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| Sweeter Times for the Sugar Biz |
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| The Persistence of Flow |
So What's up Honey Bear?
Some Musings on Sugar Water, Island Politix, and the Apocalypse
Maui County, HI - Just in time for my inauspicious arrival from the East... High intrigue is afoot on the Valley Isle. Alika Atay and his Shaka Crew have damn well had 'Nuf Already! and will soon be storming the eighth floor in Wailuku. Will the last vestiges of 19th century Hawaii oligarchy soon be symbolized by ...sorghum? Will aboriginal water rights be restored? Might dogs and cats commence living together?
Driving by the sugar factory the other day I noted the absence of steam emanating from the century old smoke stacks and experienced a vaguely Proustian Moment as I mused about the thousands of tons of molasses my family used to schlep out of the cane fields of South Louisiana in coastal tank barges. I did about a 15 minute stint at a CPA firm across the street from the Puunene mill right after getting off the boat from Dubai. I used to gaze out of my window at the ancient plant and got a feel for its rhythms and developed a strange affection for this obviously anachronistic facility.
It may seem odd to talk about an industrial installation in those terms but I grew up (to the extent that, well, I ever actually grew up) in Port Arthur, Texas. This city of my (squandered) youth was home to about 20% of domestic oil refining capacity. My early memories are filled with Blade Runner like images of a night sky lit up with a thousand flares burning off useless constituents of crude oil and a million sodium lights dotting the imposing towers which turned Texas Tea into Unleaded Regular. A lot of that crude actually came from Iraq, back in the days before any of us had heard of Baghdad outside the context of an 'I Dream of Jeannie' episode. It would arrive in ocean going tankers down on the waterfront where my old man taught me and my brother about the tugboat business. I have an affinity for smokestacks and working stiffs in hard-hats that the average mainlander here might not share.
I met Don Couch there at the CPA firm; he was keeping the computers running and I was trying to figure out precisely what "QuickBooks" was. I liked Don well enough to help out with his County Council Campaign. None of this worked out as we'd planned. This pocket protector philanthropist fired me shortly after a shotgun wedding merger between two of the largest (an exquisitely relative term for a transplanted Houstonian) CPA firms in Maui. And old Don got his ass kicked by some chick from Atay's posse.
But hey, Don and I are 'land on your feet' kind of guys. He ended up with some other gig in county government. Seeing as I was damaged goods in the view of about 40% of the local bean counters, I figured a "If you can't join them, fight them." strategy was in order. If this doesn't work out I've got plenty of other ideas. My first job was for my daddy washing dishes. And boy are there a whole lotta restaurants around here. I was also a top-forty DJ back in the seventies. I can butcher beeves. Dude - I have got options. As mentioned in another post - I'm a regular Forrest Gump.
So when I got here 18 months ago, lots of local folks were raising cain (how can you pass on pun like that?) about Maui Snow, the A&B Death Star, the evils of mono-culture, etc. In short, there are a lot of people from California here.
And then... POOF - it was all gone!
As far as I can determine it was not so much that the Middle Earth Lunch Room set won, but that the Coffee Condiment Capitalists... gave up.
After all, a hundred million bucks is a lot of dough to pitch down a rat hole.
The drama regarding future deployment of the A&B cane lands and disposition of long standing water rights which made the sugar industry possible is going to be at least as interesting as a new HBO series.
Apparent facts in evidence:
It may seem odd to talk about an industrial installation in those terms but I grew up (to the extent that, well, I ever actually grew up) in Port Arthur, Texas. This city of my (squandered) youth was home to about 20% of domestic oil refining capacity. My early memories are filled with Blade Runner like images of a night sky lit up with a thousand flares burning off useless constituents of crude oil and a million sodium lights dotting the imposing towers which turned Texas Tea into Unleaded Regular. A lot of that crude actually came from Iraq, back in the days before any of us had heard of Baghdad outside the context of an 'I Dream of Jeannie' episode. It would arrive in ocean going tankers down on the waterfront where my old man taught me and my brother about the tugboat business. I have an affinity for smokestacks and working stiffs in hard-hats that the average mainlander here might not share.
I met Don Couch there at the CPA firm; he was keeping the computers running and I was trying to figure out precisely what "QuickBooks" was. I liked Don well enough to help out with his County Council Campaign. None of this worked out as we'd planned. This pocket protector philanthropist fired me shortly after a shotgun wedding merger between two of the largest (an exquisitely relative term for a transplanted Houstonian) CPA firms in Maui. And old Don got his ass kicked by some chick from Atay's posse.
But hey, Don and I are 'land on your feet' kind of guys. He ended up with some other gig in county government. Seeing as I was damaged goods in the view of about 40% of the local bean counters, I figured a "If you can't join them, fight them." strategy was in order. If this doesn't work out I've got plenty of other ideas. My first job was for my daddy washing dishes. And boy are there a whole lotta restaurants around here. I was also a top-forty DJ back in the seventies. I can butcher beeves. Dude - I have got options. As mentioned in another post - I'm a regular Forrest Gump.
* * *
So when I got here 18 months ago, lots of local folks were raising cain (how can you pass on pun like that?) about Maui Snow, the A&B Death Star, the evils of mono-culture, etc. In short, there are a lot of people from California here.
And then... POOF - it was all gone!
As far as I can determine it was not so much that the Middle Earth Lunch Room set won, but that the Coffee Condiment Capitalists... gave up.
After all, a hundred million bucks is a lot of dough to pitch down a rat hole.
The drama regarding future deployment of the A&B cane lands and disposition of long standing water rights which made the sugar industry possible is going to be at least as interesting as a new HBO series.
Apparent facts in evidence:
- The capacity of the Iao and Waihee aquifers is obviously not unlimited. A close look at the hydrology profile of Maui Island indicates continuing pressure on water resources as real estate development and population increases proceed - irrespective of drunken sailor irrigation practices.
- Sugar is cheaper to produce in Brazil. Or Thailand. Or Haiti. Or mostly anywhere other than Maui.
Fair certainties:
- Mr. Atay and his allies in the Shaka Movement will have a lot to say concerning these matters.
- The ladies and gentlemen on the board of Alexander & Baldwin - whose ticker symbol ALEX is reminiscent of the name of your ex-wife's second husband - will likely have very much more to say. None of these folks I expect are heavily involved in the Shaka Movement. A&B, it is instructive to keep in mind, represents the real owners of clear title to these 36,000 of oh-so-sweet acres. Those owners include BlackRock Partners and other cuddly corporate grizzlies who aren't historically overly sensitive regarding things like Aloha ‘āina.
In short: This is gonna be fun!
Were I in a position to influence the debate (a prospect which is literally unimaginable) I would suggest crafting a strategy which attempted to keep the sugar acreage permanently out of production. A&B is considering the possibilities of farming the usual suspect mono-culture crops which mainland agribusiness relies on. My background is in energy not agriculture, but it might be the case that if sugar is not profitable here, corn and soybeans may not be either. Commodities tend to have similar market profiles. This is why they call them... commodities.
Endearing as the idea is to local hippies, broccoli and artisanal blood oranges are probably out of the question as well.
There are a lot of hippies here on Maui - hell, I'm more or less one of them. Many of them profess aspirations to 'return to the land'. Perhaps a few even have the skills, temperament and desire to draw paychecks in a labor intensive industry like commercial fruit and vegetable production. Importing the types of workers who actually make this sort of business tick in places like the Central Valley of California is problematic. Issues include cost of living, remoteness and... well, all 11 million of them may be gone in a few weeks.
Prediction: the electors will indeed send DonJon to the Oval Room - and the migrants (legal, illegal, rapists, assumed 'good people', dreamers...) will mostly stay put.
Prediction: the electors will indeed send DonJon to the Oval Room - and the migrants (legal, illegal, rapists, assumed 'good people', dreamers...) will mostly stay put.
I hear a lot about hemp as a possible viable replacement for sugar cane. For me it's hard to hear the word 'hemp' and not think about its sexier (and enormously more profitable) female cousins Sativa and Indica. Surely the high powered agronomists at A&B have noodled the idea. But Mr. Atay is not the only new sheriff in in town - and these guys may not believe federal legalization of pot to be congruent with the notion of Making America Great Again.
Publicly traded companies don't tend to get involved in industries which are illegal under federal law. Generally speaking. Notable exceptions include money laundering. Most corporate drug dealers are private companies. As far as I can tell Alexander & Baldwin are culpable thus far for nothing more than the diabetes epidemic.
Publicly traded companies don't tend to get involved in industries which are illegal under federal law. Generally speaking. Notable exceptions include money laundering. Most corporate drug dealers are private companies. As far as I can tell Alexander & Baldwin are culpable thus far for nothing more than the diabetes epidemic.
One idea (perhaps unworkable - again, I'm so new here I can't pronounce the street names) would be to move the A&B holdings into a land trust funded by Maui elites. Even the rednecks where I'm from in the Deep Red South use this trick to settle arguments between themselves - and most of them are armed. The oracle of Oracle plunked down a third of a bil to snatch up a charming little piece of the county just offshore from the sugar bushes about eight miles across the Lahaina Roads.
What's the A&B sugar plantation worth? Beats me. $300 million would work out to about $8,500 an acre. May be a little short. But billionaires and tropical islands are an unpredictable combination. Who knows what might be possible? Next time you see Ellison's yacht leaving Lanai - it might be heading to Lahaina to drop off another load of cash.
The greening of Maui indeed.
And speaking of land use, I keep hearing the phrase 'affordable housing' here. I don't see much of it - but I do hear a lot about it. There are reasons for this and anyone with a couple of hours of college economics can puzzle these things out. Note to Alika: Defying inconvenient supply and demand realities is the province of politicians. Are you and the Ohana up for this one?
What's the A&B sugar plantation worth? Beats me. $300 million would work out to about $8,500 an acre. May be a little short. But billionaires and tropical islands are an unpredictable combination. Who knows what might be possible? Next time you see Ellison's yacht leaving Lanai - it might be heading to Lahaina to drop off another load of cash.
The greening of Maui indeed.
And speaking of land use, I keep hearing the phrase 'affordable housing' here. I don't see much of it - but I do hear a lot about it. There are reasons for this and anyone with a couple of hours of college economics can puzzle these things out. Note to Alika: Defying inconvenient supply and demand realities is the province of politicians. Are you and the Ohana up for this one?
If agriculture has run its course as an economically viable activity on the island (and there appears to be rather abundant evidence that it has) perhaps we should let it die peaceably and care for the land, the people, and the nativist spirit in ways which do not involve planting these 36,000 acres. Bromides like 'a return to the land' and "zero net import food production match" - whatever in hell that might mean - take on a whole new meaning when formulating strategies which will necessarily involve dispatching substantial numbers of Keiki into the okra fields to perform stoop labor.
Since about 1950 or so no OECD country (or political subdivision thereof) has been food self sufficient. I have never actually been made to understand why they should be - despite having closely read a number of earnest and well intentioned manifestos from groups like Shaka.
All those depressing thoughts notwithstanding, I work at maintaining a positive outlook, remaining on the sunny side of the street and not viewing humanity as a teenager driving a Z06 at 165 MPH towards a DWI checkpoint. Ask around - I'm a pleasant guy with an engaging sense of humor.
Long distance food shipments will probably go away some day. When that day arrives I'm not sure how happy anyone's going to be about it. Once the reefer trucks stop delivering Hot Pockets, fresh blueberries and flash frozen Mahi-mahi to the Safeway in Kahului, discussions regarding 'land stewardship' will have long since been concluded.
A return to nature is what we are all most likely facing, ultimately. The game (as I see it) is to keep the balls in the air until the very last possible moment. The notion of 'sustainability' is a political MacGuffin employed to keep the pulse rate of the masses steady and maintain a fictive hope that there is some real chance of a long-term future on a planet which will soon be home to about 10 billion copies of a species which is, viewed from a certain perspective, a very dangerous virus sporting a really big brain.
Best of luck Alika. If you need some help navigating the shoals of Haole bullshit, hit my cell. Boy could I tell you some stories. I'm pulling for you old son...and looking for another horse to back in 2018.
Don?
Don?