Rule protecting coffee expires

By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald staff writer

The Big Island coffee industry has been operating without an official quarantine in place for more than a month now.

On Dec. 2, a one-year emergency interim rule established by the Hawaii Board of Agriculture to prevent the spread of the coffee berry borer expired. Since then, the Department of Agriculture has been working to have a permanent rule put in place, said Leslie Iseke, a plant import specialist.

A permanent rule was supposed to have been put in place around the time of the interim rule’s expiration, but unexpected delays slowed the process, Iseke said.

“We’d hoped to get started on it a little sooner. We wanted to avoid this gap,” she said. “But things happened. But so far, we’ve gotten support for moving forward with permanent rules.”

Currently, the gap in the quarantine essentially means that the treatment of coffee being transported to other islands is no longer required, Iseke said, which could possibly allow the spread of the coffee pest. But, she said, the Department of Agriculture has stepped up its inspections in the meantime to try and prevent that.

“The gap doesn’t mean we’re not doing whatever we can under the existing authorities we have available,” she said. “In terms of coffee leaving the Big Island, we’ve stepped up our inspections and sampling, because we’re still authorized to inspect propagated plants and plant parts.”

Iseke said businesses in the Big Isle’s coffee industry have shown a willingness to take the quarantine seriously and have overall done a good job of self policing, as the agriculture department’s resources are limited. While no extra hires have been made to cover inspections during the gap in quarantine coverage, at least one inspector from the Hilo side of the island has been joining the two in Kona to increase inspections of coffee shipments traveling off island.

“They’re having to give up some coverage in other areas, such as maybe not as much monitoring of (plants on) inbound flights,” she said. “There’s a give and take.”

There are two public hearings scheduled for the Big Island today on the proposed administrative rules to establish a permanent quarantine. People wishing to share their thoughts on the rules may provide testimony beginning at 8 a.m. at the Kona Imin Center, 76-5893A Old Mamalahoa Highway in Holualoa. Then at 3 p.m., the Department of Agriculture will accept testimony at its conference room at 16E Lanikaula St. in Hilo.

According to state Rep. Clift Tsuji, who serves as chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, a similar hearing in Oahu on Wednesday did not receive any testimony.

“I would encourage Big Islanders, for the hearings scheduled for Hilo and Kona, to come out and let their concerns be known so that we can understand from a legislator’s point of view how we can maintain our vigilance over the coffee berry borer,” Tsuji said. “Testimony will be very important.”

Among the biggest changes proposed to the now-expired interim quarantine would be the allowance of transportation of green coffee beans outside of the primary areas of infestation to other areas on-island, Iseke said.

Maintaining a secondary quarantine on transportation on the Big Island has proven to be “inherently difficult” to enforce, Iseke said. Instead, coffee growers, roasters and processors would be expected to use their own common sense and judgment in limiting the spread of the infestation on the island.

“(The changes) could allow movement on the island, but hopefully people actually receiving it (the coffee), if they were to move it from an infested area, they would think real carefully about whether they want to open up to that kind of exposure,” she said.

Essentially, Iseke said, the coffee industry has largely been supportive of quarantining themselves to prevent the spread of the infestation. But, she said, there has been a difference of opinions on the best ways to treat beans that are to be exported for processing elsewhere.

“Especially among organic growers,” she said.

Because Big Isle coffee is a premium product that fetches premium prices, many growers want to avoid treating the beans in a manner that might affect their quality, she said. Currently, approved treatment methods include: fumigation using chemicals like methyl bromide or Profume, heating the beans at 315 degrees F for at least five minutes, or freezing the beans at about 5 degrees F for 48 hours.

The Department of Agriculture was initially alerted to infestations of the berry borer in Kona in September 2010. Since then, the coffee pest has also been found in the burgeoning coffee-producing region of Ka’u. The beetle can be highly destructive, and the most recent figures show that it has affected the yield of some Kona coffee growers by as much as 20-25 percent. According to Tsuji, that could amount to annual losses to Big Isle growers of between $11 million and $15 million.

So far, Tsuji said, federal and state agencies have contributed about a half million dollars to combating the coffee berry borer infestation in an attempt to prevent its spread to the other islands.

For a copy of the proposed administrative rules and more information, visit http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/Info/proposedrules/proposed-administrative-rules

Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.