My research is based out of Poʻipū, Kauaʻi, home of the tiny harbor of Kōloa Landing, on Kauaʻi’s south shore. The small town of Kōloa was Hawaiʻi’s first plantation town and has since turned into one of the island’s main tourism hubs. It is a microcosm of the development of Hawaiʻi and its evolution from subsistence, diversified agriculture, to sugar, to tourism. 

Early Hawaiians grew, foraged, and caught all their necessary provisions. As global and merchant capitalism spread throughout the world, Hawaiʻi was eventually drawn into it. Kōloa Landing became the favored spot for ships to anchor on Kauaʻi because it was safer and more reliable to sail away from. Kōloa was also able to supply ships with the agricultural products that were numerous on the island at the time. Produce, pigs, and wood came from Kōloa. Other supplies such as salt beef, butter, salt, oranges, coffee and rice were brought to Kōloa Landing from different places around the island (Donohugh 2001, 52, 64). The people in Kōloa entered into global trade by trading supplies for trinkets, then trading sandalwood. They also engaged in the fur and whaling industries. All the different kinds of trade overlapped somewhat, and by 1820 all four kinds of trade were taking place (Donohugh 2001, 50–51). 

The more recent history of Kauaʻi and specifically Kōloa, home of the first commercial sugar plantation in Hawaiʻi (1835), is deeply tied to sugar. In 1835, Ladd and Company were given a 50-year lease--the first of its kind in Hawaiʻi--on a 980-acre tract of land in Kōloa, which allowed them to hire Hawaiian laborers and work the land (Donohugh 2001, 88). In 1838, a dam and mill were built and a weekly market was started. While the plantation continued to operate, it was at an economic loss. This first run of the Kōloa Plantation ultimately failed due to financial problems and continual tensions between the plantation owners, workers, and the local chiefs. Yet this foray into capitalist production “initiated many changes in the traditional way of life on the island” (Donohugh 2001, 93). As time went on, new owners obtained new leases, purchased more land, and began importing supplies and equipment to improve Kōloa Landing and the Kōloa Plantation. During this time, other sugar plantations were started in other places on Kauaʻi, notably Līhuʻe, which eventually became the government seat, replacing Wailua which had been the traditional seat of power since the early Hawaiian days (Donohugh 2001). 

In the next decades, as the sugar plantations evolved and imported workers from around the globe, Kauaʻi and Kōloa transformed. A turning point in Kauaʻi’s history was the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 between the United States and Hawaiʻi. This treaty “removed the tariff of approximately 30% on unrefined sugar entering the United States . . . Kōloa sugar production more than tripled during the 1870’s as a consequence”. More infrastructure was added to the plantations and Hawaiʻi became economically dependent on the United States (Donohugh 2001; Miller 2023). In 1893, the United States overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. 

The plantation vastly altered Kōloa in terms of the environment and its social and political makeup. Rivers were altered to direct water, roads were built, harbors were used and developed, people from all over the world immigrated to Kauaʻi to work at the plantation, and the politics of Kauaʻi became tied to sugar and its development. Workers were given a small plot of land and a pig in addition to their meager wage keeping diversified agriculture alive as Kauaʻi slowly turned to a more monoculture agricultural economy. As sugar declined, it was painfully obvious Kauaʻi needed another economic engine to provide employment opportunities for many skilled and unskilled plantation workers. Changes in ownership at the Kōloa Plantation and changes in Kōloa’s development trajectory facilitated Kōloa town’s transition from primarily an agricultural community to a tourism economy (Donohugh 2001). Kōloa Plantation finally closed in 1996, but land ownership and development trajectories continue to be structured by the history of the plantations. 

As Kauaʻi was transitioning from a sugar economy to a tourism economy, leaders implemented different strategies that tried to keep farming a viable livelihood and also address the problems that made farming difficult. The main problems that continued to surface revolved around profitability, including issues with labor and import and export challenges. 

• Labor challenges: On the United States mainland, immigrants from primarily Mexico were coming in to work agricultural jobs, yet in Hawaiʻi, this was not happening. Agricultural labor was expensive in Hawaiʻi. 

• Import/export challenges: Farmers tried to get agricultural products such as macadamia nuts, pineapple, papaya, bananas, and avocados into both the United States domestic market and into international markets such as Japan. Shipping from Hawaiʻi to the United States mainland proved difficult due to pest problems and embargoes. Farmers tried to get Hawaiʻi into a status like another foreign country in order to get around these issues. 

• Environmental challenges: Diversified agriculture was gaining ground leading up to the 1990s. Hurricane ʻIwa in 1982 and then Hurricane ʻIniki in 1992 took out many farmers' crops and destroyed infrastructure. 

Although today diversified agriculture plays a role on Kauaʻi, in the end agricultural products could not compete with the amount of money that could be made from housing and resort development. Agriculture remains a small part of the overall economy and employment sector on Kauaʻi.

Today, tourism is the main driver of Kauai’s economy. Visitors spent $2.76 billion dollars in 2023 on Kauaʻi (State of Hawaiʻi 2024), and jobs in the tourism industry are some of the best paying and stable ones on the island. Yet, this development trajectory has changed Kauaʻi and Kōloa drastically. The natural beauty, opportunities for outdoor recreation, as well as a rural yet increasingly urbanized and gentrified landscape has brought increasing numbers of visitors and amenity migrants to Kauaʻi. 

A changing Kauaʻi can be seen through looking at real estate costs and the only strongly growing employment sector since 2020: construction. There are currently more jobs in construction than when the industry was at its height in 1993, which was the rebuilding period after Hurricane ʻIniki. A $155 million dollar contract to expand the Līhuʻe Airport runway will continue the construction sector’s growth (The Economic Research Organization at the University of Hawaiʻi 2024). In September of 2024, only 28 years after the Kōloa Plantation closed, the median listing price for a home on Kauai was $1.7 million, up from last month and last year this time (Locations 2024). This vastly out prices the majority of local families who work on island and is a product of the limited geographical space on Kauaʻi and the historical development of the island as it went from an agricultural industry and very rural education system to an amenity migrant destination where remote work, off island incomes, and globally minded investment buyers can afford the luxury of a changing Kauaʻi landscape. 

In spite of the current reality and the many challenges faced by diversified agriculture, agriculture has been and continues to be a hopeful development strategy on Kauaʻi. We can learn from this primary source the complex role diversified agriculture played in rural change on Kauaʻi and better understand Kauai’s historical rural development.

Amenity migrants: People who can and do move for quality of life purposes that usually relate to more favorable weather, outdoor recreation opportunities such as mountains, lakes, beaches, etc., socio-cultural desires, and lower crime rate.

Diversified agriculture: The practice of producing a variety of crops or animals or both.

Economy: The process or system by which goods and services are produced, sold, and bought in a country or region.

Gentrification:  Historically, this term has been used to describe urban areas and change, but more recently, it has been brought in to discuss rural processes of change whereby re-investment, improved housing, and new businesses bring in and/or attract wealthier residents and investors, resulting in increased real estate costs and a pricing out of previous residents.

Monoculture: The cultivation of a single crop in a given area.

Rural: In, relating to, or characteristic of the countryside (increasingly hard to define as rural places are tied to urban places in many ways yet open space, values, livelihoods, and lifestyle tend to be associating characteristics of ongoing rurality, think Hāna on Maui or Haleʻiwa on Oʻahu for examples of communities that may be similar to Kōloa in terms of history and present day situations and ongoing rurality).