A relief fund has been set up to help Hawaiʻi farmers hit by the recent storms.
The fund, organized by the Hawaiʻi Agricultural Foundation and the Hawaiʻi Farm Bureau, will help farmers recover and rebuild from the flooding, heavy winds, and rain over the last two weeks.
An online dashboard for reporting agricultural-related damages showed losses at nearly $11 million as of Monday afternoon.
Dean Okimoto is the chair of the ag foundation and a farmer in Kunia whose land was flooded. He said the reported damage is likely to be much higher in the coming weeks.
"We grow lettuce, so all the outer leaves of the lettuce are damaged. What we would get normally 4,000 pounds out of, we're lucky to be getting 40 pounds right now," he told HPR.
"We're losing tens of thousands of dollars in this whole thing. And that's not to mention the equipment breakdowns and everything else that we, we got to dig out from all the mud."
He said some of the fields were too inaccessible to assess the total damage.
Donations to the fund can be made online at the foundation’s website.
