Dry weather diminishes
coffee yield on Big Island
KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii >> This year's Kona coffee harvest is significantly down from the near-record 4.1 million pounds produced last year, mostly due to dry weather conditions, state agriculture officials said.
About 10 percent of the beans brought in for processing this harvest season were empty seed husks -- about four times higher than average, said Kent Fleming, a University of Hawaii-Manoa economics professor and extension-service economist.
While some farmers in Holualoa saw a drop of about 10 percent, others, such as those in South Kona and lower elevations were down anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent, Fleming said.
"Rain just did not fall when it was needed most" during spring and summer, Fleming said.
Near-normal rainfall last year helped produce a harvest of 4.1 million pounds of Kona coffee, the highest since 1971.
But May and June rainfall this year in the same area was less than 2 percent of the monthly average of 7 to 8 inches, according to state and federal statistics.
Farmers that did not take a significant hit were those who were able to add water at the right time.
But the cost to irrigate the average Kona coffee farm, 3 to 7 acres of producing coffee trees, is "roughly $3,000 per acre," he said.
"That's a lot of money for a cash-strapped farmer," Fleming said.
Hawaii isn't the only region where coffee production is down. The world's largest producer of coffee, Brazil, will produce 13 percent less coffee this year compared to 2002, according to federal agriculture statistics.
Still, coffee prices have remained stable.
"There's a real (global) coffee glut," Fleming said. "In part, that's due to the U.S. government encouraging countries like Vietnam, with extremely low labor costs, to start coffee production."
Fleming said the government should make federal crop insurance available to Kona coffee farmers, in part to offset the federal effort encouraging coffee production in foreign nations.
The state Department of Agriculture has tried for the past few years to get federal crop insurance for coffee farmers, he said.
"Crop insurance would have protected them (Kona's coffee farmers) from this year's losses," he said.
