Traditional Agriculture in the Hawaiian Islands & Associated Ethnobotany

Overview of Traditional Agricultural Systems

Traditional agricultural systems, like those found in the Hawaiian Islands, are generally characterized by high species numbers, exploitation of diverse microenvironments within a field or region, biological pest controls, significant use of human and animal energy, reliance upon crop varieties, and use of wild plants and animals for consumption purposes.

Traditional farming systems often feature a considerable degree of plant diversity in the form of polycultures and agroforestry patterns. Complex ethnobotanical taxonomies commonly guide practitioners' identification and use of the vegetation within their system. Because traditional agroecosystems are also genetically diverse, partial resistance to diseases by particular crop varieties is not uncommon.This genetic diversity allows farmers to plant crop varieties adapted to the site but resistant to a specific disease, in microclimates where conditions exist for the disease to flourish.The ability to assign taxonomic nomenclature to the site, to the disease, and to the resistant crop variety is a useful management tool, especially with regard to enhancing harvest security.

In much of the developing world, farmers face enormous production problems associated with steep landscapes, floods, droughts, pests and disease, and low soil fertility. Yet many farmers using traditional techniques apply unique management principles to overcome or minimize these constraints. These principles include maintenance of a spatial and temporal variety of crops and vegetation, optimum utilization of space and environmental resources, recycling of nutrients, water conservation and management, and provision of crop protection against pests.

Pre-Contact Agricultural Systems in Hawaii

As described in Cordy (1972), agricultural systems in pre-contact Hawaii generally tended to coincide with one ahupua 'a (a pie-shaped, sociopolitical land division which extended from the mountain summit to the outer coral reef. Because the boundaries of these ahupua 'a were often determined by geographical factors, such as valleys, the agricultural systems often tend to be both sociocultural divisions and geographical units.

In these Hawaiian agricultural systems, the crops grown prior to contact were those typical of much of Polynesia, although with many unique local varieties. They included taro, both wet and dryland, sweet potatoes, yams, sugar cane, breadfruit, paper mulberry, bananas, and coconuts. Sweet potatoes and taro were the dominant crops.

The horticultural aspect of the agricultural system consisted of a certain combination of three crop clusters, each having its own characteristic crops and fields. Livestock - pigs, dogs, and fowls - were raised in the agricultural system, but exactly how, on what, or in what numbers is hard to determine due to the lack of data. All these aspects of the Hawaiian agricultural system combined and affected each other in a multitude of ways.