Coffee Problem Brewing

Coffee Problem Brewing was Originally Posted on July 2, 2012 by lavarock

I wrote about this before and hoped that the Governor would hold true to his word that he would veto HB280. I am afraid he will bow to big business.

Imagine you live in an area with a small police department and a busy road. The town is having problems paying the policeman. His main job is to ensure people don’t speed through town, especially the many big trucks. Rather than shuffle money around to pay his salary, the mayor is tending to bow to the big trucking companies who say they promies to watch their speed. They have been known to speed often through town. Yeah right. Do away with the police and let the truckers watch their own speed.

Imagine the USDA does not have enough inspectors to inspect meat in the area. Rather than spend money on more inspectors, the USDA is encouraged to let the processors do their own inspections and grading of beef. They promise to behave. Yeah right.

This is the same issue we have. There is 1 inspector on the Big Island to inspect coffee. The big processors (including blenders who import foreign coffee to water-down Kona) say don’t hire more inspectors, we can do our own grading anc certification. Yeah right. The reason the inspection was put into place was thatone of them was caught selling “Kona Coffee” with no Kona in it. There was no certification at the time. This procedure was put into place to ensure the coffee advertised as Kona was really Kona.

Many small farmers support this certification because we do not cheat. We are not the ones mixed foreign coffee with Kona. We don’t have lots of coffee and want to make sure that we get top dollar for the work we put into growing, harvesting, drying, roasting and selling our quality product.

The processors and blenders buy large lots of Kona from farmers at a low price. They may have contracts with target, COSTCO, Wal-Mart or others to sell specific grades of coffee. Recently we have had a coffee cherry borer beetle which has taken its toll on coffee production. Small farmer may have lost a lot of crop but are willing to have their beans certified to ensure top price. Now imagine that the processors and blenders have a contract fo x amount of Extra Fancy beans. If they can’t ship that quantity they have problems. I believe an easy way to ensure they don’t have problems getting sufficient quantity of a certain grade is if they do the certification themselves. If you think about it, that solves their problem very easily. I mean, with nobody looking over their shoulder, who would know.

In none of their complaints or responses to the bill to do away with the state certification do they mention hiring another inspector. They just say they want to certify the product themselves.

I can’t expect all of you to necessarily care about our problem or see our side, but I want to to know that the farmers, the actual producers of Kona Coffee are trying to ensure that you are getting what you are paying for.

http://tinyurl.com/7ze7nru

http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-of-hawaii-veto-of-hb-280-is-critical