Maui News NRXINTRC.HTM
Author: Maui News

# OFF DEADLINE/Reporter's corner

Tuesday, December 31, 1996

#### By HARRY EAGAR

Back in October, at the height of the drought, I was standing on the eighth floor of Kalana O Maui, waiting for a County Council committee to meet. Mary Evanson of the Sierra Club and I were looking out at the Central Valley, which was blanked out by a cloud of orange dust.

Evanson said it used to be like that all the time in the 1940s. Farmers have learned a lot about wind erosion since then.

Most people in Kihei, being malihini, don't realize it, but orange-out is the natural condition of the Central Valley. What makes Kihei and Maalaea habitable is sugar cane.

Earlier this year, I got a call from a woman in Lahaina who wanted to know why Pioneer Mill had to burn cane. Nothing unusual about that. What was unusual about this woman -- and I wish I knew her name but I wasn't taking notes -- was that she listened to the answer.

When I get this question, I always cite Mary Brewster. She was a whaling captain's wife who stayed on Maui during the winter of 1847. She toured the island, and coming down Haleakala Highway on horseback ran into the daily dust storm. It was so thick the riders couldn't see each other.

You can look this up in ``She Was a Sister Sailor: Mary Brewster's Whaling Journals.''

The only other person who ever listened to my answer about cane smoke was Buck Joiner. I explained that each year, HC&S imports about 50 billion gallons of water into the driest desert in the state, a desert that is naturally as dry and as bare as southern Arizona.

Buck, an engineer, wanted clarification on the numbers: ``You say billion with a `b'?''

Right, said I. That explained it for him.

As the wind arrives from the northeast, the venturi effect of being squeezed between the mountains speeds it up and sets up a swirl called the Maui Vortex. This sweeps down on Maalaea and onto Kihei. You can read about it in ``Prevailing Trade Winds,'' edited by Marie Sanderson.

I am not making this up, although I've been accused of that.

One Kihei civic leader told me I was full of it, that undeveloped parts of his town are not bare dirt. He should go look around the outskirts of the sewage treatment plant.

But I'm not saying that if sugar is shut down, Kihei will become a ghost town overnight.

Let it dry out for about 10 years, until the water deficit reaches half a trillion (trillion with a ``t,'' Buck) gallons; then let a couple of 10,000-acre grass fires (like on Molokai) strip off the plant cover. Then watch what happens when the wind blows.

Some people think that if they can shut down sugar, some other crop will take its place.

Aside from the historical fact that this hasn't happened at previously abandoned plantations, the economics of farming guarantee it won't happen in the future either.

Another friend once asked me why HC&S can't plant soybeans. ``I have a friend in Kula who grows soybeans and he can sell all he grows to the tofu factory. Why can't HC&S do that?'' she said.

I said I didn't know, but I'd think about it. Eleven years as a newspaperman in Iowa provided the raw data.

Multiply 37,000 acres of plantation by 37 bushels per acre of soybeans (an excellent yield in the Midwest). Multiply that by $7 a bushel, the best price soybeans have fetched over the last 20 years. Multiply that by two, because you could get two crops a year (maybe three on the most favored acres) on Maui.

Sum total: $20 million.

How much does HC&S make from cane and byproducts (primarily electricity)? Close to $100 million.

Profits in sugar may be thin, but that is because of tax considerations in other countries. Sugar itself returns a very high yield of value per acre.

That's because of the difference between the C-3 and C-4 pathways of carbon respiration in photosynthesis. Sugar cane (and grasses as a class) are much more efficient than other plants.

This difference was worked out in Hawaii by Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association researchers, and it was one of the most important discoveries in plant physiology in this century, though our children aren't taught about it in school.

Anyhow, the carbon pathway has important implications for global warming, and someday maybe I'll write about them.

Meanwhile, if I owned real estate in Kihei, I'd be down on my knees every day calling down blessings on HC&S' irrigation department. And I'd just love Maui snow.

Harry Eagar covers business for The Maui News.``Off Deadline'' is a weekly column that allows staff members an opportunity to take a step back and reflect on issues of the day, or to just talk story.