Agricultural land
Four agencies count agricultural land four different ways. None of them is wrong — they answer different questions, and the gaps between them are the story.
Agricultural land by layer and district
How much agricultural land, by which definition
Each district measured four ways. Read across a district, not down a column — these are overlapping definitions of the same ground, not stages of a process.
What dedicated land actually is
Acreage under a 10- or 3-year agricultural dedication, split by the use the assessor recorded
County-zoned agricultural outside the State Agricultural district
Land the County zones for agriculture that the State classifies Conservation or Urban
Dedication categories as the County records them
Pasture, cropland and forest are our groupings for charting. These are the actual codes in the assessor's records — both the land-use code and the benefit status.
Every figure, every district
Reference table for the written narrative
Where
Where is the cropland — and what dominates each part of the island?
Total crop acreage
By area (2025 HCDL)
Dominant crop
Each area's number-one crop by acreage (2025)
What's farmed
What's grown — and what's changing on the ground right now?
Crops: many-small vs. few-large
Operations × acres, each point a commodity (2022)
Crop acreage change, 2023→2025
Island-wide (HCDL)
Scale & change
How big is Hawaiʻi County agriculture, and which way is it heading?
Total farms, 1997–2022
Number of operations (Census)
Who earns the sales?
Line every farm up smallest-to-largest by sales; the curve shows how little of the total sales dollars the small farms add up to. Flat-then-spike means a few big farms earn almost everything.
NASS publishes no sales bracket above $500K for this county (disclosure), so $500K+ is the top group.
Farms vs. sales dollars, by size tier
Each bar is 100%. The biggest farms are a sliver of operations but most of the money.
Share of farms vs. share of sales
For each sales tier — the gap between the pair shows how over- or under-represented it is in dollars
Who farms
Who are the producers — and what does the next generation look like?
Producers by age & sex
2022 Census
Producers by race
Alone or in combination (2022)
Median household income
By Census subdivision (CCD), ACS 2019–2023
Population change, ~2010→2023
10-year percent change by CCD (ACS)
Agrifood economy
How does food and farming show up in the economy?
Jobs by sector (2024)
Average annual employment (QCEW)
Sector employment, 2014–2024
Over time
Do farms turn a profit?
Operations with a net cash gain vs. loss
Income beyond crop & livestock sales
Farm-related income (ag-tourism, forestry, custom work…)
Food access
Where can people get food — and who is most stretched?
Food-access map
Grocers, SNAP retailers, food pantries, commercial kitchens, organic operations. Toggle layers in the legend.
Population — by ZIP
Where people live (ACS 2019–2023), to read the rate maps against
Financial hardship (ALICE)
Percent of households in poverty or below the ALICE survival budget, by ZIP (2024)
Food insecurity index — by ZIP
Composite index (Hawaiʻi Health Matters / HCI, 2025)
Population — county trend
Total population, 2000–2023 (Census + ACS)
SNAP participation over time
Hawaiʻi County (DHS Hawaii Branch)
Food insecurity rate — county trend
Percent of residents food insecure (Feeding America Map the Meal Gap)
Sources: USDA FNS (SNAP retailers, current), USDA Organic Integrity / Supersistence OID (2026), The Food Basket (pantries), Hawaiʻi Island grocery & commercial-kitchen lists, United Way ALICE 2024, Supersistence Hawaii-SNAP (through May 2025). Grocer, pantry and kitchen lists are working drafts (2021 vintage); SNAP and ALICE refreshed to current.
By district
The nine TMK districts, cut from the same island-wide sources — so the district numbers and the county numbers always agree.
Mapped crop acreage, 2023–2025
Total acreage identified in the Hawaiʻi Cropland Data Layer for this district
Food-system outlets
Counted by point-in-polygon against the district boundary. Rate per 10,000 residents shown alongside the count, so small-population districts are not read as empty.
Top crops by acreage (2025 HCDL)
The nine districts compared
All nine districts compared
Sortable reference table — every figure in the district snapshots, in TMK zone order
Population & 10-year change
ACS 2019–2023, aggregated CCD→TMK district
SNAP retailers per 10,000 residents
Count alone tracks population; the rate shows where access is actually thin