ISLAND HISTORY: Hawaii’s independent sugar growers and Manuel Aguiar Jr.

Independent sugar growers in Hawaii worked their land as a joint effort with the sugar plantation in their vicinity.

They had control over their own land, assumed full financial risk of their crops, and had cooperative contracts with a plantation to transport and grind their cane at a plantation mill.

These growers were found exclusively in unirrigated areas, since irrigation required large areas under plantation management for economical operation.

Independent growers made great strides in utilizing modern methods.

Hand cutting was replaced by machine harvesting to some extent, and new cane varieties, improved agricultural practices, use of chemical weed control and other advanced methods increased yields by 2.5 tons of sugar per acre.

One independent sugar grower on Kauai was Manuel Aguiar Jr. (1892-1969).

When he started in 1911 at Kapahi, there were over 200 independent sugar growers on Kauai in the Kapahi region alone.

He’d gotten his start as an independent grower by borrowing $150 for a down payment on the purchase price of $532.50 for Territorial Lot 76 – 35.5 acres at $15 per acre.

Then in 1912, he cleared 18 acres and planted cane, which he harvested in 1914 for a net profit of $2,190.

By purchasing and leasing additional land, Aguiar would eventually have 150 acres in cane and employ several men who lived in Aguiar Camp alongside Kawaihau Road.

Unlike most independent growers, Aguiar worked alongside his men.

At harvest time he and his men cut the cane and carried it (hapai ko) into cane cars on railroad tracks that Makee Sugar Co. and later, Lihue Plantation would haul by train to their mills.

His final crop was harvested in 1958, when Lihue Plantation quit buying cane from independent growers, and when only three independent sugar growers remained on Kauai.

Yet, the overall Hawaiian sugar industry was then still robust, with 28 sugar plantations and around 1,800 independent sugar growers in operation in Hawaii.

Eight of these were in operation on Kauai: Kilauea Sugar Co., Lihue Plantation, Grove Farm, McBryde Sugar Co., Olokele, Gay &Robinson, Waimea Sugar Co. and Kekaha Sugar Co.