy completely dependent on imports and you have a situation where between 14 and 21 new species of insect pests are identified in Hawaii every year.
Seventy-two major landowners control approximately 95 per cent of Hawaii's land. The largest landowner, Bishop Estate, owns nearly a fifth of Hawaii's private land, and such concentration of ownership - together with a natural scarcity of land and Hawaii's tourist and residential population- makes land prices skyrocket.
The market for land in Hawaii is not primarily agricultural: development of subdivisions, resorts and retirement communities has long been competing with agricultural uses. the small group of major landowners naturally looks to its property for maximum return, so farmers are paying premium prices, mortgage rates are high and the average young farmer cannot afford a large property.
Maintaining a market share is also a major consideration and if the small farmer fails to supply the ripe tomato or banana, Hawaiian merchants will look elsewhere. North American suppliers can readily satisfy the Hawaiian market through air freight, with the result that Hawaii's small farmers have to plant the same crop year after year to maintain their share of the market.
The net result is that many agricultural practices generally recognised as beneficial are being ignored as impractical: pushed by mortgage payments, it is economically impossible to let land lie fallow and the small farmer simply cannot rotate crops. There is no "back forty" to rotate the crops to, and all available land must be used to produce crops.
With literally nowhere else to go, the pests and diseases attracted by a given crop can build up over successive plantings until they represent a truly serious threat - and the Hawaiian farmers only desperate response is heavy spraying (once a week being the norm) which in turn drives up production expenses as both labour and pesticide costs increase.
With Hawaii's population including people from a broad range of cultures, it is no surprise to find a similarly wide variety of vegetables cultivated... and the State's farmers have been quick to adapt modern chemical methods to weed, disease and insect control problems. But there is a further problem in many cases, with the legality of their pest control problems.
The United States has some tough laws relating to the use of the various chemicals unleashes on the world by modern technology. To be approved for use on any given crop, each chemical must be tested on that crop and then evaluated for residues. The prescribed tests are extensive and expensive, running into millions of dollars and in some cases the total value of the crops is less than the cost of having the chemical cleared for use.
Add to this laws that make high dollar value per hectare crops more a liability than lower yield crops, and chemical companies shy away from clearing crops that otherwise might be worth their trouble. In this situation, it is unlikely many of Hawaii's variety of ethnic vegetables will ever be tested to determine which chemicals are really safe to use on them.
Hawaii's large agricultural business's also contribute to the pesticide problem. sugarcane undergoes "close-in," when its leaves effectively shade the entire land area below the plants, preventing weed growth. But before this can happen, cane fields are sprayed with a variety of herbicides. Of relatively recent introduction are cane varieties that require spraying with the herbicides round-up or Mon 8000 to "ripen" them ("ripening" consists of arresting the plant's actual growth while leaving it to continue photosynthesizing, thus increasing sugar content. Without spraying, the sugar content of the new varieties is inadequate). However, the precision of application is frequently not all that could be desired. A colleague told me in horror of how a 300 gallon (350 litre) planeload of Roundup had disappeared enroute to the intended spray location. He knew the plane had been loaded, but when the pilot went to spray the cane fields... there was no herbicide in the tank. Where it all ended up between loading and its intended destination was a complete mystery.
On another occasion he learned a crew had mistakenly spread rodenticide in a forest reserve. He did not like to speculate about the effects or retention of rodenticide in local pigs, which frequented cultivated fields as well as the adjacent reserve.
Perhaps more dangerous- though dwindling in its extent- is Hawaii's famous pineapple industry. In the past, exemptions have been granted to pineapple growers regarding the use of pest control substances banned elsewhere in the US. At various times in recent years it has been discovered that drinking water sources have been tainted with enough pesticides to cause restrictions on water use from the wells in the area. One of the substances noted was used in pineapple fields to combat ants: interestingly, it had been out of use for a number of years when discovered... and today purified bottled water is finding an increasing market in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, the closest office of the US Environmental Protection Agency is in San Francisco, and in absence of the EPA the US Coast Guard is supposed to be deputised as the EPA's agent.
President Reagan has been under criticism by environmentalists who say he has essentially gutted the EPA- and in Hawaii the Coast Guard Garrison has also been whittled down. There are no rescue facilities located on the islands of Kauai and Hawaii and volunteer auxiliaries are all that is left in their place. Undermanned for rescue and at the same time called upon to escalate the "war on drugs" that the President has declared, the Coast Guard has perforce been absent from the enforcement of many of the environmental laws it is supposed to oversee in Hawaii.
PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, December 1988
© Michael Moriarty
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