Forest, marine, livestock, and aquaculture products are not even included in this table. Another feature of Hawaii agriculture is that there is, if anything, a negative correlation between the size of an industry and the number of farms. The diversity of both products and farm size makes Hawaii a tremendous natural laboratory for studying farm management issues. Short-term variation in these proportions is probably dominated by research needs. Table 3 shows one measure of the relative importance of the many functions the ADSC performs.
Costs vary according to sample type and analysis specifications.
Revenue sources reported here do not include salaries, paid from state general funds via the university. Perhaps the most frequent source of criticism by clients is sample turn-around time, which has been as long as two months. Costs of using the ADSC are low compared to mainland competitors, but that is balanced against faster and more reliable turn-around times. The ADSC has a quality advantage in that local knowledge is used in its interpretations of sample results, information mainland labs do not use. For that reason, there is some unwillingness at the college to surrender the sample analysis business to the private sector.