How Addressing Hawaii’s Affordable Housing Crisis Could Help Farming Efforts…Farmers say housing insecurity threatens their ability to retain employees and makes it difficult to ramp up production.
Farmer Eric Batha said there’s one challenge that tops them all when it comes to expanding his Big Island cucumber business.
“Agricultural workers are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to pay,” said Stevie Whalen of the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, which owns the land at Kunia Village and manages part of the housing project.
A high turnover rate among Batha’s employees is largely the result of the incompatibility between low wages earned by unskilled farm laborers who pick and pack produce and Hawaii’s exorbitant cost of housing.
