Richard Ha tends not to take himself too seriously. The founder of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, a 600-acre banana and vegetable farm on Hawaii's Big Island, once showed up wearing shorts to receive an award from the state's governor. He calls his eco-farming blog Ha Ha Ha! But earlier this year, Ha was not smiling. He had decided to shut down his banana-growing operation, a move that would leave 400 acres fallow. His costs -- for fertilizer, energy, and health care coverage for his workers -- had been soaring. And because banana prices were flat, there seemed to be no end in sight.
On the first Friday in April, Ha delivered the bad news to his nine full-time banana pickers. But when Monday morning rolled around, Ha was surprised to find that seven of the workers had shown up to plead their case for keeping the farm going. His farm crew members, many of whom had not graduated from high school, had a fairly sophisticated plan: planting a less labor-intensive variety of banana that would require less land and could be grown closer to the packing facilities. That would do away with the need to hire additional workers at harvest time. It was tempting. The last thing Ha wanted to do was close down his farm and fire his trusted full-time workers. But all of his business instincts were telling him that doing otherwise was inviting disaster.
One thing was certain: Shutting down would be personally painful for Ha. He began raising bananas on 25 acres of his father's chicken farm in 1973, after returning home from a tour in Vietnam and then graduating from college with an accounting degree. His start-up capital consisted of $300 from his credit card. He traded chicken manure to other banana farmers for banana plants and collected used banana boxes to save money on cardboard.
Unlike pineapples and sugar cane, bananas have always been a mostly local crop in Hawaii, given that the mainland gets plenty of the fruit from Central America. So Ha primarily sold to the island market. He eventually became one of the state's more successful farmers, responsible for as much as a third of Hawaii's bananas. He was among the first in the state to develop the market for apple bananas, a small, extrasweet variety that carries a premium price. Hamakua Springs is also one of only a few banana farms to receive an "Eco-OK" certification from the Rainforest Alliance, an influential environmental group. By 2001, Ha's operations had revenue of more than $1 million as he branched out into other crops -- including tomatoes, lettuce, and Japanese cucumbers -- that he grew hydroponically.
A lot of the joy and money, though, had since gone out of growing bananas. For one thing, in recent years, Hawaiian bananas have repeatedly been hit by a virus; Ha's crop was damaged more than once. Cheap imports from Central America increasingly flooded Hawaiian markets, forcing a number of banana farms in the state to close, including Ha's largest competitor. The prices of fertilizer and energy, always higher on Hawaii than on the mainland, were climbing every day, taking a bigger and bigger bite out of profits. Because of the constant refrigeration needed to control the ripening of green bananas, Ha's utility bills recently hit $15,000 per month.
But Ha's biggest concern was finding enough workers to tend the banana fields. "Our yields were suffering, because we were struggling to keep a stable work force," says Ha, who figured it was only a matter of time before the farm started losing money. For months, he had wrestled with the idea of closing down the banana farm. A careful businessman, Ha constantly calculates his operational costs and profitability. And his weekly spreadsheets were showing a gradual but steady drop in profits. Finally, in early April, he discussed closing down with his manager, Kimo Pa, who is also Ha's son-in-law. Ha's daughter Tracy Pa and his wife, June, also weighed in. Everyone agreed time was running out. "We were doing OK," says Ha. "But I thought it would be better to shut it down rather than lose money and be forced to shut down later."
Then Ha's full-time pickers showed up to make their case. "I figured they would go for unemployment or go hunting for other jobs," Ha says. "It was a big shock." Indeed picking bananas isn't exactly coveted work. It's about as tough as manual labor gets. A banana picker carefully notches away at a banana bunch with a razor-sharp machete. He then positions himself below the bunch so that, with the final notch, it falls on his shoulders. He then carries his bundle over to a nearby trailer. In a typical day, a worker might handle 100 bunches, or more than 10,000 pounds, of bananas.
You would think there would be easier ways to make about $12 an hour. But the job at Ha's farm also came with full health benefits and lots of free fruits and vegetables. "It's hard work, but it's good work," says Eric Garcia, who's been picking bananas for Ha for five years and was among those lobbying to save the jobs. "You get to work out in the fresh air, mostly by yourself. I said let's do whatever it takes to keep it going."
It wasn't as if there were too many other jobs. Though unemployment on the Big Island is less than 5 percent, full-time blue-collar jobs with benefits and decent pay are rare. The only other work at similar pay is in hotels and restaurants. But most of those jobs were located on the other side of the island. For Ha's pickers, that would mean a three-hour round-trip commute by car and hundreds of dollars per month in gasoline.
