The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner holds the clue

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner holds the clue was Originally Posted on February 25, 2007 by lavarock

What is Hawaii’s biggest export for the past two years?

It’s a local product, enjoyed world wide.

It is as pure as it can get.

At various times in its history, Hawaii was known for its sugar cane, its macadamia nuts, its pineapples, yes and even its coffee, but coffee is NOT the answer.

The Rhyme of the Ancient Marriner holds the clue. “Water, water everywhere and nary a drip to drink…”

For the second year in a row, at $37.4 million per year, WATER is Hawaii’s biggest locally-produced export.

Hawaii is surrounded by water, but it is not the salt water we sell. because Hawaii has little to no industry, our waters are pretty darn clean and fresh. Add to that the oceans currents and depth of our water and you find that water down 3000 feet here is thousands of years old and thus free of man-made recent pollution.

Companies here in Kailua-Kona pump the water up from below, desalinate it and bottle the stuff for foreign markets. Currently I understand the biggest buyer of this pure water is Japan. What happens to the salt that is extracted? It too goes to Japan and other places.

This water I hear will be added to other products and will soon be available on the mainland of the US soon.

Pureness makes a difference!

In a somewhat related development, I am hearing the the current Hawaii bills to help the consumers know what is in their coffee, will probably NOT see the light of day this year! That is just pitiful that the legislators here continue to allow blenders to sell a 10% Kona and a 90% overseas coffee in a package that touts it is a “Kona Blend”. Shouldn’t this be a “Columbian Blend” or a “Vietnamese Blend” showing the consumer what the MAJORITY of the product really is? In the meantime, the legislators are swayed by the blenders who whine that they want a study to see what the market impact would be if blenders were required to accurately label their product. When did we let the wolves control the henhouse? When did we decide that people cheating the public get to continue to drag their feet and make enormous profits off a product intentionally sold as something else?

A ray of sunshine though are that there is a growing fight along the same lines on almost every other product, tune, chocolate, macadamia nuts and so on. All of these farmers are complaining that there is fraud going on.

The Associated Press reported that a tuna company has labels that say the tuna is Hawaiian when it is not. Macadamia nuts are being imported and processed here and called “Hawaiian Made” because of the value added here. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6600AP_WST_Grown_In_Hawaii.html

You will see my organization listed at the bottom of that article, the Kona Coffee Farmers Association (I’m a founding member). Although we continue to make inroads, we are finding that, as you would expect, big business only needs to throw some money ate the politicians to slow down the process.

We continue to fight for the consumer. Remember, FRMERS don’t blend Kona Coffee, big companies making milluions of dollars profit a year do it.

Unlike these big companies, I have the name and telephone number of almost every customer I have sold to. Most of them have my business card with a toll-free number and a live person at the end of the line (well, unless I’m out These companies are not looking for repeat business. Would they help their competition? NO! However, some of my neighbors got together and cross-sell a sample of each others coffee (called the Tripple Play). Since coffee from each farm will taste different (like wines) we decided to help the public taste 3 different coffees and only pay 1 shipping price. You can find that deal at ItsKona.Com, DailyFixCoffee.Com and KonaLisaCoffee.Com. Just another case of Kona Coffee Farmers looking out for you.