Production of pineapples on the Hawaiian Islands has declined in the last few decades. In some places on the islands pineapple production has completely disappeared.
It used to be that Hawaii was the chief place to grow pineapples, and large areas of land were covered by pineapple farms, on five of the eight main islands, including Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai. In fact, 80% of all of the worlds production of pineapples, at one time, were produced in the state of Hawaii. Unfortunately, since the heyday of pineapple production in the 1930’s, the production of pineapples has steadily declined, so that today it is but a glimpse of what it once was. There is a very good reason for why the Hawaiian production of pineapples declined, as well as one important reason why it wasn’t as severe as it could be.
The main reason why the production of pineapples declined within the state of Hawaii is the fact that the cost of labor among workers in the pineapple growing industry was quite high compared to what companies could pay workers in other tropical countries for doing the same work. In fact, in nations like Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, the cost of labor fetched only 5-10% what it fetched in Hawaii. In fact, since many pineapples were taken to canneries, and shipped after being broken down and put into cans, the cost of labor for the cannery workers in these other countries was only about 1-2% what the cannery workers were getting paid to do the same work in Hawaii. Since most pineapple production is done under the auspices of large, mainly public, corporations, and the profitability of that corporation is important when dealing stock price, it was important to those large businesses to move production to a developing country where they could get labor at a real cheap price.
The one most important factor that has kept the production of pineapples from falling completely off the shelf, and being more severe, is the fact that there has been a large marketing campaign to motivate food consumers to buy fresh pineapples. The fact that consumer demand has increased for fresh pineapples, at the same time the production of pineapples was dropping, helped to keep the production drop from being more severe, and actually helped to stabilize its production on the Hawaiian Islands, albeit at a much lower level than before. Today, you can get fresh pineapples at many supermarkets and fresh food stores.
Since its production heyday back in the 1930’s, pineapple production has been reduced to only three of the five islands that formerly produced this fruit. On the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Oahu, there is still production, but the amount of land utilized for that purpose has been substantially diminished. Two other islands that used to produce pineapples no longer do so, including Kauai and Molokai. The fact that the amount of land that used to be needed to produce pineapples is no longer needed, this has cleared up large amounts of land, and small family farms have been established – as much of the farmland in the continental U.S. has become owned by less and less owners who own larger and larger pieces of land, the state of Hawaii is going backwards on this trend by allowing more and more small farm owners to come into existence.
So, will pineapple farming continue to be around for a while? I suppose so – as long as they continue marketing it as a fresh fruit to consumers, both on the Hawaiian Islands and on the mainland. Its role as part of the Hawaiian economy may be diminished, but it still will have a place in the scheme of things, particularly on the islands where it is still grown.
