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Stacy Higa, Chairman <br />and Members of the County Council <br />Page 3 <br />"Fair" for agricultural productivity. The property is designated as Other Important <br />Agricultural Land and Prime Agricultural Land under the ALISH System. The Federal <br />Emergency Management Agency Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) designates the <br />property as Zone "V, an area determined to be outside of the 500 -year flood plain. <br />The major concern in allowing a rezoning of agricultural land that creates smaller <br />lot sizes is that this will reduce the potential use of the land for commercial agriculture by <br />fragmenting the land into areas too small to be farmed on a commercial scale. While a <br />few crops can be intensively cultivated on very small acreages, usually these crops have a <br />very limited market. Reducing the size of the lots can reduce the range of potential <br />agricultural uses and the range of market opportunities for those crops. At the same time, <br />a strong demand exists in the real estate market for lots in agricultural areas by purchasers <br />who are interested in large -lot residential homesites or for speculation. The desire for <br />these "gentleman's estates" tends to drive up the price of agricultural land making it less <br />affordable for commercial farmers. <br />Most agricultural rezonings in Hawaii County in the last twenty years have <br />resulted in subdivisions where the primary use is residential, not agricultural. For the <br />most part, these rezonings did not occur on prime agricultural land or on what is now <br />termed "Important Agricultural Land" in the General Plan. The predominant zoning in <br />the agricultural lands of the Hamakua coast, extending to Waimea, is A -40a. There will <br />be considerable interest by landowners to rezone to reduce the minimum lot sizes because <br />the biggest value is the ability to build a home. The per -acre price is therefore higher if <br />the property can be sold in smaller lots. This desire to create smaller lots must be handled <br />very carefully because of the possible carving up of the land into uneconomical units, and <br />the increasing per -acre price. <br />The General Plan now contains a policy for the protection of lands classified as <br />Important Agricultural Lands in Section 14.2.3(s): `Important agricultural lands shall not <br />be rezoned to parcel sizes too small to support economically viable farming units." This <br />policy applies to roughly the lower two-thirds of this property, where the applicant is <br />proposing to create five new lots after the rezoning, one of 8 acres, the remainder being <br />five acres in size. Five acres is the minimum at which a range of crops can be grown on a <br />commercial scale, and is sub -optimal for many crops. While the rezoning application <br />does not violate this policy, it is at the minimum that could be consistent with the policy. <br />A number of factors tip the balance for this favorable recommendation: the area <br />has not historically been cultivated in crops, unlike the former cane lands and the <br />vegetable growing areas of Waimea. The project is not. a short-term speculative venture <br />in that the owners have held the property for more than thirty years, have used it for cattle <br />