I looked up the definition of “agricultural land use” and found that it was precise on what that is:
“Agricultural land is typically land devoted to agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of life — particularly the rearing of livestock and production of crops — to produce food for humans. It is thus generally synonymous with both farmland or cropland, as well as pasture or rangeland.”
So my questions to all the big landowners, such as Knudsen, Grove Farm, etc…, why is it, after giving leases to local families, all of whom are ranchers and farmers, that you took the land back and broke the contracts? Some of these families didn’t have their leases for even a year, but you took it all back. Is it because there is a much higher profit to lease your land to a company that grows trees, harvests, burns those trees and sells the electricity to KUIC?
This leads to my next question, which is to the state land board. If the definition of “agricultural land use” is to raise or produce food for human consumption, are these landowners still having the benefit of agricultural land use tax? Because in my mind and many others, they had lost this privilege when they stopped these families’ ability to grow and raise food.
Kauai County Council, are you aware of this? And what are you going to do about it? Kauai needs these farmers and ranchers to be able to raise and harvest for our sustainability. Being dependent on stores as the only source of food is not sustainability. It is just the opposite. Were we not working on the idea of allowing ranching families the ability to sell their meat at farmers’ markets as long as they follow all the rules?
People of Kauai, as you drive on our highway and on our county roads, such as Maluhia (tunnel of trees), look at the scenery. What you will not see is the usual cows or horses or farms but trees that will be planted and sold to us (via KIUC) to create electricity.
Living on Kauai is not getting better but worse for local people who have been here for generations. Others come here and only see profit and their own advancement with no regards to what they are destroying. But in this situation it’s old families that have been here just as long as we have but hires others to “manage” their land, virtually killing our struggle for sustainability.
Call the land use board, our County Council, our mayor, and ask “why?” And if they say that it’s their choice on how they use their land, well it’s only right they pay the taxes that are in line with the use, and it’s called “profit for us and screw the local people!”
•••
Mae Rita Jardin is a Koloa
resident.
How can you break a contract and not be liable for breach of contract? If you had a valid leasehold interest, and the lessor breaks the lease, you then sue for breach of the lease. I don’t understand the problem. You have legal remedies; use them. As to your attempt to involve the zoning ordinances, that could be possible evidence as motive in the lawsuit. While growing food or livestock is important, so is growing lumber for bio-fuel. Both keep the land from being developed for housing and more crowding of highways and infrastructure. If, in fact leases were broken, sue. If not, landowners are free to use their land as they see fit as long as the purpose is legal. If growing lumber for bio-fuel is not an agricultural use, then that issue should be litigated and a clear judicial determination of the zoning term “agricultural” should be set.
Aloha Ms. Jardín,
Your name is sure fitting for a resident of the Garden Island.
Mahalo for bringing this important information to all of our attention.
Logging for any purpose, fuel for energy, or houses, or whatever is INDUSTRIAL isn’t it; and certainly does not provide sustainable food for the residents of Kaua’i.
Shame on “killing off” farmers and ranchers for logging. Seems like insanity has the power. Kind of Satanic it seems because it is the opposite of Godly.
God’s Paradise included the Garden of Eden…not excluded it. Kaua’i the Garden Island, don’t ever forget it…!
And will the logging be all about growing INVASIVE SPECIES, spreading their seed by the Tradewinds to contaminate more lands and kill off indigenous species.
May We take issue with, and challenge what you said, “Being dependent on stores as our only source of food is not sustainability.”
It is not possible to have life sustainability being dependent on stores alone since stores carry 95% INDUSTRIAL FOODS.
JUST READ THE LABELS, the food is filled with chemicals, and petrochemicals (the latter all of which are carcinogenic cancer causing), petrochemicals are made from petroleum, the same petroleum they make gas and oil for your car…and you and all are eating that toxic poisonous deadly stuff every day.
That’s right, Big Food has gone INDUSTRIAL too. It just makes so much money what corporation could turn it down? Answer: NONE.
Many people on Kauai are demonstrating that a Life Span, based on a childhood and part or all of adulthood, wherein they were raised and sustained on real natural live unprocessed foods without chemicals allows for Life Spans ’s into the upper 90’s and into the 100+ years of age. This is considered BLUE ZONE LIVING, and Kaua’i already offers that.
However turning farm and ranch lands into Logging Industrial Enterprises demonstrates at the least an immaturity of mind and at worst an aberrant societal responsibility of stewardship of the land by Big Land owners called GREED.
And why would we need to burn logs for electricity when we are closing in on having 100% solar for Kaua’i’s energy and so many homes and all new homes mandated to have solar water. Besides the burn power plant is owned by a German corporation…so they get our money…?
Supermarkets bring our foods from factories, canned-bottled-packaged-shrink wrapped from thousands of miles away to 1/2 way around the world…and some of that being “fresh” food…?
BIG FOOD is providing an experiment in chronic degenerative diseases: Heart and Stroke Disease, too many Cancers, Obesity and Diabetes and Alzheimer’s, etc.
And the experiment is proving positive or correct: processed, junk, sugared, chemicalized food has lowered Life Span Expectancy, and it can get worse as the chemicals do the same, and relatively new are the Agriculture Poisons getting into the food, more and more since WWII, and Glyphosate is now found in tested pregnant women. Who would have thought of that. Chemicals in food really work, they kill people early in life.
Why is there Cancer in childhood, and so many passing away in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s…and even 80’s is too young compared to a natural life span in the 90’s and 100’s. It’s no mystery, eat poisons for a few to several decades and your dead. Boo on that, life is for living to the maximum life your food can sustain, so why eat unsustainable food from thousands of miles away when we can eat home grown natural food without chemicals and other worthless harmful additives from Kaua’i farms and ranches on even 1/2 to 100’s of acre farms. To our elected people…please don’t County Zone us out of our health and deserved life spans by taking our Ag lands away from us. We all know how important to life food is, try not eat any for 30 days…you’re dead by then already. Let’s stick with live local food full of life for a full life span.
Remember, even a 1/2 acre of crops is a lot of food at the Farmers Market and our grocery stores.
BIIG FOOD has proven it works, destroying lives and families…so now that we know, let’s be done with it, and go back to sustainable live, natural, unprocessed, un-sugared, and chemical free food on local farms. Sorry’s if there’s a few bug bites on your apple, just think of it as the canary in the coal mine, a good omen that the apple is not poisonous.
Can we aggressively ask our elected leaders to restore farm and ranch lands to the sustainable food farms we deserve as humans, providing the foods God put on this earth, not the food that the science laboratories put in the supermarkets without even testing them on rats and sending them to us in packages also made with toxic chemicals as preservatives.
Know too when you protect the people you are protecting yourself and your family.
Iniki showed us that we cannot depend on supermarkets for food in a disaster. The stores were empty of all the shipped in foods before the storm even hit. And if a disaster is statewide can we even depend on the military as we did after Iniki.
Clearly we need local farms and ranches and live natural unprocessed chemically free foods 365 days a year. It is God that wants us to eat every day as hunger and energy need and life dictate.
Mahalo,
Charles
It is the responsibility of the occupier’s political system to uphold and administer Hawai’ian Kingdom law as detailed in the Geneva convention and the military rules of WAR…. WHICH KAUAI IS STILL ENGAGED IN A Hundred and 26 years after the Illegal insurgency displaced the QUEEN and colluding with missionary and mercenary groups stole everything from the Peaceful Hawai’ian Kingdom…..
More information about the ongoing genocide of indigenous people and culture is explained and now in the International Criminal Courts…..
Be PONO, KNOW WHO AND WHERE YOU ARE!!! MAHALO
HAWAIIANKINGDOM.ORG