A bill setting aside funding to study the economic impact changing Hawaii’s coffee labeling requirements is awaiting Gov. David Ige’s signature.
Both the House and Senate voted to pass House Bill 1517 CD1 this week with a unanimous “aye” vote from Senators and all but one House representative, Rep. Bob McDermott (R-Oahu), voting in favor of the amended version of the bill passed out of a joint conference committee on April 29.
House Bill 1517 CD1, the latest iteration of a measure that initially sought to set tighter limits on using Hawaii location names to sell coffee, now includes $100,000 for the Department of Agriculture to conduct an independent study to assess the economic impact of Hawaii’s coffee labeling laws on local coffee farmers and the industry.
“Analysis shall include studying the impacts of a change to a minimum coffee blend ratio of fifty-one per cent and one hundred per cent,” the bill forwarded to Ige reads. The measure also directs the study include consultation with coffee farmers, including the Hawaii Coffee Association, Kona Coffee Farmers Association, and other stakeholders in the coffee industry within Hawaii.
The study, per the bill, would be due by Jan. 1, 2024, to be considered by during the legislative session that year.
House Bill 1517, when introduced back in January would have prohibited using geographic origins of coffee in labeling or advertising for roasted or instant coffee that contains less than a certain percentage of coffee by weight from that geographic origin, phased in to a minimum of 51%.
Currently, state law allows distributors to use Hawaii names, such as Kona, Kauai or Ka‘u, on products that include as little as 10% of coffee from the named region.
The state law, first passed in 1991 to protect Kona coffee, was expanded to all Hawaiian grown coffee in 2001. Efforts since to increase the minimum percentage have been unsuccessful, though a measure in 2019 came close, but was deferred by its final Senate committee after being pared down to a study.
Coffee is the state’s second highest value agriculture crop, second to seed crops. And, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service the value of the 2021-22 crop is higher than estimated earlier this year.
According to the final season estimates issued Wednesday, the value of the 26.7 million pounds of coffee cherry produced in 2021-22 was actually $61.94 million, nearly $1.9 million higher than was estimated by the service in January. The 2021-22 value was up from $48.38 million in 2020-21 and $54.3 million in 2019-20.
