Producing sugar cane for ethanol using new cane farming, harvesting, and etanol production practices might be the key to re-vitalizing Hawaii’s plantation agricultural base. Hawaii Island, particularly the Hamakua coast has geographic features that make etahnol production in Hawaii potentially competative with corn ethanol production on the mainland. Most important is Hawaii’s abundent rainfall and a mountain slope offering natural advantages for water savings and energy savings by using gravity. Visualize a system that captures rain at higher elevations, irrigates and grows cane at the middle elevations and processes, stores and loads ethanol for shipping at the lower elevations. It would be interesting to calculate the savings from using potential energy due to the differences in elevation for pumping and transporting product . Also, cane ethanol production is known to be more efficient efficient than corn ethanol production and does not compete with food products from corn.

I remember the happy Hawaiian population when the plantations were providing jobs that kept the young folks in the Islands and were producing a comodity of value in world markets.

Can we get there again?