Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow.
This is a sad day for most of us here on Maui. Alexander & Baldwin, a local company that traces its origin back almost 150 years, has announced it will close the last remaining sugar plantation in Hawaii by the end of this year. Sugar is just no longer economically viable.
The history of sugar here is not all positive, but it’s hard to describe how it has impacted this place in so many ways. Hawaii is a multi-ethnic society in which everyone belongs to a racial minority … and that’s mostly because of sugar. First came the Chinese, then the Japanese, then the Portuguese, then the Filipinos … all to work in sugar. They worked, they assimilated, they left the fields and entered business, became doctors and lawyers and educators and politicians. And new waves of immigrants arrived to take their places in the fields.
Today, across the broad isthmus of Central Maui, there are 35,000 acres “in sugar”. To irrigate the cane, the plantation created an intricate system of ditches and flumes to bring water down from the mountains into the fields. Part of the worry here today—along with concern for the 650 jobs that will be lost—is for what all that acreage will look like when the cane is gone and that water is no longer needed. Brown and dry and dusty?
Everyone here has known this day would eventually come. The company has experimented for years, looking for a practical use for the leaves (the sugar comes from the juice in the stalk) and for alternate crops. The local media is quoting company officials as being confident that Central Maui will remain in agriculture, will continue to be lush and green. I hope so. I hope they’re right. But I’m still going to miss those fields of cane. A lot.
From a different perspective, sugar stands out as one of our long-time subsidies, to the extent the Feds have acquiesced to a monopoly of only a few refiners. Consequently, although Chicago used to be the nation’s hub for confectionary products, production of such candies and related items has moved to Mexico and Central America, where the price of sugar is not regulated. The loss of those factories cost many jobs that will never return.
It is quite ironic to see how members of Congress will selectively pick some “subsidies” to rant about (e.g. Amtrak), while ignoring others, especially if located in their own states. Makes you wonder were those sugar refineries are operating, or, how many Essential Air Service airports remain in Florida..?
That is sad news. I remember visiting a plantation around Christmastime 1973 and buying refrigerated sugar cane stalks that you could chew on. The broad expanse of the sugar cane field was fascinating.
It’s quite remarkable the way sugar has been a part of so many lives and in so many ways. Very hard to let go of much of that.