Working lands · In development
The land grows it. The corridor makes it. The moku governs it.
Hawaiʻi's land use law places every acre in one of four state districts, and the counties decide the zoning inside them. Read carefully, the law already contains a plan: farm lands that keep farming, housing that keeps farmers on the land, and a rail corridor where value-added processing belongs. This page states that stance — with its citations — and names what we are building to carry it. None of the new map views described here are live yet.
Two kinds of places, one journey
Mokunet narrows its facilities focus to two siting classes, joined by a single rule.
Farm lands — Ag-1 and Ag-2
County agricultural zoning inside the state agricultural district. What belongs here is what the law already allows a farm as of right: growing, first — and with it pack houses, washing and grading, cold storage, and mills for the operation's own crops; a farm dwelling; and, on designated important agricultural lands, employee housing capped at the lesser of five per cent of the operation's important-agricultural-land acreage or fifty acres, under a state-approved agricultural plan, with residential subdivisions expressly prohibited. The caps are the point: housing that keeps farms farming, not development on farmland.
The corridor — where processing belongs
The rail corridor's mixed-use, business, and industrial zoning districts, in the state urban district. On productive agricultural soils the law prohibits what it does not expressly permit, and on-farm processing is tied to a farm's own crops — so processing that serves many farms at community scale belongs in the corridor, near the people who work in it and the transit that carries them.
The rule that joins them: industrial and business zones appear on Mokunet only as the value-added partner of the farm lands they serve — never as a standalone real-estate layer. A corridor facility earns its place on the map from the farms and cooperatives it sources from.
What the law already says
The stance is stated from Hawaiʻi's land use law, HRS chapter 205 — not from preference. Four provisions carry most of it.
Value-added is the law's own word
§205-2(d)(15) permits agricultural-based commercial operations selling value-added products produced using agricultural products grown in Hawaiʻi. The statute names the very activity this network coordinates.
The law rewards the pattern
§205-46.5 directs permitting agencies to give priority processing to permit applications for agricultural processing facilities of an agribusiness whose lands are mostly designated important agricultural lands.
Forestry is agriculture
§205-2(d)(1) counts forestry among agricultural uses, and §205-2(d)(7) makes mills lawful accessory farm buildings — the legal ground for a local building-materials chain.
Counties hold the pen
§205-5 lets each county further define agricultural-district uses by ordinance. Ag-1 and Ag-2 are county law — which is why the county conversation, not this network, decides what changes.
Built from here
A building-materials chain that starts and ends at home.
The land grows the timber, farm mills prepare it, corridor fabrication turns it into mass-timber components, and network projects build with them — so a building can say where its frame grew. Every step traceable to its place through the same records that govern every other project on the shared map.
The chain:Grown hereMilled on the farmFabricated in the corridorBuilt into network projects
Deciding with counties
Simulate, then decide together.
County ordinance defines what agricultural zoning permits, and county decisions shape the corridor. Mokunet's part is not advocacy: we are building the ability to offer counties simulated futures — a rezoning, a housing build-out, a materials chain — computed against the shared map and always marked as hypothetical. Counties evaluate; counties decide. The shared map is an offering to each county's own planning, never a claim on it.
Where this stands today
Honest framing: the stance on this page is stated from the statute and already guides how we plan. The capabilities are being built — land use and zoning context on the shared map, the corridor view that pairs processing with the farm lands it serves, computed farm-housing envelopes, and county scenario reports. None of them are live today.
In development:Land use & zoning layersCorridor viewHousing envelopesCounty scenarios
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