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Hawaii Farmers Face $31M in Damages After Devastating Kona Low Flooding

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:11:17 GMT

A series of relentless Kona Low storms has left Hawaii’s agricultural community reeling, with record-breaking rainfall causing what officials describe as the worst flooding the islands have seen in decades.

Between March 11 and March 15, the National Weather Service reported that some areas received more than 30" of rain. A second system followed less than a week later, with the University of Hawaii recording staggering localized totals of up to 61". In total, an estimated 2 trillion gallons of water were dumped on the state’s countryside, leading Hawaii’s governor to label the event the most severe flooding since 2004.

U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda surveys flood damage in Hawaii.

(Rep. Jill Tokuda)

A Significant Blow to the Workforce

The impact on the farming community is widespread. U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda , D-Hawaii, reports that the scale of the destruction is historic.

“At least 1 in 3 farmers, ranchers and producers were negatively impacted,” Tokuda says.

Data from Hawaii Agriculture Disaster Response , based on self-reported farmer information, indicates that as of Thursday afternoon at least 500 farmers had been affected. The damage spans more than 4,000 acres, with estimated losses already exceeding $31 million. Farmers on Oahu have been hit particularly hard, accounting for over $20 million of that total.

(Hawaii Ag Disaster Response- Hawaii Agricultural Stewardship)

Legacy Crops Wiped Out

The losses are not just financial but also generational. Tokuda says she visited a coffee farm in Kona that was preparing to plant as the storms struck.

“They were just about to plant 20,000 saplings in their fields ... completely wiped out and gone,” Tokuda explains. “They had legacy trees that were originally planted over a hundred years ago by their founders — gone and lost.”

Beyond the loss of plants, the physical geography of the farms has changed. One of the most urgent requests from producers is for topsoil.

“They can’t sell their crops, which means they can’t pay themselves or their employees,” Tokuda adds. “They need to replace seedlings; they need to replace equipment.”

Long-Term Concerns for Food Security

Areas of Hawaii enjoy a nearly year-round growing season, farmers planting different crops in the wet and dry seasons. The timing of these storms was catastrophic for those in the middle of a harvest.

Amanda Shaw, a nonprofit leader for Agricultural Stewardship Hawaii, helped create the state’s farmer response platform. She says even her home area, Waimanalo, which avoided the worst of the flooding, still saw devastating losses.

“A lot of our farmers lost 90% of what they had in the ground,” Shaw says. “If it was leafy greens, that was totally gone.”

According to Shaw, coffee and macadamia nut growers likely sustained the heaviest long-term damage, while vegetable producers lost significant rotations of squash and leafy greens.

The primary concern now is whether the industry can recover. Shaw says while farmers are known for their resilience, the financial burden of this event may be a breaking point for some.

“We are concerned that if folks see significant damage on their land that they’re not able to recoup from, that it could be a pathway out of farming for some folks,” Shaw says.

Farmer Aid and Ways You Can Support

The Hawaii Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity on April 1 announced 333 Emergency Farmer Relief grants. The department reports it received over 1,600 eligible forms and continues to look for more funds to give producers. The grants provide a producer $1,500 to address immediate needs. FEMA granted Hawaii federal assistance for recovery efforts.

The Hawaii Agricultural Foundation and Hawaii Farm Bureau are accepting donations for farmers through the Hawaii Farmers’ Disaster Relief Fund. Tokuda lists a number of assistance programs for farmers on her website.

Agriculture in the Bull's-Eye: Raids Reportedly Resume on Farms, Meatpacking Plants

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:40:22 GMT

After President Donald Trump reportedly ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE ) to pause raids on farms and meatpacking plants last week, new reports say the administration is reversing course again. The on-again, off-again reports regarding ICE raids is sowing confusion for those who rely on immigrant labor and already causing labor shortages due to employees not showing up for work.

There was an update again late Friday, with President Trump saying he’s looking at new immigration policy steps that would allow farms to take responsibility for people they hire.

The Washington Post first reported Monday that ICE officials told leaders representing field offices across the country they must continue to conduct raids at worksite locations, which is a reversal from guidance issued just days earlier.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wouldn’t confirm the Washington Post’s report, but an agricultural association told Farm Journal the article is accurate based on their discussions with the administration.

Instead, DHS told us this:

“The president has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” says DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safe guard public safety, national security and economic stability. These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation.”

By Friday, there was another update. Reuters reported President Trump said he was looking at immigration policy steps that would allow farms to take responsibility for people they hire.

“We’re looking at doing something where, in the case of good, reputable farmers, they can take responsibility for the people that they hire and let them have responsibility, because we can’t put the farms out of business,” Trump told reporters. “And at the same time we don’t want to hurt people that aren’t criminals.”

According to Farm Journal’s Michelle Rook, the recent ICE raids are already creating absenteeism and labor shortages that could severally disrupt the U.S. food supply. Ag groups are again calling for immigration reform with hopes the issue will finally come to a head.

Ripple Effect of Immigration Crackdown

Joe Del Bosque, owner of Del Bosque Farms in Firebaugh, Calif., is experiencing the rollercoaster with labor, saying the shifting policy strikes fear in farmers and workers.

“There’s so much uncertainty as to what the administration’s going to do,” Del Bosque told Rook on AgriTalk this week.

Del Bosque says the raids on California produce farms are disrupting the harvest of perishable produce.

“They haven’t been really huge sweeps. They’re usually picking up a few people. But it creates a lot of fear, and people don’t show up to work. That’s just as bad as if they were taken away,” he says.

According to an exclusive report by Farm Journal’s The Packer , the ripple effect of Trump’s immigration crackdown on agriculture could be far-reaching — if the administration revives its focus on ag.

Kevin Kelly is the CEO of Emerald Packaging — the largest flexible packaging supplier to the leafy greens industry. Based in Union City, Calif., the company has been in the packaging business for 62 years. Kelly says the immigrant workforce in California is feeling uncertain and afraid.

“We’ve certainly heard folks aren’t turning up to work in the fields, and we’ve seen it in our facility. We verify everybody, so we know everybody in our facility is documented and can legally work in the United States,” Kelly tells Jennifer Strailey, editor of The Packer. “In our case, it’s brothers and sisters being deported, and other family members being afraid. Our employees are staying home to help their family members move, to take care of them or to take them to see an attorney — that kind of thing.”

Dairy operations in several states have also been raided recently. Dairy producers say they rely on immigrant labor to provide a stable year-round work force and to keep the U.S. food supply stable.

“We need these people to take care of our animals so we can produce food. Without animal care, we won’t have milk, cheese, butter — nothing,” Greg Moes, MoDak Dairy in Goodwin, S.D., told Rook.

The recent ICE arrests at Glenn Valley Foods of Omaha, Neb. have also led to absenteeism at meat processing plants.

“At the beginning of the Trump administration, we had this same worry with the crackdown — whether this was going to impact absenteeism and things like that,” says Brad Kooima, Kooima Kooima Varilek in Sioux Center, Iowa. “So, hopefully we can put that in our rearview mirror.”

By the Numbers: A Heavy Reliance on Immigrant Labor
The news this week of the Trump administration putting a pause on raids of farms and meat processors is welcome news for those in agriculture. From dairies and produce farms, to meatpacking plants across the U.S., these sectors rely heavily on immigrant labor.

Immigrant labor makes up a substantial portion of the meat processing workforce, with estimates ranging from 37% to over 50%. However, states like South Dakota and Nebraska have even higher concentrations of immigrant workers in meat processing — reaching 58% and 66%, according to the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute.

And a large portion of U.S. dairy farms rely on immigrant labor, with estimates indicating that over half of all dairy workers are immigrants. Specifically, these workers account for 51% of the total dairy workforce and are responsible for producing 79% of the U.S. milk supply.

Farmworker Justice estimates 70% of the produce industry’s farmworkers are immigrants. USDA’s estimates are lower — closer to 60%.

Not Your Average Operation: Large-Scale Farming in the New Mexico Desert

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 13:00:00 GMT

The high desert of northwest New Mexico might seem an unlikely place for a large-scale commercial farming operation. The region receives only about 20" of annual precipitation. However, at an elevation of 5,300' to 5,800' with 279 often sun-filled growing days a year and naturally near neutral-pH soil, it offers the perfect environment for year-round production of many crops. All one has to do is add water.

That’s exactly what Navajo Agricultural Products Industry (NAPI), the country’s largest contiguous, irrigated farmland operation, is doing. Located on the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the U.S., it occupies 275,876 acres. More than 72,000 of those are in active production in northwest New Mexico near Farmington.

Established by the Navajo Nation Council as a Navajo-Owned Enterprise to generate employment opportunities for tribe members and develop a profitable agribusiness, NAPI has been operational since 1970. In the past 55 years, NAPI’s initial mission of employing and feeding the Navajo people remains unchanged, but the operation, which has been GlobalG.A.P.-certified since 2001, sells to customers around the world, including Walmart, Bueno Foods, Whole Foods and Frito-Lay.

(Google Earth)

Irrigating the High Desert
Aaron Benally has been involved in farmland operations on the Navajo Nation, which occupies 27,000 sq. mi. across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, for more than 40 years. He began his career as a laborer, but now serves as NAPI’s potato crop manager.

“I love what I do and helping my own people,” he says.

Critical to that mission of food and economic security is water. NAPI’s farmland operations are 100% irrigated.

“Our water quality is the most pristine of any coming off the Upper Colorado River Basin,” says Preston Toehe, NAPI engineering technician.

Navajo Lake, built between 1958 and 1963, serves as the principal storage for the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP). President John F. Kennedy signed NIIP into law in 1962, as partial satisfaction of the Navajo Nation’s treaty and water rights, dating as far back as 1868.

NAPI has an allowable diversion from Navajo Lake of 508,000 acre-feet of water, which travels to NAPI’s farm operations via 90 miles of canals, 13 miles of tunnels, 7 miles of siphons and with the help of 84 pumping plants. The farm’s nearly 700 pivot irrigation systems are all remotely monitored and controlled. The federally funded NIIP remains incomplete, however, and stands at about 72% buildout. Its future will be dependent on receiving continued federal funding.

(NAPI)

Growing for Better Health
“The point is economic stability for the Navajo Nation,” explains Sky Hayes, specialty crop manager of NAPI’s organic foods program, which produces USDA organic-certified melons, squash, pumpkins, chiles, wheat and corn. While NAPI sells some of that organic produce locally, the farm also has contracts with the Navajo Nation, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers and other grocers in New Mexico, Colorado and even some as far as Pennsylvania.

Hayes says NAPI started the organics operation to address health concerns on the Navajo Nation where nearly half the adult population has Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.

“Newer generations are really looking at what they’re eating” he says. “Greens are especially popular.”

Two years ago, NAPI started growing Huckleberry Gold low-glycemic potatoes and is currently working with New Mexico State University to perform testing that would eventually allow the farm to market the potatoes as low-GI.

“We brought back the low-GI potato to provide a healthy food staple to the Navajo people,” Hayes says.

“There has been a lot of research on Huckleberry Gold potatoes, but farmers struggle to get certification,” he adds. “NAPI has an advantage there. I don’t know of any farmers growing that kind of potato.” He expects the testing and certification process to take another three years.

Filling the Native Foods Gap
Meanwhile, NAPI produces an array of value-added native food products — 80% of which are sold directly to Navajo consumers. Among those native foods is traditional corn. NAPI cultivates more than 400 acres of it in a typical year.

Other native foods the farm produces, processes and packages on-site are sumac; Navajo tea; blue, white and yellow cornmeal; blue corn pancake mix and Navajo frybread mix.

“Being an enterprise of the Navajo Nation, we want to carry on the tradition of Navajo farming and provide food for future generations,” Hayes explains. “Farming on the Navajo Nation has decreased the last 15 years.” That’s largely due to increasingly insufficient access to water on the reservation, which has become a major issue for local dryland farmers.

“The reservoirs have dried up,” Benally adds. “We’re all affected by climate change.”

(NAPI)

Raising Staple Dryland Crops
NAPI’s bread and butter crops are alfalfa, corn, pinto beans, potatoes and small grains. In a typical year, the farm plants more than 19,000 acres of alfalfa, 10,000 acres of feed corn and 3,500 acres in winter wheat. NAPI’s No. 2 corn is traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, and both feed corn and wheat go to Purina, New Mexico, dairies and hog feedlots. Flour is also sold under the Navajo Pride brand through wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales.

NAPI also has nearly 6,000 acres of pinto beans in production. Beans are triple cleaned, packaged in an on-site processing plant and shipped nationwide and internationally. Mexico receives 75% of the crop each year, and the rest mostly stays in California and New Mexico — appearing as featured items on restaurant menus in Farmington and Albuquerque.

“We have the best pinto beans in the world,” says Aaron Benally, NAPI’s potato crop manager.

NAPI has also been growing potatoes since the early 1980s, when Benally first joined the farm as a laborer.

At one point, NAPI had 2,700 acres in potatoes, though its production has declined dramatically. Last year, the farm saw its lowest historic potato yield due to poor weather conditions. NAPI also leases farmland to Navajo Mesa, which sells the chipper potatoes it produces on the Navajo Nation to Frito-Lay.

In addition to its conventional potato crop, NAPI produces USDA organic-certified potatoes, which it sells to local retail stores and Natural Grocers. All those potatoes are hand washed and hand packaged at the farm’s fresh-pack facility. “It’s labor-intensive,” says Vincent Cowboy, NAPI’s sales and marketing manager, but he hopes the farm will eventually produce and sell organic potatoes on the same scale as their conventional crop.

(NAPI)

Working for the People
NAPI contends with the unique challenge of operating a commercial farm under two government jurisdictions — that of the Navajo Nation as well as the U.S. government. But Hayes says at the end of the day, it’s not going to be the government or even the weather that will determine the farm’s success so much as water: “That’s the farm’s lifeline.”

Along with its people.

NAPI employs around 300 full-time staff. Ninety-eight percent of the farm’s workforce is Navajo, and a third of employees are women. Like many commercial operations around the country, NAPI often struggles to find and retain employees.

“The willingness of people to work in the ag industry has been declining,” Hayes says. “People want an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. indoor job, and we’re seeing a decrease in participation – even among our own people.”

And while NAPI is one of the largest industries located in the Four Corners region of the Southwest, it’s competing with the higher-margin oil and gas industry for workers,

“Energy companies can pay twice as much,” Toehe says.

On the downside, however, energy employment is subject to travel and frequent boom and bust cycles.

“People who want a stable job are going to stay with us,” Toehe explains. “NAPI has the backing of the Navajo Nation to keep it going into the next generation.”

“I could have gone to work in the mines,” says NAPI veteran Benally. “But this is a good place to work for people who don’t have a higher education degree and are willing to work hard and move up the ladder.”

USDA Requests Comments on Aid to Producers Discriminated in Farm Lending Programs

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 14:09:03 GMT

USDA requests comments on financial aid to those discriminated in USDA farm lending programs.

The aid comes via provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which earmarked $2.2 billion for the effort for those affected by prior to January 1, 2021. Aid is limited to not more than $500,000 per recipient.

In the Federal Register notice , USDA said while the IRA provisions provide financial assistance to those affected, the effort is “more fundamentally about providing USDA the tools to rebuild that trust by directly acknowledging the wrongs that have been committed and taking concrete actions to offset those wrongs.”

What to Expect

USDA seeks input on how to identify those who experienced discrimination and what kind of evidence should be submitted to back up the claims. Factors that should be considered relative to the aid include:

Whether only economic loss should be considered
Whether previous payments for discrimination should be considered
Where there are non-monetary ways to provide relief

USDA is also seeking feedback on using third-party entities in determining delivery of the financial assistance and on how USDA should use other programs in conjunction with the financial assistance to those who have been discriminated against in USDA loan programs.

Comments must be submitted to the Federal Register by Nov. 14. USDA has also set three public listening sessions on implementing the aid on Oct. 20 and 26 and Nov. 1.

More on USDA programs:

Minority Farmers Sue Over Repeal of the Debt Relief Program
Agricultural Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act

Clinton Griffiths: Lessons From The Desert

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 12:24:32 GMT

Draped across horizon-to-horizon skies, a developing cloud bubbles and rolls dragging a tail of rain now miles away. The smell of soaked soil floods the air as a cool breeze flutters across the field. These are the moments that defined my childhood.

Growing up in New Mexico, around a family of farmers and ranchers, rain was the currency of hope. I spent every season waiting on rain. Anything over a 10% chance was a “good chance” for moisture.

Precipitation in the arid corners of the country is always measured in hundredths. One good rain often resuscitated the evening sounds of frogs, could breathe life into brittle pastures and stamp puddles of possibility around the future.

RESPECT FOR RAIN

Since moving to northern Indiana, I’ve never lost that respect for rain. There are times when spring planting flounders under the weight of lingering moisture. Heavy downpours can flood and drown holes into otherwise perfect stands.

But you won’t find me at the co-op cursing the rain. I’ll admit, I’ve been close (once). Living in a climate and around an industry so reliant on temperamental torrents changes one’s perspective, apparently for life.

FORECAST THE FUTURE

In our July/August issue we dove into about weather modification — the practices and technologies being employed right now to impact local geographies. Here is our coverage:

Seeding The Sky: Can Scientists Manipulate The Weather To Benefit Agriculture?
Weather modification is the pursuit of technology or land management practices that ultimately alter, support or encourage a preferred atmospheric outcome. It can be done to improve or encourage rainfall; increase mountain snowpack; and suppress hail, lightning and flooding.

Greening the Desert: Dutch Researchers Work to Restore Sinai Peninsula
Dutch researchers think it’s possible to modify the weather in one of the driest regions in the world, the Sinai Peninsula, and restore a green, fertile plain by restarting the area’s water cycle.

USDA Scientists Testing New Cloud Seeding Technology
USDA scientists are testing new cloud seeding technology to help fight drought by unlocking more rain from clouds. The key ingredients are tap water and a small electrical charge.

Weather modification is being done in the U.S. and all over the world. While the ethics are worthy of lively debate, the technology should be studied, monitored and measured.

“Weather modification is on the brink of a mountain and we’re close to getting pushed to the top,” says Jonathan Jennings, meteorologist for the West Texas Weather Modification Association and 20-year practitioner of cloud seeding. “We’re also close to falling backward because there’s always been a massive PR issue.”

Water manipulation itself is nothing new. We’ve all seen field tile drain excess water, watched center pivots pump potential with irrigation and driven across reservoirs capturing mountain snowmelt.

Water is the tool that feeds the world. In agriculture, spend any time without it and you’ll discover its primal tug — a pull to the sky in search of nature’s next drink.

Do you have a question or comment about what you read in Farm Journal? Contact us at FJteam@farmjournal.com

Clinton Griffiths is a TV newsman, turned magazine editor, with a passion for good stories. He believes the best life lessons can be found down a dirt road.

Resilient Agriculture Requires Trade Barriers be Removed

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 12:01:12 GMT

The average person in Uganda eats 660 pounds of bananas each year.

That’s a lot of bananas: It’s at least 50 percent more than the weight of a full-grown male mountain gorilla . Ugandans eat more bananas per person than the people of any other nation.

I’m a banana farmer in the Rakai district of Uganda, so you might think that I’d have trouble keeping up with our country’s strong demand for bananas. The vast majority of Uganda’s bananas supply local markets, but we also export them. More than 1,000 tons each year head to Europe. Many of the bananas on my farm make their way to the United Kingdom, and other Ugandan farmers send bananas to Belgium and Germany as well as neighboring African countries.

It’s another example of how much the business of food production relies on global trade. Maximo Torero Cullen, the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), recently made a striking point: “One of every five calories people eat have crossed at least one international border, up more than 50 percent from 40 years ago,” he said .

Many farmers in our area have diversified into coffee, partly because the market for bananas can be unpredictable, with prices rising and falling in ways that are beyond our ability to anticipate or control.

Ugandans enjoy coffee, but we don’t drink it the way we eat bananas: Most of the coffee we produce ships overseas. It’s our best export crop.

I’m diversified in another way: Our main product is goats . We sell boer and mubende goats for meat. But that’s not all: We breed goats and educate fellow farmers in goat care and management. We also sell goat manure as a fertilizer, though lately we’ve been using it almost entirely to help our own bananas grow.

Our goat operation is international. We’ve sold to customers in Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. We’ve imported hybrids from South Africa because we seek to crossbreed them with our indigenous breeds to produce goats whose offspring grow up fast. The economics are risky, however, as a healthy male goat can cost as much as $1,000, plus $200 in freight. Yet the rewards of innovation can make it worthwhile.

If Africa had a better infrastructure, these prices would go down and international trade would go up. We need better roads and more rails. Another problem is the lack of electricity, which makes it impossible to freeze food during packaging and transportation. In a better-functioning system, more calories would cross more borders.

Sometimes it seems as though we don’t need to promote trade as much as we need to remove the obstacles that prevent it from reaching its full potential.

COVID-19 has disrupted much of the activity we already have. Borders have shut. The paperwork is immense. The rhetoric is hostile: Kenya and Uganda have accused each other of introducing cases of coronavirus. During the crisis, our exports to the UK dropped as the cost of airlifting cargo from Entebbe rose.

Even local trade is distorted. To combat COVID-19, our government gave away so much maize flour that the demand for bananas dropped. As prices plummeted, fewer trucks arrived on our farm to pick up the fruit. Bananas became so cheap, we wound up feeding them to our goats.

Bans on public gatherings halted our trainings, which make up a big share of our farm’s revenue. Livestock extension services stopped. Between April and July, nobody in Uganda could acquire vaccines for livestock.

The good news is that since the easing of the lockdown orders this summer, we’ve sold more goats than ever before. People are moving into the business and they’re turning to us for their stock.

One of the lessons of 2020 is simple resilience: In farming, we never know what to expect. Nobody saw the pandemic coming. As the world grappled with it, business in Uganda and everywhere faltered. People struggled but new opportunities emerged. To seize them, we had to adapt, even on our goat-and-banana farm in a developing country.

The only thing we can know about tomorrow with certainty is that Ugandans will continue to grow and eat bananas. More trade and a resilient food supply chain will help those healthy bananas and goats cross more borders to feed and nourish more families.

Grace Bwogi grows bananas and raises goats for meat and breeding on her farm in the Rakai District of Uganda. Grace is a member of the Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org