The Boycott

The Boycott was Originally Posted on July 23, 2011 by lavarock

I had been following the events regarding the mainland Safeway stores and the Kona Coffee blend issue. At the Meeting Tuesday, I have to say that the vote was not unanimous with one nay votes cast.

As shown in the prior posting of mine, Safeway is selling a blended coffee with Kona in the name but no indication as to the percentage. Note that the Hawaii stores do not carry this particular coffee. It may have to do with Hawaii State law, which requires the percentage of any Hawaiian coffee, be on the label. Unfortunately, Hawaii allows a lower limit of 10%. There is no such lower limit on mainland sold coffee and there could be as little as 1 bean of Kona in a bag there!

The Kona Kai scandal of decades ago sent the owner of a company to jail for fraud when he sold “Kona Coffee” with no Kona in the bag.

You should note that Hawaii has a law but it is state law. There is no such law on the mainland requiring labeling.

Recently we got Jack In The Box, Mc Donald’s, an ice cream company and a cookie company to stop using Kona in the product names when the products contained either some or no Kona.

As for the boycott, it may help to remove the product from the market or force re-labeling. It depends upon how much negative publicity this generates. The one nay vote pushed for publicity explaining the problem but rather using a positive approach.

I sit on the fence. I enjoy shopping at Safeway and do not shop at the other two supermarket chains in town. I do agree with Safeway needing to change the packaging.

Readers here have seen that farming in Hawaii has its own problems and associated costs. Being in the middle of nowhere and our regressive tax here makes it more difficult to make big profits.

Our contention is that the blenders, who are not farmers, take 10% Kona and mix it with 90% cheap coffee from overseas and charge 1/3 the cost of 100% Kona. Thus their product is mostly pennies an ounce, compared to ours at just over a dollar an ounce.

We don’t begrudge them to make a product they say that consumers want; however when the fool the customer by putting “Kona” on the bag, that is our problem. Here they must tell you there is a spot of Kona in there; on the mainland, the one bean limit would probably pass a court test.

Whenever I’m in a supermarket selling mostly blends I will see perplexed customers holding a bag of blend. I ask them if I can help. They tell me they are looking fro “Kona Coffee” to take back to friends. When I tell them the contents of various bags, they pick the bag of Kona and thank me. They are not looking for a blend of foreign coffee. They think that Kona is concentrated and blended with other Hawaii coffees or from various farms.

So you can see why we fight for honest labeling. Period.

For those who see a bag of 100% Kona for $24 or more and think that we farmers are making a killing, I can attest that we are not. The way to have a farm worth a million dollars is to pay 2 million and hold on a while! Anyone who thinks otherwise is welcome to come work at my farm anytime!

Currently, our fight is also with the coffee twig borer and the coffee cherry borer, which are decimating our trees. These insects will not effect the taste of Kona Coffee as they are removed at processing, they can have a massive effect on the final yield of the crop perhaps anywhere from 10% to 80% loss are the estimates. We should know soon.

The agent used to hopefully control this is expensive and was restricted from Hawaii until this year.

So, boycott if you can. Take any bag of either “Kona” which does not list the percentage as 100% or of “Kona Blend” which does not list the percentage of Kona and does not list where the other coffee comes from, and ask the Manager of the store for us.

We are not an industry. We are not one big company, we are hundreds of farms, some as small as an acre or so, and cannot mount big boycotts or legal maneuvers.