Although Hawaii accounts for less than 1% of the global coffee production, coffee is a $50 million industry for the state, and the number of coffee farms in the islands has been steadily increasing. But the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the supply chain into disarray, and as tourism to the islands plummeted, demand for coffee plunged. Now coffee producers throughout the islands have been left sitting on millions of dollars worth of last year’s crop, just as this year’s harvesting season begins.
