Even as they clean up damage from the last two Kona low storms, Hawai‘i farmers are hunkering down again.
The scale of damage caused by the current storm still remains to be seen. But for farmers still picking up the pieces from the last storms, more severe weather can only delay their recovery even further.
“The soil in a lot of places is still mostly saturated,” Christian Zuckerman, vice president of the Hawai‘i Farmers Union, told Aloha State Daily Friday. “So flooding could happen very quickly.”
Zuckerman, himself a farmer in Wai‘anae, said the soil around his farm has a high clay content that allows it to retain moisture for a long time. Already, he said, the rains this week have caused standing water to pool around his farm again.
“The fear is, if there’s another 10 inches of rain, what’s going to happen?” Zuckerman said, adding that the first two storms dropped a year’s worth of rainfall in a matter of hours.
Zuckerman said that, out of an abundance of caution, some farmers in Waialua were preemptively evacuated to shelters on Thursday in case North Shore waterways flood. By Friday afternoon, a flash flood warning was in effect for Otake Camp, and the Honolulu Department of Emergency Management issued an official evacuation order.
Meanwhile, Zuckerman said that much of the work farmers and ranchers have done to recover over the last two weeks — clearing debris from the last storms, removing flood-deposited sediment from their farms, and more — all may end up for naught if this storm forces them to do it all over again.
“In farming, the profit margins are slim and the costs are high,” Zuckerman said. “In a disaster like this, it’s not just today’s harvest that’s affected, it’s tomorrow’s harvest, it’s your harvest for months to come.”
Zuckerman added that farmers are under further strain by a climate growing erratic. He said that Wai‘anae “didn’t have a lick of rain” between last May and December.
“And since December it feels like it’s never stopped raining,” Zuckerman said, adding that the heavy rains have been washing away the drought-stricken soil.
Zuckerman said Gov. Josh Green’s announcement this week that President Donald Trump will issue a major disaster declaration for the March storms likely won’t lead to immediate benefits for farmers. However, he said he hopes the state and counties will be galvanized into accelerating their own assistance programs, now that they are assured that their funds will be replenished by federal aid.
In the meantime, Zuckerman urged farmers to fill out storm damage surveys to help the state and federal government to determine what assistance programs to make available. He also recommended they reach out to the Farm Service Agency for additional disaster relief.
The Hawai‘i Farmers Union Foundation has also launched the Hawai‘i Flood Response Fund, where people can donate funds to help farmers and rural communities recover from the floods. Aloha State Daily has found an anonymous donor who will match all donations up to $100,000.
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