Coffee is a tropical plant, and America drinks an enormous amount of it. It also grows some: USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service still lists the United States on its roll of coffee producing countries, with a marketing year running from October to September. But when USDA counted every farm in the country for the 2022 Census of Agriculture, only three states turned up in the coffee table at all — the other 47 have no line in it. Which of the three has the most acres of coffee plants old enough to bear? Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Florida is huge and warm. Florida first! 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Hawaii — 8,303 acres, out of 8,324 acres for the whole country. Not most of it. Very nearly all of it: more than 400× the second state, California, whose coffee grows on 20 acres — and third-place Florida's printed coffee acreage is a single acre. That gap is why USDA's yearly coffee report reads like a printing mistake. It carries a row labelled Hawaii and a row labelled United States, and the two rows hold the same numbers: same acres, same yield, same production, same value. In that report, one state's line is the country's line — which also means nearly the whole national crop sits in one place. In 2020, the disease every coffee-growing country dreads arrived: USDA's Agricultural Research Service reports that coffee leaf rust, “an aggressive, economically devastating pathogen of coffee plants worldwide,” “was discovered in Hawaii in 2020 and quickly spread throughout the state.”
📚 BackgroundCoffee is a tropical plant, and the United States is mostly not tropical — which is why USDA's national coffee report is one of the strangest tables the government publishes. It has a row for a state and a row for the whole country, and the two rows carry the same numbers, year after year. USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service still counts the United States on its list of coffee producing countries, with a marketing year running October–September. And in 2020 the thing every coffee country fears arrived here: USDA's Agricultural Research Service reports that coffee leaf rust — “an aggressive, economically devastating pathogen of coffee plants worldwide” — “was discovered in Hawaii in 2020 and quickly spread throughout the state.”(USDA NASS, “Coffee” (Hawaii and United States tables); USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, “Coffee: World Markets and Trade”; USDA Agricultural Research Service, project report on coffee leaf rust in Hawaii)
Coffee acres of bearing age (2022 Census of Agriculture)
🇺🇸 United States (national)8,324 acres
Hawaii#18,303 acres
Most: Hawaii (8,303 acres); smallest printed number: Florida (1 acres).
Note: acres of coffee plants old enough to bear cherries — the little fruit whose seeds are coffee beans — in 2022, from USDA's Census of Agriculture, a count taken once every five years. USDA's separate yearly coffee survey publishes Hawaii and nothing else; the census is the count that goes farm by farm, and that is where California's 20 acres and Florida's single acre appear. USDA NASS. Only three states have a line in USDA's 2022 census coffee table. Nothing here is withheld, and the three printed figures add up exactly to USDA's national total — so this is the whole national picture, not a partial ranking. The other 47 states are simply absent from the table, which is not the same thing as a printed zero.
USDA NASS Quick Stats: COFFEE - ACRES BEARING, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state (2026-08-27) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). Only three states appear in this table at all, nothing is withheld, and the three printed figures add up exactly to USDA's national total — so this is the whole national picture, not a partial ranking.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick COFFEE / COFFEE - ACRES BEARING, Census year 2022, Total domain, and compare states.