Coffee in orchidland?

[Ccat]

Is anybody growing coffee commercially around orchidland ?

(I know it will grow there, but how well?  What sort of yields and prices do they get?)

Ccat

[Or1on]

It grows well there.  The people I know got their own coffee bags complete with the little smeller thingy on the package and their own family name printed on it.  I don't think they ever started selling it but it made great Christmas gifts sending it to relatives on the mainland.  

They say picking it and going through the multistep process of reaching a final product is tedious and grueling.  I suppose they didn't consider hiring foreigners without greencards and paying them minimum wage like the big companies do.

[terracore]

I don't know anybody who grows it commercially in Orchidland, but we have coffee trees on our residence lot that has been ripped. Just a few trees. The coffee trees have survived non-stop assaults from goats and sheep and other adversity and still manage to grow like weeds. Sometimes... so many cherries the trees lean over from the weight and suffer more damage from the ungulates and other creatures due to bending down begging to be harvested and instead being greeted by our neglect. Yet the coffee trees keep growing and producing.

We have harvested the cherries and took that process all the way through to drinking the coffee. Our amateur coffee would never win any taste awards but that is undoubtedly due to our lack of experience.

There is commercial coffee grown in HA. If it can be done there, it can probably grow profitably in Orchidland if somebody knew what they were doing, and can solve the labor cost problem of growing and harvesting coffee when potentially better tasting imports can be had at 10% the cost. Growing coffee here is definitely viable considering the climate. Commercially economically viable? Probably not outside a tiny niche market.