Pineapples haven't been grown in Hawaii for export for a while.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sugar either.

When I was in Maui last August, one of the tour guides told us that Del Monte stopped growing pineapples there because it was too expensive to produce them and that there were better uses for the land. Dole still grows pineapples there, but it is cheaper to get pineapples from the Philippines, Thailand, and Costa Rica. Pineapples are native to South America, but the U.S. still grows many non-native fruits, especially citrus. I don't think Hawaii grows enough pineapples to satisfy the U.S. demand. The last pineapples I had were Mexican. One of my favorite fruits is mamey, and it is not grown here at all or even in Hawaii.

Lars

Well....you can eat Washington apples, Michigan cherries, California table grapes, and Texas citrus, as well as Iowa pork and beef, us cheeses and Kansas wheat.
Its when we want things that are out of season exotic or cheap that we have to rely on imports.

Dole owns a whole Hawaiian island. If they don't grow pineapples there, I wonder what it's used for.

They do still grow pineapples in Hawaii, you can order them online. They are expensive. But the overhead to grow enough for export in mass quantities made it more profitable to grow elsewhere.

Rite, if you eat bananas they are probably not coming from Hawaii either. Here's a map of Chiquita's banana farms...

Coffee, tea, chocolate, pepper, cinnamon, and many other common things Americans have developed a taste for are not grown here.

Buy local when possible & think about what you consume that requires shipment from thousands of miles away. For instance, I refuse to purchase Italian canned tomatoes or olive oil but I do buy Italian imported Bionaturae whole wheat pasta.

Not every thing imported is bad & we do need global commerce.

/tricia

Here is a link that might be useful: Chiquita's Banana Farms

Tricia,

I was at the Chiquita Banana Farm in Costa Rica. Amazing the quantity of bananas they grow there. Like an ocean of bananas. Nothing but bananas all the way to the horizon, as far as your eyes can see, nothing else, no weeds, no other vegetation!

Interesting process in the factory/farm. Without going thru the whole thing, I will just tell you about the end of the production line.

There were two specialized team of workers to put those adhesive stickers on each banana, one team to put "Chiquita" stickers on higher quality bananas, the other to put "Bananza" stickers on lesser quality bananas.

dcarch

Tricia, coffee is still grown in Hawaii, and I had local coffee when I was there (which I loved), but I have not been able to find Kona coffee beans here in California (but I haven't looked that hard). You can get Hawaiian coffee beans on line, however, and I might do that at some point.

It's definitely true that many things we consume are not grown here or cannot be grown here. I planted a banana tree thinking I would get bananas because the worker at the nursery said I would, but it turned out to be an ornamental tree. I had a fruiting banana tree in Houston, but of course the bananas were seasonal. In Cordoba, Mexico (west of Vera Cruz), coffee and bananas are grown together so that the banana trees will partially shade the coffee plants. The same method is used in Guatemala around Antigua, and so one field will have two different crops at the same time. The coffee in Antigua was the best I had ever had until I had Kona coffee in Hawaii. But it still upsets my stomach!

I saw a lot of sugar cane fields on Maui but was also told that Texas produces much more sugar cane than Hawaii. The sugar refining plants closed in Hawaii, and the sugar cane grown in Hawaii is now processed mainly in Crockett, California. You can visit a closed sugar refinery on Maui, which we drove by countless times but never visited, since I've seen those in Texas. There is a sugar museum on Maui as well, and we also skipped that.

Lars

Peet's coffee carries pure Kona beans but at 50/pound they are too costly for me. Daniel gave me a gift of a half pound which he gets at an employee price. It is very good, very strong. I find myself using about a third less than I would normally use of the beans I usually buy.

When I was on the Big Island I spent time at wifi cafe that sold coffees grown on the Hilo side of the island. They were excellent. I brought some home. I wish I'd thought to buy more.

Here is a link that might be useful: Coffee from the other side of the Big Island.