Letter to the Editor re: Kona Coffee Council

Dear Editor

I read your story that the Kona Coffee Council does not support the Bills asking that any coffee labeled Kona blend in Hawaii must have a minimum of 75% Kona.

What a pity that an organization that purports to represent half the Kona coffee farmers wants to maintain 10% as the amount required to call coffee Kona. No Bill is passed as written, and if the KCC had any interest in protecting their farmer members they would engage in the discussion, there is plenty of room for compromise.

As to their comments about destabilizing the market - they contend that 50% of the crop goes into blends in Hawaii. Had they done the smallest piece of investigation they would know this cannot be so. Half the Kona crop, according to NASS figures, is about 1.5 million pounds. If you blended that 9:1 with foreign coffee then you would have to import 13.5 million pounds of foreign coffee into Hawaii. Yet the figures from the Department of Agriculture show imports of about 5 million pounds of foreign coffee. So even if ALL the imported coffee was dumped into Kona blend you would only need 16.7% of the Kona crop to mix with it. Just about the tip on a restaurant check, hardly likely to destabilize the market!


Sincerely
Christine Sheppard


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Christine Sheppard
www.kona-coffee-country.com/coffee
christinesheppard@hawaii.rr.com
808-329-7239