Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 6, Number 11, 1 November 1989 — Some statistics on kalo: [ARTICLE]

Some statistics on kalo:

•In 1988, there were 153 farms planting 420 acres of Chinese and poi taro in Hawai'i. Total value for these two crops was 1.9 million for the 6.8 million pounds harvested. An unknown number of farms planted 10 acres of Japanese taro in the same year, valuedat $147,000. •Taro for poi was produced on 310 acres on 75 farms in 1988. The 5.7 million pounds were valued at approximately $1.5 million, for an average farm gate price of 26.9 cents per pound. Sixty-one percent of the taro used for poi making was grown on Kaua'i. •Hawai'i consistently imports more taro for the fresh market than it produces. In 1988 Hawai'i imported 615,000 pounds of fresh taro, accounting for 51 percent of the total supply. Major supplies include American and Western Samoa. •Hawai'i farmers export an estimated 500,000 pounds to mainland U.S. (primarily to the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets) and Canadian markets. (Source: Taro Eeonomie Fact Sheet# 1, June 1988 by Dept. of Agriculture and Resource Economics, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii).