Hawaiʻi lost hundreds of its smallest farms and thousands of acres in recent years, but local agriculture has been “significantly” more profitable.
Those are some of the findings in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture, which was released this month.
The census is conducted every five years, and the latest one provides detailed information from 2022.
It found that Hawaiʻi lost 10% of its farms from 2017-2022. There were just under 6,600 operating farms in Hawaiʻi in 2022, the lowest number of individual farms in the state in two decades. Most of the lost farms — 557 of them — fell under the smallest size category, or those up to 9 acres.
Overall, the state lost 82,000 acres of farming land over the five-year span. About 1.05 million acres of Hawaiʻi land was used for farming in 2022.
But those still in operation are making more money. In 2022 the average farm sold about $103,000 in agricultural products, up from $77,000 five years ago.
As a whole, the market value of agricultural products sold in Hawaiʻi in the latest census was also sizably greater than in 2017. The market value in 2022 was greater than $670 million, a nearly 20% increase.
The USDA attributed the increase to the higher value of crop sales.
“I think the most interesting number is the value of ag significantly went up in a time that the net overall number of farms and even acreage went down. And so (I’m) wanting my team to find out more why that is so,” said Dexter Kishida, the state DOA's deputy to the chair.
The state DOA is still analyzing the data in the census, which includes crop and farmer information, and operation expenses.
Kishida said the DOA will analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and other factors affected the changes to agriculture in the state.
“America as a whole went through pretty significant inflation during this time. … We want to know how that affects that valuation, and is it purely inflated cost of doing business and therefore value of product? Or, is it really an adjusted number to reflect true growth?” he said.
The census provides officials with the most robust snapshot of agriculture in the state and informs agriculture-related policy.
Kishida said the state used to do more regular data collection on agriculture, but it no longer does.
