Hawaii County, HI Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

Hawaii County's protection for farming operations runs through land-use zoning rather than a separate nuisance-shield statute. Hawaii County Code § 25-5-50 establishes the RA (Residential and Agricultural) district for low density residential lots in rural areas 'where small farms are intermixed with low density residential lots,' restricted to land the State Land Use Commission has classified Rural or Urban. Section 25-5-52 lists what's permitted there by right, including crop production, aquaculture, apiaries, livestock production other than pigs (subject to Department of Health approval and a 75-foot setback from any lot line), botanical gardens and nurseries, and roadside stands selling produce grown on the premises.

A step up in intensity, § 25-5-70 sets aside the A (Agricultural) district for land ranging from good to marginal agricultural and grazing land, and § 25-5-72 permits agricultural parks, major and minor agricultural products processing, forestry, game and fish propagation, and livestock production, with piggeries and pen feeding required to sit at least 1,000 feet from any lot line and get Department of Health and director approval. Both districts key their minimum lot size to the zoning map designation itself: an 'RA-1a' or 'A-10a' suffix on the map sets the minimum building site area directly, at one acre or ten acres respectively, under §§ 25-5-51 and 25-5-71.

Farm dwellings in the A district are separately conditioned on § 25-5-77(b) and (c). None of this displaces the State Right to Farm Act, HRS chapter 165, which Hawaii County's own beekeeping ordinance at § 4-5-1 expressly invokes for apiaries; the county's role is to keep agricultural land zoned for farming so that state-level protection has somewhere to apply.