More of the same

More of the same was Originally Posted on May 5, 2010 by lavarock

In the following videos, Jim Wayman, a blender who makes the most money off blending non-Hawaiian coffee says that he got the legislature to change the requirements because mainland companies might put 1 Kona bean in the package and call it Kona. He puts 10 beans in. It is the pot calling the kettle black!

Jim seems to always swing the discussion around to the idea that people like that taste of his coffee and thus he is doing nothing wrong. We farmers make the point that we don’t care if he blends, just don’t tell people that they are getting a product they are not. When we tell him that he should call his coffee “Indonesian Delight” instead of Kona (because the majority of product is frm Indonesia), he will tell you that then it will not sell, and he will go bankrupt. THAT says that the public is buying the Kona blend because they think it is Kona coffee and that they can taste Kona in it; which experts and layman alike say is not true.

So that is the plight of the small farmer here. We work hard to create a unique product and these carpetbaggers do some hocus-pocus with the product and direct people to an inferior product. As you see in the video, once the public realizes thatthey have been hoodwinked, they are upset.

The legislature is even worse. They side with the blenders because there are more votes and money there. They refuse to do what is right and protect the farmers. Vidallia onions, Champagne, Yorkshire Rhubarb are protected against counterfeiting; but not Kona Coffee.
However, the state legislature was incensed when an atlantic Ocean country used photos of Hawaii in their ads for their own beaches!

The videos of the news feed are here. Part 1 aired last night and part 2 airs tonight. I tried to load part 2 now and it doesn’t look like it is available yet. I am going to guess what the legislature says though. let’s see if I ma right.

[mumble mumble] we won’t get involved in the Kona coffee debate because the farmers and the big companies won’t get together and find middle ground [mumble mumble]. Heck, even the farmers don’t agree as to how much Kona should be in the bag to call it Kona.

When this debate came up last time, the big blenders and producers coerced the farmers. Many of the small farms are “Mom and Pop” farms who pick the cherry themselves and just sell the items to a processor. They cannot afford pulping machines and roasters and bags and internet sites. They just grow something and want to get paid. They have been selling to these same people for decades. Then the Kona Coffee Farmers Association, the group I helped found, started pushing the blenders to accurately and honestly sell their product. With the move to increase the amount of coffee in the bag to call it “Kona” they fought back. They sent threatening letters to these small mom and pop farmers. They told them that they would stop buying their cherry and then where would they be. That the “coffee industry” would come to a screaching halt and… [more gloom and doom followed]. What they did was talk about the “industry”. The industry is the blenders. farmers are not “industry”, they are the producers.

The gloom and doom doesn’t make much sense. When people realize thatwhat they are buying is mostly foreign coffee, they drop the bag and buy real Kona. Sure some people love the taste of the blend, but are they buying it because it tastes good, or because they think it is a product of Kona? The big blender says that they think it is Kona and thus if he is required to accurately label it, people will stop buying it.

In reality, there is only 10% Kona in a bag of 90% foreign coffee. Thus, let’s just say for the sake of argument, that the legislature required 100% of the coffee int he bag to be Kona. Even if most of the people who buy Kona blends went away, there would still only have to be 10% of the blend buys convert to 100% Kona to equal the same amount of Kona be sold.

My suggestion to the big blenders is this, if your 90% Indonesian is so great, why adulterate it with 10% Kona, why not make a 100% Indonesian and tell the public THAT is what they are getting? It seems the origin of 90% of their blend is not identified at all.

My guess is the reason that Jim finally mentioned what he was using in the blend, is when the camera crew showed up on his doorstep, it was hard to hide the massive amounts of bags with “Indonesia” plastered all over it.

Hawaii is the only state in the US that grows coffee. We also are the ONLY country in the world that grows coffee AND imports other coffee in to blend with it. That the blenders profits go out of stete doesn’t seem to bother our legislature either, as long as they get a cut before the money siphons out.

So the small farmer keeps growing real Kona coffee, strives to make a quality product and continues to fight “the man”!

Here are the links to the 2 parts of last night’s presentation on KITV.

Part 1: http://www.kitv.com/video/23457733/index.html

Part 2: http://www.kitv.com/video/23457734/index.html