“Best Agricultural Newsletter in Hawaii”
Newsletter of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association February 2026
PO Box 5436 Kailua Kona Hawaii 96745 USAwww.konacoffeefarmers.org info@konacoffeefarmers.org
Contents
Message from President Peterson
KCFA Symposium – Tuesday, February 24th
Coffee Pruning Workshop Report
Potential Layoffs at Kaua’I Coffee
Coffee Agroforestry E-Library Launched
Study Identifies Key Variables Affecting Arabica Production
Understanding Flowering in Coffee
China Overtakes Italy in Coffee Consumption
Peet’s Coffee to Close Dozens of Locations
Coffee Grounds as Fertilizer for Cucumbers
Kirin Develops Beverage Using Coffee Cherry Waste
Researchers Promote Targeted Application of Bees for Coffee
Editor: Clare Wilson
Message from President Petersen
Aloha Coffee Farmers,
Happy New Year as 2026 gets rolling. I hope the season ahead brings healthy trees, steady harvests, and a little more ease for all of us. On our farm, we’re about two thirds of the way through pruning. It will be a relief to wrap up that job and shift our attention to the next round of tree care. This past year, CBB, twig borer, and CLR were noticeably less troublesome for us than in 2024, and I’m hoping that encouraging trend continues for all of you in 2026.
One of the highlights of this month is the upcoming KCFA Coffee Farmers Symposium, which will be held Tuesday, February 24, at the Outrigger Kona Resort and Spa Convention Center:. I’m especially excited to welcome Dr. Irwin DonisGonzález, Associate Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and a member of the UC Davis Coffee Center ( Irwin Ronaldo Donis- González | UC Davis Coffee Center ). He will open the symposium with a presentation on postharvest factors that influence coffee quality—an area where his expertise is exceptional.
Many of you know the UC Davis Coffee Center ( UC Davis Coffee Center ) as a leading
multidisciplinary hub for coffee research, education, and extension, and we’re fortunate to have Dr. DonisGonzález join us.
The day will also include presentations on the 51% labeling law, immigrant labor issues, and recent coffee research from PBARC, along with several other timely topics. Just as important, it’s a chance to talk story with fellow farmers something I always find valuable. We learn a lot from each other.
One of the things that makes our Association’s symposium special is that it is free for KCFA members. All you need to do is register online—there is no cost, but registration is required.
Please take a moment to sign up at Symposium Registration– Kona Coffee Farmers Association. Coffee will be available at 8:30 a.m., the program begins at 9:00 a.m., lunch is included, and we’ll wrap up in the afternoon with our annual membership meeting.
I also want to acknowledge our sponsors. Their support covers the cost of the event so that
members can attend at no charge. During breaks, please take the opportunity to visit with them, ask questions, and learn about products and services that may benefit your farm. We are fortunate to have such strong partners standing with us.
I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, February 24.
Mahalo nui loa!
Mark Petersen, KCFA President
KCFA Symposium – Tuesday, February 24
Join us at the 2026 KCFA Coffee Symposium and AGM!
Reservations required, get your tickets now
The Kona Coffee Farmers Association (KCFA) cordially invites you to participate in our Annual Symposium at the Outrigger Kona Resort & Spa, 78-128 Ehukai Street, Kailua Kona, Hawaii, 96740.
Meet and mingle with over 150 growers, agribusiness owners and community members from across the island. Lunch is included.
Our keynote speaker Dr. Irwin R. Donis-González is an Associate Professor at UC Davis. He specializes in postharvest engineering, management, and treatments for agricultural commodities. He oversees postharvest technology initiatives, including expertise in coffee post-harvest activities, emphasizing efforts to improve the quality of both green and roasted coffee.
Full agenda in the works but expect a packed day of speakers on farm and marketing topics as well as a chance to meet with vendors.
Our Annual General Meeting will be held at approximately 3pm, immediately after the Symposium. All members are invited to join for an update on our activities, as well as vote for new board members.
Sponsor this event here, from coffee service to tables for vendors. Come out to meet our growers.
Report on KCFA’s Coffee Pruning Workshop
On Saturday, January 24th, the Education Committee of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association put on an instructive coffee tree pruning workshop.
Bob Nelson and Bob Smith spent well over an hour explaining the hows and whys of coffee tree pruning to 26 participants. They discussed various techniques that can be used on a farm to set a pattern to your work, such as the Beaumont-Fukunaga method which is a popular structured three-year cycle pruning system used in Hawaii, primarily in Kona, to manage coffee trees. It involves stumping entire rows of trees (typically 1/3 of the farm annually) to about knee-level, resulting in higher, more consistent, and easier-to-harvest yields compared to conventional pruning methods.
The two Bobs talked about the economic impact of such a system and provided other methods to prune your trees and keep your income continuing.
The participants in the program were diverse — a good number were young, some were older, some were brand new workers on new coffee farms while others were working with established farms that needed to recover from years of neglect. Many thanks to Bob Nelson for hosting the event at his farm and thanks to him and Bob Smith for patiently explaining this important topic.
Kauai Coffee Warns 141 Workers of Potential Layoffs
https://tinyurl.com/5hbf96n3
“Kauai Coffee Co., one of the largest coffee-growing operations in the United States, has warned employees of potential layoffs as land lease negotiations remain unresolved.
Multiple local outlets — including Kaua’i Now and Hawaii News Now — reported that the company distributed Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices to 141 employees as the March 28 lease expiration date approaches. WARN notices are not a guarantee of layoffs, but they do formally signal that business closure is imminent if underlying issues are not resolved.
The notices follow a January 7th Kauai County Council meeting in which Kauai Coffee Co. senior advisor Wayne Katayama first publicly warned of potential layoffs.
“I cannot overestimate the seriousness of why I am here before you today,” Katayama told the council. “We will continue to seek some kind of resolution and hopefully that we’ll be able to negotiate something successfully by the end of March. That however has put a strain on our 2026 crop for our farming operations and processing operations.”…”
read Civil Beat’s Kauai Coffee article for background and additional information here:
https://tinyurl.com/3mrrwcd7
Coffee Watch Launches “Coffee Agroforestory E-Library”
The non-profit, Coffee Watch, has launched a Coffee Agroforestry E-Library, the world’s first comprehensive online database dedicated to scientific literature on shade-grown coffee, also known as agroforestry. This new resource brings together decades of research from languages and countries around the world into one accessible platform, empowering farmers, companies, NGOs, policymakers, and researchers to advance sustainable shade-grown coffee production.
https://tinyurl.com/2neadfr3
“…Focused on farm management as opposed to post-harvest processing, researchers analyzed coffee production environments across 18 rural kebeles (local administrative areas) in southern Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone using farm records from 2013-2022, alongside topography, climate and soil data, farmer interviews and GIS tools.
Using statistics designed to shrink a long list of variables into a smaller set of “what matters most” for total coffee production, the team reports that 12 principal components explained 95.4% of the total variation in the dataset.
Soil and Clustering
In the analysis, soil cation exchange capacity — a measure tied to how well soil holds nutrients — was the largest single contributor to variation, while “evapotranspiration” and shade trees were also leading variables. Other important variables included nitrogen, altitude, ash, organic carbon, iron, soil water conservation, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), coffee variety and soil clay content.
After identifying these variables, the research team divided the region into five “clusters” to provide more detailed analysis and recommendations at the microclimate level….”
UNDERSTANDING FLOWERING IN COFFEE: SIGNALS,
POLLINATION, & WHY SOME FLOWERS FAIL
Flowering is one of the most anticipated moments in the coffee calendar. Those bursts of white blossoms, our “Kona snow”, signal the beginning of the next crop and offer a glimpse of the season ahead. While flowering may look simple from the outside, the biology behind it is surprisingly complex. Understanding how and why coffee flowers form, open, and sometimes fail can help farmers better interpret what they see in the field.
Follow this link to read the details for the following topics.
- Environmental Signals That Trigger Flowering
- Where Flowers Form—and Why Some Branches Bloom More Than Others
- Mechanics of Pollination
- Why Some Flowers Die or Fail to Set Fruit
China Overtakes Italy in Coffee Consumption
https://www.comunicaffe.com/china-overtakes-italy-coffee-consumption-reached-6-million-bags-in-2024/
“MILAN – China now consumes more coffee than Italy, the home of espresso and one of the world’s largest coffee-consuming countries. According to a recent USDA report, Chinese consumption reached 6 million bags in 2024, compared to around 5.5 million in Italy. Of course, we are talking about aggregate data, which in China’s case, is spread over a population of over 1.4 billion, compared to just under 59 million in Italy.
Nevertheless, the data is still impressive, especially considering that consumption has increased approximately threefold in volume in the space of fifteen years, from around 2 million bags in 2010.
Even the per capita figure, although still very low, has grown considerably, from 3-4 cups per year in the early 2000s to 22 cups in 2024….”
Peet’s Coffee to Close Dozens of Locations
“Pioneering brand Peet’s Coffee will close up to 30 locations as early as the end of January 2026, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The announcement came shortly after Keurig Dr Pepper launched its all-cash US$18bn offer for JDE Peet’s, the former parent company of Peet’s Coffee. The deal is set to close in Q2 2026. Once completed, KDP will split into two listed firms: a North America-focused beverage company and the standalone “Global Coffee Co.” – set to become the world’s largest pure-play coffee business and a direct challenger to Nestlé’s dominance in the retail coffee market.
Peet’s Coffee, which first launched in Berkeley, has been a staple of Californian coffee culture since 1966, particularly in the Bay Area. Although the San Francisco store closures are a symptom of corporate restructuring and efficiency gains, they will leave a lasting emotional impact on a city that cares about its coffee.”
Study: Coffee Grounds as Fertilizer to Improve Cucumbers
https://tinyurl.com/mwkcxcsd
“Researchers in Spain have discovered an effective way to upcycle spent coffee grounds as fertilizers in cucumber greenhouses, creating a circular “cup-to-crop” connection.
A University of Granada team found that tailored formulations of coffee grounds can improve the taste of commercially grown cucumbers while “biofortifying” them with essential minerals and keeping toxic metals in check.
The coffee-derived fertilizer was presented as an alternative to synthetic fertilizers. The paper addresses a common roadblock in food-waste-to-fertilizer ideas: unwanted metals.
Published in September in the journal Chemosphere, the study used a low-cost process to transform coffee grounds into fertilizer pucks applied to Dutch-type cucumbers — also known as “English” cucumbers — the kind often sold individually plastic-wrapped and cultivated for high-volume greenhouse production….”
Brazilian Researchers Promote Targeted Application of Bees for Coffee
https://tinyurl.com/4hnxmjr5
“…In a field study on full-sun arabica farms, researchers reported a 67% higher fruit yield on coffee branches closer to colonies of the native stingless bee Scaptotrigona depilis, compared with branches farther away. The study was recently published in Frontiers in Bee Science.
The study adds to a broad body of evidence suggesting that an increase in certain pollinators — and the habitat that supports them — can help increase arabica yields.
It also took into account real-world pest control conditions, exploring how the colonies held up under common pesticides applied the previous year….”
Kirin Develops a Fermented Beverage Using Coffee Cherry Waste
https://tinyurl.com/wxfhkhcn
“Japanese beverage giant Kirin Holdings has announced a new fermented ingredient made from coffee farm byproducts, pitching it as a flavorful and body-building beverage enhancer and a circular sustainability solution.
The ingredient was developed over the past seven years at Kirin’s Institute for Future Beverage. The company — known internationally for its beer — used coffee cherry flesh and skin, the sticky material surrounding the coffee seed that is often discarded as waste or composted on farms, to make a fermented extract.
Small specialty coffee companies and independent beverage brands have been experimenting with cascara and other coffee cherry byproducts for years — similarly promoting potential environmental or farm-focused economic benefits. Yet most have lacked the R&D muscle, marketing budgets and even regulatory influence needed to push those products beyond niche audiences that Kirin might offer.
Kirin’s researchers relied on fermentation technology originally developed for wine, using lactic acid bacteria and yeast to ferment concentrated coffee cherry juice. The company said the finished ingredient enhances “warmth,” fruity notes and perceived alcohol-like richness….”
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