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Kona Coffee
Kona Prices on the Rise? Not because of the Earthquake
by Nicole Jones
 According
to Kona Coffee Council Vice President Bob Foerster, if you see a rise in Kona
coffee prices this season, it’s not because of the last month’s earthquake. Kona
is really weather dependent – not earthquake dependant, Foerster said in an
interview following the earthquake.
“The earthquake rattled the north end of the island a bit,” he said. “But it
really didn’t affect us here in the coffee belt.” The coffee belt, as it’s
commonly known to locals, is roughly two miles wide, 20 miles long and located
in the mid-southwest side of the island.
Fortunately for Kona lovers, power was down for only a few days after the 6.7
quake and there was no significant damage to the infrastructure – so production
of coffee never really ceased. And since Kona coffee is flown from Hawaii to the
mainland, rather than shipped by sea, there were no delays.
Getting coffee out of Indonesia was a real problem following the tsunami in
2004, said Mike Ferguson, Chief Communications Officer for the Specialty Coffee
Association of American (SCAA), a California-based trade association. Ports were
clogged with shipments of aid and relief, so exporting coffee was a real
problem.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans last summer, the problem was exactly the
opposite. Because New Orleans is our nation’s second largest coffee port and a
third of its facilities were destroyed, many coffee shipments were delayed from
entering.
“Generally speaking, when it comes to coffee, it’s pretty hard to mess up the
infrastructure,” said Ferguson. “Plantations themselves can withstand a lot of
damage due to the weather.”
All things aside, if Kona plantations end up with a bumper crop like last
year’s, prices of our favorite Hawaiian coffee should remain the same.
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