Honolulu Weekly

Roughy 50 farmers, residents and assorted politicians and board members gathered on a rainy night last week at Koko Head Elementary for a meeting to discuss the fate and future of Kamilo Nui. The tiny valley behind the Mariner’s Cove neighborhood of Hawai’i Kai is one home to fewer than a dozen farmers but is one of the last agriculturally-zoned areas on the southern side of East O’ahu.

The valley has been in agricultural production since the 1950s, when industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, who developed the area, set aside the 83 acres–along with a few smaller parcels above Kaiser High School. In recent years, however, the spectre of development has finally come around to Kamilo Nui, and farmers, though they have not given up, are nervous about the upcoming renegotiations of their leases with Kamehameha Schools, most of which are scheduled for 2010. Among the central issues at hand: providing a way for aging farmers to stay on their land beyond the years when they will be able to meet the lease’s requirement that 50 percent of their income result from farming, and staving off advances from developers looking to acquire farmers’ lease interest and turn plots into fake farms.

“The anxiety we feel in the valley is so unbearable,” said Judy Nii, whose family has been farming Kamilo Nui for more than 50 years. She asked Esther Kia’aina, Land Assest Manager at Kamehameha, “Do we still have a chance?”

Kia’aina’s presence at the meeting, which was organized by State Rep. Gene Ward, was cited as by many of those who spoke at the meeting as a welcome development. “I can’t speak for the higher-ups” at Kamehameha, Kia’aina repeatedly said, “But I can have a conversation with you folks.”

It was a lively one. Elizabeth Reilly, of Liveable Hawai’i Kai Hui, pressed Kia’aina for details on the school’s plans beyond 2025, which is the expiration date on many of the leases. Farmers Glenn Nii, Bill Yamabe and others expressed confusion as to the negotiation process. Underneath many of the questions, all of them delivered respectfully, seemed to be an attitude of mistrust of Kamehameha’s intentions.

Whether through force of her personality or simply by showing up, Kia’aina seemed to allay many of the community’s darkest fears. Both during the meeting itself and in smaller gatherings afterward, attendees thanked her for her presence, even if at times her presence seemed to be all she’d brought along.

Reilly pointed to the possibility of using some of the land for educational efforts, which she suggested could be a way for famers to remain both on the land and involved in the community. Kia’aina replied, as she did to several suggestions, that the idea merited further discussion and pointed to Kamehameha’s statewide agricultural sustainability plan, which is slated for release next year, as one place that discussion might advance.

In any event, farmers and concerned citizens were united in their vision for the valley’s future: when Ward asked for a show of hands as to who supported the existence of agriculture in Kamilo Nui in perpetuity, every hand in the room went up.