A Brief Hisotry of Kona Coffee
Introduction: Coffee, a relative of the gardenia family, is one of the most important crops grown on the Big Island. Although other Hawaiian Islands also produce coffee only Kona Coffee is of sufficient quality to be sold on the world market during gluts in coffee production. In Kona Mauka (upland Kona) you will find many coffee farms and roasting plants that give tours, such as the Captain Cook Coffee Company, in Kainaliu.
Hawaii is the sole US producer of commercially grown coffee and Kona coffee remains truly rare. Today's Kona coffee industry is composed of an interlaced group of independent small farmers, coffee roasters and merchants. Of the perhaps 600 coffee farms in Kona, most are between 2 and 3 acres in size. Kona Coffee is raised on over 2000 total acres in an area 20 miles long and 2 miles wide long the slopes of Hualalai and Mauna Loa volcanoes, between 500 to 3,000 feet elevation; annual coffee production is generally over two million pounds.
History:
World famous Kona coffee owes its richness and flavor to the fertile, volcanic soil, mild climate and abundant rain water in the mountains of the west side of the Big Island. The area's coffee industry began in earnest during the 1830s and soon the lives, and culture, of Kona residents began to revolve around it.
The history of Kona coffee is one of boom and bust, good times and bad, but always characterized by a strong work ethic, independence, self-sufficiency, family unity, and cooperation. A multicultural industry from the beginning, it has involved contributions from the island's Native Hawaiians, Haoles, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans.
In 1813, Don Francisco de Paula Y Marin, a Spaniard and one of Kamehameha's trusted advisors, planted coffee on the island of Oahu. The British warship HMS Blonde brought more coffee trees to the Hawaiian Islands in 1825. Reverend Samuel Ruggles brought the first coffee to the Big Island when he brought cuttings of coffee trees to the town of Captain Cook in Kona in 1828.The industry grew and large plantations were established during the first half of the nineteenth century. Both companies provided However, even though world coffee prices started to climb in the 1850s, labor shortages, pest and disease infestations and drought thwarted efforts to expand the Hawaiian coffee industry. Coffee plantations were replaced by sugar cane plantations as coffee pries fell and sugar prices rose and by 1860, coffee plantations almost disappeared from Hawaii.
Boom times arrived again in Kona in the 1890s as American and European started another era of the large coffee plantation enterprises; this lasted until 1899, when the world coffee market crashed and brought the Kona coffee industry to near extinction.
Economic realities forced large scale coffee plantations to be sold off, cut up and replaced by small family ventures run by new immigrants; by1910, Japanese farmers comprised 80% of Kona's coffee farmers. This marked the beginning of the transition from large coffee plantations to small family farms, a transformation revolutionized the Kona coffee industry and saved it.
Through The Great Depression, two world wars and into modern times, coffee prices rose and fell causing the Kona coffee industry to grow and shrink accordingly. However, the farming style from the turn of the 20th century onward was always characterized by smaller, rather than larger, coffee farms. Captain Cook Coffee Company and American Factors (AMFAC) were the only legal buyers of the coffee crop in those days; they provided goods to the farmers through company stores which were paid for with the coffee harvest. Many times, small farmers had no other way of raising scare cash than to sell their coffee on the black market. Until the mid 1950's when they withdrew from the coffee industry, Captain Cook and AMFAC hired armed men to patrol the roads of Kona in an effort to suppress this vicarious coffee commerce.
Today, Hawaii is the sole US producer of commercially grown coffee and Kona coffee is grown on around 600 independent coffee farms, mostly are between 2 and 3 acres. Total coffee acreage exceeds 2000 along the slopes of Hualalai and Mauna Loa volcanoes; annual coffee production is generally over two million pounds.
Donald B. MacGowan: Originally, Dr. MacGowan pursued a career in academics, earning two B.Sc. degrees, a dual M.Sc., and a PhD.; co-authoring over 5.2 million dollars in grants, and publishing more than 200 refereed journal articles, abstracts, etc. Gaining sanity somewhere in that process, he quit the academic rat race and began to live. Donnie is an accomplished, prolific alpinist, having climbed on 5 of the seven continents, putting up more than 150 first ascents on rock, ice and snow, and a dozen first ski descents. He has written, directed and produced short and feature length films on health, travel, mountaineering and life in a touring rock band. Donnie records and tours relentlessly with his Celtic Punk fusion band "Fatal Loins"--although nobody much seems to care for their music. A Hawaii resident since 2000, he quietly and humbly inhabits Kailua Kona, doing environmental good works, surfing the be-jeezis out of the local waves and frenetically producing somewhat bizarre and mildly disturbing programs for local television which have recently been lauded as: "Ignorant", "Arrogant" and "Totally Insane". You may say what you wish about him, Donnie does not care. For somewhere underneath those swaying palm trees, in those warm aloha breezes, he is far too busy praying for good surf to hear you...
For more information about visiting and touring Hawaii in general, and exploring the historic and cultural sites on the Big Island in particular, visit http://www.tourguidehawaii.com and http://www.lovingthebigisland.wordpress.com
By Donald MacGowan
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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