Claim: Developer D.R. Horton is claiming that they are going to preserve commercial farming as a major aspect of their Ho'opili project. Just over ten percent of the property, about 160 acres, is designated as commercial farmland in Horton's latest proposal.  But gulches, gullies, and hillsides make up almost all of the land they have designated as "commercial farmland".  It's unsuitable land that the current farmers don't use because it's not worth the trouble.

Truth: Horton's original plan was to rid the area of farmlands altogether, replacing it with homes, roads, schools, businesses, and the usual urban development. Only after hearing the public's outcry to save the land that feeds us did they change their plan. And now they claim that they will give us places to farm, but if you take a look you'll see that all they've done is change the areas they previously had designated as "Open space / buffers" to "Commercial farms".

Old Plan: To the left is a map from their proposal circa 2007. You can see the designated open spaces indicated with the green arrows.

New Plan: To the right is their current, revised plan with the commercial farms areas indicated by red arrows. They point to the same places as the green arrows on the map above! The 159 acres of lands they claim will be for commercial farming are all in areas that were formerly open spaces or buffers. We don't understand why Horton claims we will be able to farm these spaces. We won't. If we could, crops would be growing there now!

Terrain: This map shows the terrain. On it, you can see all the hilly areas Horton has designated for our "Commercial farms".

Conclusion: We're not sure what D.R. Horton thinks could be grown on those hillsides and in those gullies. Perhaps it's a new crop of fallacies. Don't be fooled!