Coffee On Hawai'i Island

In 1813, during the last years of the reign of Kamehameha I, the Spaniard Don Francisco de Paula Marin introduced coffee plants to his exuberant gardens on O’ahu.

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It wasn’t long before others started planting the pretty ornamental as well. In 1828, missionary Samuel Ruggles brought cuttings from O’ahu to his land in the Kona District south of Kailua, where he was stationed. Coffee prefers shade and dry, cool summers. It did well on Hawai’i Island’s southwestern volcanic slopes, where clouds sweep in during the afternoons, and ocean breezes temper the sun. Within a few years, coffee began its ascent as a commercial crop, grown for its brew, from Kona to Ka’ū and in Hāmākua as well. In 1892, coffee’s pioneers introduced a new variety of coffee bean from Guatemala, Typica. Belonging to the Coffee arabica species, this cultivar showed enormous promise and is still used today. In Kona, coffee followed a different path than elsewhere, where sugar was king. Few other crops besides coffee fared well in the area’s rocky soils, so Kona was far more determined to turn coffee into a healthy industry. Unfortunately, Hawaiian coffee was subject to global market fluctuations, causing a tumultuous legacy. World coffee prices frequently tumbled, and Kona’s small coffee farmers would largely pay the difference. They would ru