Macadamia nuts are one of Hawaiʻi's most valuable and iconic crops, so why are some farmers so worried about the industry in the wake of Hurricane Lala?
For starters, Lala's most devastating impacts were to the southern region of Hawaiʻi Island, which is home to thousands of acres of macadamia nut trees.
“In the Kaʻū region, between Nāʻālehu and Pāhala, there are over 5,000 acres of macadamia nuts in production. And to give context ... our acreage as a total industry here in Hawaiʻi was slightly over 16,000 acres,” said Andrew Trump, who helps run his family’s Island Harvest macadamia nut farm in North Kohala.
As of this week, he's also the president of the Hawaiʻi Macadamia Nut Association.
“You're looking at nearly one-third of our industry,” he said, “Probably even more of our 30 million pounds-per-year that are produced here in Hawaiʻi probably come out of that region.”
Hawaiian Host Group, the parent company of the Hawaiian Host and Mauna Loa brands, operates a lot of the macadamia farmland in the area. In 2023, it acquired about 4,000 acres of macadamia nut farm land at Kapua Orchards on Hawaiʻi Island.
In an HMNA meeting Thursday, Bill Disario of HHG said Lala will result in a drop in production.
“Our Kapua Orchards were hit pretty hard. We're still assessing that damage. We have a drone — lots of trees down in our orchard roads,” Disario said, adding, “All the crop that we can get we will take, 'cause we're going to be way short.”
Disario and other macadamia nut farmers in the meeting said it won’t be clear how much they lost for some time, because Lala left behind debris on roads that continue to block complete access to their land.
Storms can pluck macadamia nuts off branches and wash them away. Trees that are uprooted or knocked over might need to be replaced, and those can take up to a decade before they have anything to be harvested.
“When we talk about losing trees, we're setting ourselves back years, potentially decades, before replanted trees can come and replace that production, if they are replaced at all,” Trump said.
He added that disaster relief funding and insurance payouts following Hurricane Lala may play a big role in how the industry recovers.
The incoming decline in production amplifies what’s already been a rough few years for local macadamia nut farmers.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that the production value of the industry dropped by more than half from 2021 to 2023 — from nearly $63 million to about $30 million.
Similarly, Trump said local farmers produced about 60 million pounds of macadamia nuts just a handful of years ago, and in 2025 that number was down by about half.
Before Lala, the rise of cheaper, foreign-grown macadamia nuts being imported to the state had been dragging down the prices local farmers could get for their Hawaiʻi-grown product.
In 2024, the state Legislature passed food labeling laws requiring some locally sold products to disclose the origins of the macadamia nuts and coffee they contain.
However, a significant loophole in the law exempts products in which macadamia nuts aren’t the only ingredient. That means it’s still difficult for consumers to tell between products that use local and imported nuts.
Another setback came in 2022 when HHG closed a major macadamia nut processing facility in Keaʻau. It was the largest of its kind in the state, and its closure limited where farmers could sell.
Jeffrey Clark, HMNA's former president, said, “A lot of (farmers) are having a hard time finding somebody to buy the nuts. It does look like some of the processors will be buying nuts this year, which is good, but now with the storm there's not going to be nuts available.”
The association said a new processing facility is being designed, but it will be years before it becomes operational.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most recently with Lala, misfortune has plagued the industry.
“It really is the perfect storm,” Clark said. “We've got economics against us, we've got Mother Nature telling us something — twice now — in a row. Maybe it's time to do something different.”
Farmers with ruined macadamia nut trees will have to decide if they want to replant them, or use that land for something else.
Clark, who used to be the COO for the Olson Trust and president of Hāmākua Macadamia Nut Co., said he left the industry at least in part because of the challenges it's faced over the last few years.
He still wants to be an advocate for the farmers, and believes the industry will survive.
Trump said the same thing, though it will likely continue on an even smaller scale than it's at now. Some farmers are already shrinking their macadamia nut farming operations to their best-growing trees.
“Our industry is likely going to get even smaller than it is today before it may rebound, but I think there's still a lot of hope to deliver a high-quality Hawaiʻi-grown product to consumers moving forward,” he said.
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