Labor shortages are real
A Hawaiʻi agriculture survey reported that 41% of participating farmers and ranchers identified insufficient access to labor as a barrier to expansion. The share was 59% among Honolulu County respondents.
Issues & Research · Workforce & Self-Sufficiency
Train for jobs that pay enough to stay.
Workforce development and economic development have to be aligned.
Hawaiʻi can improve training and career pathways, but training alone cannot solve a structural shortage of living-wage jobs. The economy also has to create more productive work in agriculture, ranching, food processing, manufacturing, logistics, repair, and other import-replacement industries.
Main finding 02 · Workforce
A skills strategy cannot fix a jobs shortage by itself.
Hawaiʻi’s workforce challenge is often framed as a mismatch between employers and qualified workers. That is part of the problem, but current projections point to something larger: the number of young people entering the labor market is expected to exceed the number of openings that pay a living wage.
If the economy does not create more living-wage work, better training can improve who gets the available jobs without solving the shortage of good jobs itself.
“If agricultural work means low wages, expensive housing, and no economic future, then yes, we will have trouble finding workers. The answer isn't to give up on producing our own food. The answer is to make agriculture a viable living-wage industry again.”
The workforce gap
Hawaiʻi needs more living-wage jobs, not only more training programs.
~170,000Young people expected to enter Hawaiʻi’s workforce over the next decadeHawaiʻi Workforce Funders Collaborative, current 2026 projection.
~101,000Projected openings meeting the current single-adult living-wage thresholdThe current analysis uses a threshold of about $62,000 per year.
59%Approximate share of entrants with a projected living-wage openingA projection, not a guarantee about individual outcomes.
Research implication: Workforce policy has two jobs. It must help people gain useful skills, and it must help create or expand enough industries capable of paying wages that support life in Hawaiʻi.
Agricultural labor
“Nobody wants to farm” is an incomplete diagnosis.
Housing is part of the labor problem
Hawaiʻi legislative committees in 2026 repeatedly found that high-cost or unavailable agricultural workforce housing limits recruitment, retention, production capacity, and long-term farm stability.
Economic conditions shape labor supply
When farm work offers low pay, expensive nearby housing, difficult land and water access, and little opportunity for advancement, recruitment difficulty should not be treated as proof that residents inherently reject agricultural work.
The goal is viable farming, not cheap labor
A self-sufficiency strategy should ask whether farms and ranches can support productive businesses and living-wage careers, not whether Hawaiʻi can reproduce a low-wage labor model.
Technology & productivity
Do not rebuild the plantation labor model. Build a high-productivity agricultural economy.
Produce more per worker
Autonomous and semi-autonomous equipment, robotic cultivation, drones, sensors, automated irrigation, computer vision, and precision application can shift labor away from repetitive manual tasks and toward operating, maintaining, and improving productive systems.
Ranching can become more remote and data-driven
GPS livestock tracking, virtual fencing, drones, cameras, water monitoring, and pasture sensors can reduce the time workers spend physically checking large areas while supporting more precise grazing and livestock management.
SI as an operating layer
Farm data from sensors, cameras, drones, machinery, weather, livestock monitors, and inventory systems can be integrated so SI, and more advanced intelligent systems as they become practical, help recommend or coordinate irrigation, crop care, animal movement, maintenance, harvesting, and logistics.
Modernize the entire supply chain
The productivity strategy should extend through sorting, washing, processing, packaging, refrigeration, warehousing, inventory, forecasting, and distribution. Local food production can increasingly resemble advanced manufacturing supported by agriculture.
Policy principle: “We should not rebuild Hawaiʻi agriculture around large quantities of low-wage manual labor. We should rebuild it around technology, automation, and highly productive workers.” Read the full Agriculture & Technology proposal.
Concrete case studies
Rice and kalo show how technology can change the agricultural labor equation.
Rice: high automation potential
Rice already has mechanized transplanting and harvesting, GPS-guided field equipment, drone seeding and application, automated irrigation, crop monitoring, robotic weed-control research, and increasingly integrated unmanned-farm systems. It is a strong candidate for demonstrating how a small skilled team can manage substantially more production.
Kalo: build technology for Hawaiʻi
Kalo requires more specialized engineering. Dryland kalo is generally easier to mechanize, while traditional loʻi may gain first from automated water management, crop monitoring, material handling, and small equipment designed for wet conditions. International taro-harvesting research shows that mechanization can substantially reduce labor, but Hawaiʻi needs equipment adapted to local cultivars, soils, field sizes, and cultural systems.
Workforce implication: The future job is not simply “farm laborer.” Rice and kalo modernization can create work for equipment operators, irrigation technicians, mechanics, robotics technicians, drone operators, crop specialists, engineers, sensor technicians, and food-processing workers. Read the full Rice & Kalo technology case study.
More than farm labor
A larger local food economy creates an employment ecosystem.
Farmers & ranchers
Equipment operators
Veterinarians
Butchers & meat processors
Food-processing workers
Refrigeration technicians
Truck drivers & logistics
Warehouse workers
Irrigation specialists
Mechanics
Agricultural engineers
Food manufacturing & sales
Technology changes the job mix: The objective is not simply to replace workers. It is to reduce low-productivity repetitive tasks while expanding skilled work in robotics, equipment operation, mechanics, refrigeration, irrigation, engineering, sensors, data, food processing, manufacturing, and logistics.
Corroborating example
Daniel Anthony has made a similar economic argument about agriculture.
2026 Lieutenant Governor candidate
Daniel Anthony
Anthony is also a farmer himself. He grows coconuts, kalo, lychee, and ʻulu, and raises sheep and pigs. His perspective on agricultural labor therefore comes not only from policy advocacy, but from direct experience producing food in Hawaiʻi.
Anthony’s campaign supports expanding local and indigenous food production, putting more agricultural acreage into active use, regenerative farming, and economic diversification. In a 2026 interview, he argued for a living-wage approach to kalo farming tied to the price of kalo, connected school demand to local production, and emphasized restoring water access through ahupuaʻa-based systems.
He has also long criticized the expectation that agricultural revival should depend on low-wage farm labor rather than economically independent farmers. That history supports the broader point that labor supply cannot be separated from the economic model surrounding the work.
This page does not adopt Anthony’s platform wholesale. His statements are included because they provide a concrete Hawaiʻi example of the same workforce question: whether agriculture can attract people when the industry is structured to provide a viable economic future.
Economic self-sufficiency
Keep more of Hawaiʻi’s productive capacity at home.
Food security is part of a larger economic strategy. Where local production is economically practical, import replacement can create local work, build resilience, and keep more business activity circulating in Hawaiʻi. Technology makes that strategy more realistic by allowing fewer workers to produce, process, and distribute more.
- Agriculture and ranching
- Food processing and preservation
- Manufacturing and fabrication
- Repair and maintenance capacity
- Logistics, warehousing, and cold-chain infrastructure
- Robotics, sensors, drones, SI, and precision agriculture
Cross-cutting workforce proposal
Agricultural Reentry Campuses: link training directly to paid work and successful reentry.
A real workforce pathway
Eligible participants transitioning out of incarceration could voluntarily live on a transitional campus, earn a real wage, receive recognized training, build an employment history, and develop transferable skills in agriculture and related skilled trades.
Not a cheap-labor program
The program should never depend on unpaid or artificially cheap labor. Participants should be employees in legitimate productive operations, with the ability to save money and pursue employment inside or outside agriculture after completion.
Why it fits this research: The proposal is one example of aligning workforce development with a productive industry Hawaiʻi needs to rebuild, while also addressing public safety and transitional housing. Read the full Agricultural Reentry Campuses proposal.
Policy direction
Align workforce investment with industries Hawaiʻi needs to build.
Create the jobs, not just the credentials
Measure workforce programs by whether participants move into real living-wage careers, while economic-development policy expands the number of those careers.
Make agriculture economically viable
Address labor costs together with workforce housing, land and water access, financing, processing infrastructure, and reliable markets.
Use public purchasing strategically
Where lawful and cost-effective, schools and other public institutions can provide predictable demand for locally produced food and help producers scale.
Build the whole food economy
Workforce planning should include processing, refrigeration, veterinary services, logistics, equipment, repair, engineering, sales, and distribution.
Raise productivity with technology
Support mechanization, automation, and modern agricultural systems so higher output does not depend on maintaining a permanently low-wage labor force.
Target import replacement
Identify goods Hawaiʻi can competitively produce or process locally and align training, infrastructure, permitting, and capital around those opportunities.
Sources & methodology
What the evidence supports, and what still needs to be measured.
Primary workforce and agriculture sources
Agricultural technology and productivity sources
- UH CTAHR: Drones Take Flight to Protect Hawaiʻi’s Agriculture
- UH CTAHR: Modern Agriculture, Robots, Smart Sensors, and Ag Innovation
- University of Hawaiʻi: SI and robotics research for practical farm tools
- Hawaiʻi Community College: drone and geospatial workforce credentials
- USDA NIFA: Automation for Specialty Crops
- USDA NRCS: Virtual fencing for grazing management
Rice and kalo mechanization sources
Daniel Anthony sources
Research note: The 170,000 and 101,000 figures are projections and will change as wages, living-cost thresholds, demographics, and occupational forecasts change. The agriculture evidence establishes that labor and workforce housing are real constraints. It does not prove that higher wages alone would solve agricultural labor shortages. Land, water, housing, infrastructure, management, capital, market demand, and productivity also matter.
Issues & Research
Housing and workforce are now the first two major findings.
Return to the Research index or read the housing analysis on how existing housing stock is allocated between resident and competing uses.
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