The correct answer is D) slow transportation.
Before Hawaii became a state, the business challenge the wealthy American plantation owners who lived there faced was slow transportation.
In the 1800s, before Hawaii became an official state of the US, the islands of Hawaii lacked the good and proper infrastructure to transport the crops through the islands and to export the corps to the mainland United States.
In those previous years of being part of the United States, wealthy plantation owners hired thousands of Japanese immigrants to work in the large sugar plantations of Hawaii. Immigrants were exploited. They worked for long hours under the shining sun and under unhealthy conditions. And of course, for low pay.
They produced good crops but the lack of infrastructure in roads, canals, and ships, limited the transportation of crops to increase trade.