News Story today said people in California are starting to grow coffee beans to produce their own Brand of Coffee..... FYI
The best they can hope for is some form of Robusta coffee... Arabicas is relegated to tropical rainforest climates...and California doesn't have the water.
Coffee trees require 5 years to produce and is an extremely labor intensive product. Otherwise you end up with no bean and all cherry. And unripe or rotten cherries make for bad coffee.
Every cherry is hand picked because they don't ripen consistently on the trees. The longer they take to ripen the better the coffee.
Then there's the whole processing of the beans at the center... again more labor intensive work with getting the "paper" off and drying. All done by hand.
Currently green Robusta coffee is selling for a little over $2,083 for 10 metric tonnes of beans. (Unroasted coffee is called green)
Roasted coffee can get really expensive...up to $12-24/lb and even $50/lb if it's special. (And considering the heavy competition it needs to be)
There's a good reason that coffee is a second class nation job...lots of work and very little to show for it. I don't see Californians able to survive on those kinds of wages.