On August 15th, Hurricane Lala hit the southern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island, causing extensive damage to rural communities. The third wettest tropical cyclone in the state’s history and the first to hit the Big Island directly since the late-1800s, many areas experienced rainfall of over 20”, with the number peaking at 43”.
While Kona is the most broadly recognized coffee growing region on the Big Island, Ka’u on the southernmost tip is home to 500 acres of coffeelands, worked mostly by smallholder farmers, many of whom have been significantly impacted by the hurricane.
As reported by SF Gate, the hurricane has devastated some coffee farms in Ka’u. A Coffee Farm owner Alla Kostenko tells SF Gate that thousands of the farm’s trees have been uprooted and washed away. Kostenko estimates that around half of their coffee trees, mostly younger ones, were lost from one of their plots. The timing of the hurricane was especially bad, given that the harvest season is just now beginning. The fear is that the ripe cherries ready to be picked were also washed away along with the trees, meaning there is no crop to harvest.
View this post on Instagram
Beyond the farms themselves, the hurricane damaged critical infrastructure around Ka’u. There have been power outages and water disruptions as well as roads and bridges that have been completely destroyed, leaving no means of entry or exit. Many communities have been cut off from the outside world, requiring food and other essentials to be helicoptered in.
For the coffee farmers, the destroyed infrastructure adds an additional layer of complexity. Even if they are able to salvage their crop, they still have no means of exporting it.
The full extent of the damage is not yet known.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
