Pesticides in Paradise

Hawaii

Michael Moriarty looks at the toxic legacy of agriculture in the Aloha State.

M AWAITS fine weather and be nign climate are famous the world over: however, year warmth and the crowd it attracts produce some problems. A 1968 report by the Slate of Hawaii Department of Agriculture tilled Eva luation of Pesticide Problems in Hawaii concluded that Hawaii used pesticides at a rate fully 10 times high er than the national average.

Hawaii’s pesticide consumption is

three and a half limes the per capita national average and six times than of its nearest neighbour, California a

major agricultural state. Meanwhile,

dry stream beds on Oahu are kept clear of weeds with herbicides and, as one visitor to the islands said recently, “I’ve never before seen a road gang spraying herbicide from a tanker . . . with a firehose!”

The almost unchanging climate in Hawaii means that there is no cleans ing frost; pests are not killed or con trolled by the rigours of winter, and breed happily all year around. Add six million visitors a year and an economy

completely dependent on imports and

you nave a situation where between 14 and 21 new species of insect pests are identified in Hawaii every year.

Seventy-two major landowners con

trol approximately 95 per cent of Hawaii s land. The largest landowner.

Bishop Estate, owns nearly a fifth of Hawaii’s private land, and such a con

centration of ownership together

with a natural scarcity of land and Hawaii’s tourist and residential popu

larity makes land prices skyrocket.

The market for land in Hawaii is

not primarily agricultural: develop

ment of subdivisions, resorts and re tirement communities has long been competing with agricultural uses. The small group of major landowners naturally looks to its property for maximum return, so farmers arc

paying premium prices, mortgage

rates are high and the average young farmer cannot afford a large property.

Maintaining a market share is also a major consideration and if the small farmer fails to supply the ripe tomato or banana, Hawaiian merchants will look elsewhere. North American sup

pliers can readily satisfy the Hawaiian

market through airfreight, with the result that Hawaii’s small farmers have to plant the same crop year after year to maintain their share of the market.

The net result is that many agri

cultural practices generally recognised

as beneficial are being ignored as im

practical: pushed by mortgage pay

ments, it is economically impossible to let land lie fallow and the small far nier simply cannot rotate crops. There is no ‘back forty’ to rotate the crop to, and all available agricultural land must be used to produce crops.

With literally nowhere else to go, the pests and diseases attracted by a given crop can build up over succes sive plantings until they represent a truly serious threat and the Hawaiian farmers only desperate re sponse is heavy spraying (once a week being the norm) which in turn drives up production expenses as both labour and pesticide costs increase.

With Hawaii’s population including

people from a broad range of cul tures, it is no surprise to find a simi

larly wide variety of vegetables culti

vated . . . and the State’s farmers been quick to adapt modern chemical methods to weed, disease and insect control problems. But there is a furth er problem in many cases with the legality of their pest-control programs.

The United States has some tough laws relating to the use of the various chemicals unleashed on the world by modern technology. To be approved for use on any given crop, eadi che mical must be tested on that crop and then evaluated for residues. The pre scribed tests are extensive and expen sive, running into millions of dollars, and in some cases the total value of many of the crops in question is less than the cost of having a chemical cleared for legal use.

Add to this laws that make high dol lar value per hectare crops more a liability than lower yield crops, and chemical companies shy away from clearing crops that otherwise might be worth their trouble. In this situation, it is unlikely many of Hawaii’s variety of special ethnic vegetables will ever be tested to determine which chemicals are really safe to use on them.

Hawaii’s large agricultural

businesses also contribute to the pesti

cides problem. Sugarcane undergoes

‘close in’, when its leaves effectively shade the entire land area below the

plants, preventing weed growth. But

before this can happen, cane fields are sprayed with a variety of herbicides.

Of relatively recent introduction are cane varieties that require spraying with the herbicides Roundup or Mon 8000 to ripen’ them (‘ripening’ con sists of arresting the plant’s actual

growth while leaving it to continue

photosynthesising, thus increasing

sugar content. Without spraying, the sugar content of the new varieties is inadequate). However, the precision of application is frequently not all that could be desired. A colleague told me in horror of how a 300-gallon 350 litre planeload of Roundup had dis appeared en route to the intended spray location. He knew the plane had been loaded, but when the pilot went to spray the cane fields . . . there was no herbicide in the tank. Where it all ended up between loading and its in tended destination was a complete mystery.

On another occasion he learned a

pilot had mistakenly spread rodenti

cide in a forest reserve. He did not like to speculate about the effects or retention of rodenticide in local pigs, which frequented cultivated fielcls as well as the adjacent reserve.

Perhaps more dangerous though

dwindling in its extent is Hawaii’s famous pineapple industry. In the past, exemptions have been granted to pineapple growers regarding the use of pest control substances banned else where in the US. At various times in recent years it has been discovered that drinking water sources have been tainted witn enough pesticides to cause restrictions on water use from wells in the area. One of the subst ances noted was used in pineapple fields to combat ants: interestingly, it had been out of use for a number of years when discovered . . . and today, purified bottled water is finding an in

creasing market throughout Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the closest office to Honolulu of the US Environmental Protection Agency is in San Francisco, and in the absence of the EPA the US Coast Guard is supposed to be deputised as the EPA s agent.

President Reagan has been under criticism by environmentalists who say he has essentially gutted the EPA and in Hawaii the Coast Guard garri son has also been whittled down.

There are no rescue facilities located on the islands of Kauai and Hawaii and volunteer auxiliaries are all that is left in their place. Undermanned for rescue and at the same time called upon to escalate the ‘war on drugs’ that the President has declared, the Coast Guard has perforce been absent from the enforcement of many of the environmental laws it is supposed to oversee in Hawaii. D