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Hawaii faced a pressing question about what would happen to roughly 177,000 acres of land leaving sugar and pineapple production. Peter Garrod, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Hawaii, argued that the sugar industry's decline was irreversible, that pineapple could not expand to fill the gap, and that diversified agriculture faced too many structural barriers — high production costs, distance from mainland markets, and pest restrictions — to absorb more than a small fraction of the acreage. Francis Oda, chairman and chief executive of Group 70 International, proposed mixed-use agricultural villages in which a small portion of former plantation land would be zoned for housing, with the remainder dedicated in perpetuity to agriculture and linked to small-scale eco-cultural tourism, on the model of working guest ranches he had seen succeed in Wyoming. Garrod was sceptical that free land alone would make small farms viable, though he acknowledged the approach might yield some modest expansion. Both guests agreed that existing state and county law prohibited the kind of integrated housing, agriculture, and tourism arrangement Oda described, and that changes in both statutes and public attitudes would be necessary before any such plan could move forward.
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