If you have ever stayed in a hotel or condo anywhere in Hawaii that provided the packets of so called "Kona Coffee", I bet you still remember that bitter taste. This experience is repeated thousands of times every day from the hotels of Waikiki to the condos on Kona's Alii Drive and it has Kona Coffee growers feeling bitter about the damage it does to their 100% Kona coffee brand.
A law passed back in 1991 allows coffee packagers to use as little as 10% Kona Coffee beans in their product and still label it Kona Coffee. The result is a bag full of cheap, bitter coffee beans with a sprinkling of Kona coffee that is completely undetectable in the actual cup of coffee. If you want to try Kona coffee, make sure the bag says"100% Kona coffee beans". The 300 strong Kona Coffee Farmers Association have been unsuccessfully fighting this law for years. The problem is that the big packagers have a lot more power and influence in the State Senate than a small group of farmers from a small region on the Big Island. Hawaii Island has seven representatives and Oahu has thirty five that really don't care too much about coffee.
Change could be blowing in Hawaii's tropical tradewinds. There are currently two House Bills that address this labeling misrepresentation. It will be interesting to see if the growers are finally successful, this time around. I hope they are. Kona Coffee is surely some of the best grown anywhere. It's expensive, at $30 -$40/ lb. but if you have ever taken a coffee tour at one of the local farms; you can appreciate how labor intensive it is to produce. If you want to help the Kona Coffee Farmers change this law, you can visit their web site to sign a petition at Konacoffeefarmers.org.
If you are interested in buying a Kona coffee farm, contact me, Rich Bosselmann R(S) at (808) 345-5085, Konaconnection@gmail.com. As a Realtor with Koa Realty Inc., I work right in the heart of the Kona Coffee belt in the tiny town of Holualoa.
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