Seed Corn, Not Food or Fuel, Is Hawaii's Biggest Crop

Courtesy of Syngenta

Quick. Name Hawaii's most valuable agricultural product.

If you said sugar, you're wrong. Pineapple? Nope.

It's not fruit, it's not vegetables, not nuts, not flowers and not trees.

The answer: seeds.

Seed crops — primarily seed corn — have shot to the top of the list in recent years, despite a push toward food self-sufficiency and energy independence that require locally-grown plants.

Seed crops in Hawaii were valued at more than $175 million [pdf] in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Unprocessed sugarcane came in next with about $44 million, followed by macadamia nuts and coffee. But the seeds required less land than any of those products.

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