The Kona Field System

The Polynesians who settled Hawaii were not just masters of navigation and the sea; they were also superbly competent horticulturists. The centerpiece of the Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook is a 5-acre remnant of the Kona Field System, a network of farms and gardens that covered over 50 square miles of upland Kona in the time before foreign contact.  When it was nominated to the national register of historic places, the Kona Field System was described as “the most monumental work of the ancient Hawaiians.”  The challenge of farming Kona was to produce a flourishing agricultural economy in an area subject to frequent droughts, with no lakes or streams for irrigation.  Hawaiians succeeded, but we have yet to unravel all the mysteries of the Kona Field System and the secrets of its success.  Kona gardens were planted in long, narrow fields that ran across the contours, up and down the slopes of Mauna Loa and Hualalai.  The low, wide, stone field boundaries may have been planting sites themselves.  The suite of crops was limited, but diversity was provided by a vast inventory of cultivated varieties that Hawaiians valued and preserved.  As rainfall increases rapidly with elevation in Kona, the long fields allowed farmers to plant different crops according to the rainfall regimes. The intensive labor requirements of dryland farming and the environment of Kona had social results that shaped the history of Hawaii. The traditional farming system disappeared by the mid-19^th century and now coffee farms cover much of the land that once comprised the Kona Field System.