James "Jimmy" Greenwell
Year Inducted: 2013
Palani Ranch | Hawai'i
Hawaii Meat Company | Hawai'i
Jimmy has always loved working with livestock, horses and the land. He was born and raised on Oʻahu where his father (James M. Greenwell) managed Hawaii Meat Company. He spent lots of time while growing up in at the HMCo’s operations in ʻEwa and Kahuku; and later, at the first HMCo feed yard at West Loch. He also spent summers in Kona on Palani Ranch, and two summers on Molokai Ranch under Henry Rice, and another at HMCo’s second feed yard at Barbers Point.
He attended Cornell University majoring in agricultural economics graduating with a B.S. degree in 1967. He was able to keep riding in college because he got hooked on polo. Jimmy captained the team as a senior and started for Cornell his last three years.
Following several years in the service via ROTC, he started work in 1970 in the real estate/land business with Alexander & Baldwin. This led to his becoming a licensed real estate broker and peaked his interest in land matters. Except for vacations in Kona and polo through the renewal of the Maui Polo Club, he was away from livestock and agriculture for about ten years.
In 1980, he left A&B to go to work for his family’s enterprise with Palani Ranch Company and he was back in the cattle industry that he loved.
He recalls one of his first Hawaii Cattlemen’s Council meetings in Waimea. He expressed his concern that there was no committee or agenda item focusing specifically on what he saw as the cattle industry’s most basic and often threatened resource – the land. He walked out of the meeting having been appointed chairman of HCC’s just created “Land Issues Committee.”
Among the major land issues facing the cattle industry and successfully dealt with during Jimmy’s committee chairmanship, was a massive regulatory challenge to the use of historical grazing lands in the form of Federal agencies seeking to designate land as critical habitat for rare and endangered species. Other land issues involved property rights challenges. The Land Issues Committee continues today as one of the Council’s most active and vital committees.
He also has served as president of the Hawaii Cattlemen’s Council and twice as the president of the Hawaii Cattle Producers Co-operative Association. He was the first president of the Hawaii Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative when it was formed in 2007. In 2004, he was named Cattleman of the Year by the Federal Land Bank. He also has been active in many leadership positions of other business and community organizations and boards.
Jimmy Greenwell served as president of Palani Ranch Company Inc. for twenty years from 1993 through 2012 and continues as its Board Chairman today.