The United States drinks coffee every morning and grows almost none of it. The country consumes more coffee than any other nation and produces a negligible fraction of what it consumes. The supply comes from thousands of miles away, and the risks that come with that distance are now showing up in prices.
According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, the United States imported $982 million of coffee in July 2026 alone. The main sources that month were Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. None of those are domestic. Every cup poured in an American kitchen or café has travelled across at least one border before it reaches the pot.
But the supply chain is not stable. Nasdaq reports that coffee prices surged in April 2026 after the Strait of Hormuz closure raised shipping rates, insurance, and fuel costs. Robusta inventories fell to a 16-month low. The price of coffee is now shaped as much by geopolitics and freight as it is by weather in growing regions.
That exposure raises a question that the industry rarely asks. In a country with the agricultural capacity to grow almost anything, why does one of its most consumed daily beverages depend almost entirely on imports? Cafés advertise “local coffee.” In most cases, what is local is the roasting, not the growing. The beans were harvested on another continent. The country does grow some coffee. Hawaii produces a small commercial crop. But the volume is negligible against national consumption. For the rest of the market, domestic coffee is not an option, and it will not be for the foreseeable future.
James Harrell is a fifth-generation peanut farmer in Suffolk, Virginia. He did not set out to enter the coffee business. He set out to find a new use for a crop his family has grown for generations.
Suffolk has a long history with peanuts. It was once called the peanut processing capital of the world. Today, it is also home to large coffee roasting facilities. Harrell describes standing near a roasting plant, drinking coffee, and smelling the beans being roasted, while the peanut harvest was about to begin. He asked himself a simple question. If a seed can be roasted and brewed, why not this one?
“I was drinking coffee and smelling the roasting facilities,” Harrell says. “I thought, why can’t you turn peanuts into something that resembles coffee?”
He tried. He took peanuts home, roasted them, ground them, and brewed them. It did not work. The problem was the oil. Peanuts are roughly half oil by weight. Coffee beans are not. When roasted peanuts are ground, the oil turns them into something closer to peanut butter than coffee grounds.
It took him three years to solve this problem. There was no commercial equipment on the market that could extract some of the oil without extracting all of it, so he built his own. The process uses only heat and pressure. It is a trade secret.
The result is a dry, granular product that brews in a coffee maker and produces a beverage that resembles coffee in color, aroma, and preparation. It is made entirely from peanuts. There is no coffee in it.
Harrell’s argument is not that America should stop importing coffee. It is that the country’s agricultural capacity is being used more narrowly than it needs to be. The United States is the fourth-largest peanut producer in the world, according to Nutfruit Magazine citing Data from USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, behind China, India, and Nigeria. Peanuts are grown at scale, harvested with industrialized machinery, and turned into a limited range of products.
“We’re the first company to get people drinking peanuts,” Harrell says. “We’ve created a category in the peanut industry.”
The product is sold online and has shipped to all 50 states. A caffeinated version exists, which the company describes as the first purpose-made caffeinated coffee alternative. The process also produces a roasted peanut oil as a byproduct, which the company sells separately.
The broader argument is about what American agriculture can do when farmers are treated as inventors rather than commodity suppliers. The next domestic alternative to an imported staple may not require a new crop. It may require a new use for one the country already grows.
The question is not whether America can grow coffee. It is whether the country is asking the right question about what it already has.
