The United States drinks more coffee than any single country in the world. But very little of that coffee comes from beans grown in the US — aside from a small fraction grown in Hawaii, all of America’s coffee comes imported from countries including Colombia, Brazil, and Switzerland.
How much coffee do Americans drink?
Americans consumed more than one cup of coffee per person daily from October 2022 to September 2023. That’s equivalent to about 164.2 billion six-ounce cups of coffee, or 450 million per day. But that collective 3.26 billion pounds of coffee[1] was down from 3.53 billion the previous year.
By comparison, the US consumed 55% of the coffee consumed in European Union countries combined. After that, overall coffee consumption was highest in Brazil, Japan, and the Philippines.
How much coffee is produced in the US?
Hardly any of the coffee consumed in the US is brewed from homegrown beans — and none of it is produced in the lower 48.
All of the nation’s coffee farming happens in Hawaii, where 11.5 million pounds were harvested and utilized — meaning it was either sold or stored, but not damaged or unused — in the 2022–23 season. In other words, the country consumed about 282 times as much coffee as it produced.
At $2.35 per pound that year, the total value of the coffee produced domestically was $54.1 million.
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Coffee production in Hawaii is decreasing
Utilized coffee production from Hawaii decreased 19% from the 2021–22 harvest season to 2022–23. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects it to decrease another 26% for the 2023–24 year, down to 16.9 million pounds.
According to the USDA, the production decrease is due to destructive factors including an infestation of an invasive coffee berry borer beetle and an infectious fungal disease called coffee leaf rust, as well as drought and flooding.
Where else does the US get coffee?
Colombia and Brazil have been the top two countries exporting coffee to the US in each year since at least 2009. The two South American nations have swapped the top spot back and forth — in 2023, Colombia led with $1.38 billion worth of coffee exported to the US compared to Brazil’s $1.35 billion, according to International Trade Administration data.
Switzerland has become a main source of coffee
In recent years, Switzerland has risen to become one of the world’s top coffee exporters to the US. In 2009, Switzerland ranked 14th in the world with $45 million’s worth of exported coffee to the US ($64 million in 2023 dollars). By 2020, they ranked third after Colombia and Brazil. They’ve stayed in third since, exporting $1.12 billion of coffee to the US in 2023 — more than 17 times as much as in 2009 after adjusting for inflation.
This doesn’t mean that the small Alpine nation has developed a robust coffee farming industry. Most of Switzerland’s global coffee exports come in the form of roast and ground coffee — as opposed to coffee beans, which are the main export for coffee-exporting heavyweights such as Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam. Switzerland is one of the top global importers of coffee beans. Its roasting industry is a top supplier for not only the US but also for importers like the European Union and South Korea.
Together, Colombia, Brazil, and Switzerland accounted for nearly half of the $8 billion of coffee imported by the US in 2023. The countries with the next-most coffee exports to the US were Canada ($568 million), Honduras ($463 million), and Guatemala ($458 million).
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[1] Coffee weight is presented in green bean form.
