Total farming revenues rose 3 percent to $528 million - an eight-year high - in 1999, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available from the Hawai‘i Agricultural Statistics Service.

The increase happened despite a drop in sugar revenues, which in 1999 fell 0.1 percent to $86.8 million worth of unprocessed cane. Sugar, still the state’s No. 2 crop, has since declined further, said state agriculture statistician Donald Martin, attributing the drop to low prices and the closure of Pioneer Sugar’s Maui mill in 1999 and Amfac/JMB Hawai‘i’s Kaua‘i mill in 2000.

Aside from sugar, however, agriculture is again becoming a growth industry, Martin said. While too much data is still missing for a firm 2000 estimate, Martin said he saw no reason revenues wouldn’t have grown, and said he expected to see another good year for diversified agriculture, with strong showings from new growth crops like bananas, vegetables and herbs.

Diversified agriculture - a term referring to a broad mix of crops and livestock - grew in 1999 to a record $339 million, or 55 percent of total farming revenues.

The top diversified crop, fresh-cut flowers and nursery products, grew 3 percent in 1999 to a record $75.4 million, and was almost as large a crop that year as sugar. Other crops also set revenue records, including vegetables and melons, which grew 10 percent to $56.5 million, and seed crops, which grew 11 percent to $28 million.

Other newly important crops include bananas, which Martin said have reached export levels of production; papayas, which are recovering from a disease outbreak in the late 1990s; and forestry, exotic tropical fruits and coffee, all of which are being planted on old sugar land. Many of those crops will start to show revenue in the next several years as recently planted trees begin to produce fruit and timber, Martin said.

Since 1990, diversified agriculture has grown 23 percent as farmers explore new crops and expand old ones on former prime sugar land. By contrast, the value of annual Hawai‘i sugar production has dropped more than 60 percent since then, and pineapple, the No. 1 crop, has been stagnant, dropping to about $80 million per year before rebounding in 1999 and 2000 to more than $100 million annually.

Pineapple has stabilized after an early-1990s decline. Local growers have switched their focus from canning, where they were outgunned by international imports, to the more-lucrative fresh-fruit market.

Agriculture jobs also are growing again as diversified agriculture employers expand their operations. After dropping below 7,000 workers in the late 1990s, agricultural employment in September 2000 climbed above 8,500 - the highest level since 1994, according to data compiled by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

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