Monsanto is no longer seeking to designate 1,084 acres on Molokai as important agricultural lands, the company announced Wednesday afternoon.

Dan Clegg, Hawaii business operations lead for Monsanto, and Dawn Bicoy, community affairs manager for Monsanto on Molokai, said in a joint statement that through conversations with residents, “it became obvious that more needs to be done to ensure the community has accurate information and is well informed” about what the designation would mean.

“It was not an easy decision,” the statement said. “As an agricultural company, we share in IAL’s vision and believe it’s a great match for Molokai. However, as an integral part of the island’s community, we also feel strongly that we need to prioritize our neighbors and fellow community members first, even if it means pulling back a petition that could have helped preserve prime agriculture lands on Molokai well into the future.”

Designating property as “important agricultural lands” is part of the state’s initiative to protect valuable lands that are capable of producing high agricultural yields and help support the state’s economy, according to the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agricultural and Human Resources.

The state offers landowners incentives, including allowing farm dwellings and employee housing on a certain portion of the land and allowing landowners to reclassify up to 15 percent of the land into a rural, urban or conservation district.

However, Clegg and Bicoy said Monsanto had “waived our rights to the land reclassification incentive and had no plans to pursue some of the other incentives available to IAL landowners.”

“Most of the IAL incentives are not well suited for our current business operations, and our interest in IAL designation is not driven by the incentives,” spokesperson Monica Ivey told The Maui News last week. “IAL designation will not give Monsanto Hawaii any special privileges or new rights to resources.”

In September, Monsanto submitted two petitions to the state Land Use Commission to voluntarily designate about 1,550 acres on Oahu and 1,084 acres on Molokai as important agricultural lands. Those parcels made up two-thirds of Monsanto’s land in Hawaii.

The company, which grows mostly seed corn and some soybeans, said the designation would not change its day-to-day farming operations or its crop plans.

“It will also not impact any of the other farmers who operate on our land,” Ivey said. “What IAL designation does is make it harder for these lands to be shifted to other, nonagricultural uses in the future.”

On Oct. 11, the commission unanimously approved the petition to designate the lands on Oahu. After a site visit and meeting on Molokai last week, the commission deferred its decision on the second petition, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

Clegg and Bicoy said the Molokai petition was the first to meet all eight criteria for important agricultural lands. The 1,000 acres are located around the reservoir in Kualapuu.

“Our withdrawal of our Molokai petition doesn’t change our commitment to the community and to agriculture,” they said in the statement.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.