10-10-2013, 04:35 AM
quote:
Originally posted by rainyjim
"The current legislation will severely restrict farming being viable here in the long term as various crops face new introduced diseases and pests."
This is a fabrication. The island currently has very little agriculture despite claims otherwise.
It's hard to pull up current data because USDA sites are down due to the federal shutdown. But the 2007 figures showed that agriculture in Hawai'i County was valued at $203,000,000 per year then, which was 40% of the state total. It's not as big as tourism, but it's a significant segment of our economy.
It's also notable that this year the value of the seed industry alone, which is virtually all on Oahu, Maui, and Kauai at the moment, is $211,000,000 and that the biggest single financial impact of banning transgenic crops on the Big Island will be to keep that industry from expanding to our county.