The thread hypothesis is that there is a great deal of "idle" land. I've never been to Moloka'i and I don't know if that's true. When I lived on O'ahu it seemed that many people who basically lived on the beach would be glad to have agricultural work rather than e.g. catering to tourists. Shipping a tractor once is cheaper than shipping container-loads of vegetables every week, and that's more true the more that shipping costs rise. Tractors come from Asia now, anyway.