Farmers union to Legislature: Restore coffee borer funding

The Hawaii Farmers Union is asking state legislators to restore $1 million to fund research into the coffee berry borer situation on Hawaii Island.

“We’re dithering around,” Secretary David Case, a Kona coffee farmer, said Monday of the state House’s decision to strip the funding from House Bill 353. “That’s really a shortsighted deletion of funding. This is an emergency.”

In other countries, when the invasive pest arrived, governments and universities dove into research on how to prevent the borer’s spread and minimize its impact, Case added.

The state Senate’s Agriculture Committee is set to hear HB 353 this afternoon. The bill requires $200,000 in matching funds before any state money can be released.

Union Vice President Simon Russell took the coffee farmers’ pleas for federal assistance to the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week. During Russell’s trip to the East Coast, for the National Farmers Union annual convention, the Hawaii vice president also made a pitch for allowing state’s producers to determine the maximum percentages allowed for any blended agricultural product.

In Hawaii, Case said different industries are making arguments for different percentages required to label an item Hawaii grown. Chocolate and tea growers say 100 percent of the product should be grown here. Coffee farmers have been trying to settle the debate for years.

“For coffee, we’ve been told by taste testers at 75 percent you can legitimately detect Kona coffee,” Case said.

Hawaii’s state legislators took a step closer to requiring the 75 percent minimum for coffee this year, with measures introduced by the Hawaii State Association of Counties.

Russell said the National Farmers Union was “instrumental in writing and passing the previous Farm Bill in 2006.” The convention unanimously approved allowing state producers to set those product percentages.