Nearly 1 million pounds of coffee get processed in a typical season at Ka'ū Coffee Mill on the island of Hawaii. But this warehouse is filled with nearly $1 million worth of Ka'ū-grown coffee beans, and they aren't going anywhere.By this time in a normal year, that all would have been milled down and sold. But since the global demand completely shut down, I'm still hanging on to that.
This is what will eventually get roasted and become what we know as coffee. In a normal season, Ka'ū Coffee Mill will produce close to 160,000 pounds of green bean, which gets sold to coffee shops and roasters throughout the state and internationally.The pandemic took hold just as last year's harvest was ending in Ka'ū. While farms and regions like Kona wrapped up their harvest in late December, the harvesting season in Ka'ū runs through March and April.
And while coffee farmers were included in the latest round of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, getting help might not be as easy as it seems.Because of the requirements and what they're asking of the farmers, a lot of these folks aren't going to be able to glean money from that program. Nor are we, because of the way the wording is in that.For folks in Ka'ū, their only hope of returning to normal operations depends on tourists returning to the islands.
By Hawaiians?
good luck