Is farming sexy? Agro-food initiatives and the contested value of agriculture in post-plantation Hawai‘i

Abstract Following the decline of plantation agriculture in Hawai‘i, widespread agro-food initiatives espousing narratives of food localization and sustainability have proliferated across the islands. These initiatives reflect divergent value regimes that emerge from vicissitudes of commodity and social relations in post-plantation Hawai‘i. These emergent value regimes are discursively and materially negotiated by a new generation of aspiring farmers. This paper examines the ways in which the co-existing visions of farming for values and economic value in farming contribute to the revaluing of agriculture in Hawai‘i. We argue that the growing visibility of agro-food initiatives that depict farming as sexy facilitates novel opportunities for farmers to draw value from the diverse economies of agriculture. Inadvertently, however, it normalizes the hardships faced by small farmers and further obscures the enduring structural challenges in Hawai‘i. This article contributes to scholarship on the politics of value and diverse economies within the shifting political economy of agriculture.