> By the time they realized they'd either have to change or go out of business Sugar production in Hawaii peaked 40 years ago but even then had already been in

> By the time they realized they'd either have to change or go out of business Sugar production in Hawaii peaked 40 years ago but even then had already been in decline for decades, there were no surprises for any of these companies and I'm skeptical they could have turned that train around. > kept the field burning Not burning the fields was certainly not going to help the bottom line, there's a reason these companies fight it. > the impossibly ancient mill equipment New mill equipment wasn't going to fix the real problem, that third generation kids didn't want to work in the fields for low pay. > focus on more secondary goods like rum, organic sugar It's called secondary market for a reason, it's small. Puerto Rico has (had?) ~70% of the US rum market but only employs ~700 people directly. That's the same number of people that HC&S just let go on Maui but that only produced 4% of cane sugar sold in the US.