A Mahi Pono crew uses a pair of a gas-powered augers to dig the holes for papaya trees being planted Thursday. The crew was expected to plant 10,000 non-GMO solo papaya trees. Mahi Pono Community Relations Director Tiare Lawrence said the next crops scheduled to be planted by the farm are onions, coffee and limes, which will go in the fields that have been prepped along Haleakala Highway. Also set to be planted soon, she said, will be ulu trees in Hamakuapoko. She said the breadfruit trees will provide shade for cattle and also help re-establish the“cultural landscape”of the area. Pranquil Arocena (left in second photo) and Miguel Villa plant a papaya tree Thursday morning.

A Mahi Pono crew uses a pair of a gas-powered augers to dig the holes for papaya trees being planted Thursday. The crew was expected to plant 10,000 non-GMO solo papaya trees...

Company narrows list of crops to grow on old HC&S sugar fields.

PUUNENE — Wind whipped through the central plains Wednesday morning and a team of Mahi Pono officials looked out at an expanse of empty land being worked by tractors.

As blades tilled the soil, this field signaled a turning point in agricultural history — from 150 years of sugar cane monocropping to an array of non-GMO crops to be used to bolster the county’s food supply.

The new season starts Friday when Mahi Pono, a joint venture between Pomona Farming and PSP Investments, holds a blessing and a first planting of red potatoes on about 40 acres in Puunene.

The planting will mark the first nonsugar crops going into the ground after the company purchased 41,000 acres of fallow fields from Alexander & Baldwin in December. After more than a century of production, A&B’s sugar endeavor, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., ceased Maui operations in 2016...

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Papayas Planted in Mahi Pono Fields

Mahi Pono Set to Begin First Plantings