Farmers on Oʻahu's North Shore are dealing with the damage caused by some of the worst flooding they've seen in years.
Agriculture operations are found throughout the North Shore, which was among the island's hardest hit areas by the recent storms.
That includes the 1.5-acre Thrive Hawaii Family Farm in Haleʻiwa, run by Jason Witte and his family. They grow leafy greens, like won bok and cabbage, and other produce, like tomatoes and cucumbers, on their organic farm.
Much of that was underwater from the rain. The flooding was so severe that Witte described it as “kayakable.”
“We've been here for … seven (years) and some change now,” Witte said. “I've seen a little bit of standing water because the ground can get rid of it at more than, like, an inch per hour, but never like this.”
That includes the heavy flooding in the area in 2021, which collapsed some buildings and swept vehicles and structures across roads. The Wittes were mostly spared from rain and flooding.
On Monday afternoon most of the flooding was gone. Witte and his wife, Jennifer, were at the farm doing some cleanup at the farm.
Witte pointed out the leaves in many of the won bok, a type of cabbage, now mottled and dotted with holes from disease.
He said the flooding can allow fungal pathogens to infect plants. Most of an entire row of won bok appeared to be impacted.
“You can see that foliar disease is present. There’s a lot of spotting, there's a lot of wind damage,” Witte said. “Some of the cabbages have completely failed and there's mud all over them, so yeah, this particular planting is pretty much going to be a wash.”
The farm lost about $6,000 worth of produce in the immediate aftermath of the flooding, but Witte said disease, which takes a few days to become more apparent, can nearly double those losses.
About a 15-minute drive away at Kamananui Cacao Orchards, most of the rain-related damage was dealt to infrastructure.
Some of the electrified fencing to keep wild pigs out was tangled and buried. PVC piping to deliver water to the 5 acres of cacao trees was dug up or destroyed by flowing water. Parts of recently paved roads were swept away, revealing the lining underneath.
“It's the biggest storm I've ever seen since being here,” said Max Breen, head of operations at the orchard. Heʻs worked there for six years.
“Rivers popped up that we didn't even know existed through the property. So everything about the access to our farm is altered right now," he said.
A roughly 30-foot section of the orchard’s access road was completely wiped away in the most dramatic display of how much water was rushing through the farm.
Water that flooded an old sugar mill reservoir carved out a gorge about 60 feet deep where a hill used to be — and where that section of the access road used to sit.
“I have no idea how we're going to fix that,” Breen said. “It looks like you'd need to build a bridge, but that's probably not in the cards.”
He said a weather device on the property measured nearly 21 inches of rainfall on the property between last week Tuesday and Sunday.
In all of 2025 the farm received a total of 25 inches of rainfall.
Though the cacao trees are fine for now, “sanitary pruning” of damaged branches helps stave off flood-related disease. But the farm could still lose about 20% of its cacao.
Both farmers are optimistic about their ability to recover, although it likely means a lot of work in the coming months.
Witte said other farmers in the area might not be so fortunate.
“I think there's people that are doing far worse,” he said. “ There's a community out here of farmers that, you know, typically we suffer in silence. I don't think it's a community of people who are very vocal about things, and so even when we're dealing with catastrophe, people might not be able to speak up and ask for the help.”
He urged those in the public with the resources to help to do so.
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