just after Captain Cook had been killed on the Big Island, described it as "the most beautiful Country we have as yet seen among these isles... here was a fine expanse of Low land bounteously cloath’d with Verdure, on which were situate many large Villages and extensive plantations."

Today, agriculture remains the mainstay of the North Shore (along, of course, with the waves, for this is the surfing Mecca of the known universe). In the wake of sugar, small farmers here are raising fish and cattle and growing taro, tomatoes, tuberose, lettuce, papaya, kava, asparagus, bananas and much more. Their Mother Nature is Susan Matsushima, who started out as an elementary school teacher and now runs a multimillion-dollar-a-year flower-and-plant business at Alluvion Farms. Susan is as full of life as her nurseries, and she is on a mission to promote ag. "I really feel the North Shore can be the breadbasket for Oahu," she tells me as she takes me on a tour of Alluvion; not far away, the surf is breaking for the farm sits on twenty acres just across from Laniäkea Beach. "Most people don’t realize what’s happening out here—this is a really entrepreneurial area," Susan says as we walk. Everything she is showing me proves her point: She shares her twenty acres with, among others, an organic okra farmer, a landscaping company and an ornamental fish breeder. Everywhere around us, things are growing.

And it’s true, I find, as I explore Waialua: The bounty of ag turns up all over here—the fields are off the maps but everywhere. I travel 4.8 miles down an unpaved road and find May’s Wonder Garden, a thriving lettuce farm, the largest hydroponics venture in the state. Behind it, some twenty-five raised ponds are home to tens of thousands of snails. I watch them sunning themselves, oblivious to the plan for their future: Escargot on the menu in Hawaii’s restaurants.

But while most of the ag that’s going on in Waialua these days is small-scale and individual, not all of it is—Pioneer Hi-Bred, a subsidiary of DuPont, has 1,200 acres in feed corn. It’s now the single largest crop in the area, and it’s dragged Waialua into debates about the hottest ag issue in the world: genetically modified crops. Forty-five percent of the corn Pioneer grows here is genetically modified. Sitting in his office, a huge processing plant visible out the window behind him, Pioneer’s Richard McCormack explains that the company is raising new varieties to disseminate around the world. He holds up a small pouch about the size of a handbag.