KALAHEO — A tiny beetle called the coffee berry borer has traveled from Africa to at least four other continents over the last century, including South and Central America, and has most recently made an appearance in Kailua Kona. “Apparently
KALAHEO — A tiny beetle called the coffee berry borer has traveled from Africa to at least four other continents over the last century, including South and Central America, and has most recently made an appearance in Kailua Kona.
“Apparently it has been on the Big Island for over a year,” said Richard Ebesu, Kaua‘i Master Gardener program coordinator at the University of Hawai‘i and agent for the College of Tropical Agriculture. How the beetle migrates is unknown, but the most commonly cited explanation is accidental transport.
“It might have been a (coffee) worker who brought it (to Hawai‘i), or somebody went to Brazil and put a couple of coffee cherries in their pocket,” Ebesu said. “Eventually, other islands will get it, just like the white fly or aphid. If it’s on one island, it eventually ends up on all the others.”
Representatives of Kaua‘i Coffee Company, the largest coffee grower in Hawai‘i, insist a coffee berry borer (CBB) infestation in Kaua‘i is not inevitable and the company is taking measures to address the problem.
“Since the initial announcement in early September, Kaua‘i Coffee has established a monitoring program to detect the presence of the CBB,” said Wayne Katayama, the company’s president and general manager, in a letter to the Department of Agriculture.
“We have taken coffee samples from each of our fields, numbering more than 3,500 samples from just over 3,000 acres. Currently, we are sampling each truckload of coffee being delivered to our processing plant. To date, we have all negative detection for CBB.”
In September, the state Department of Agriculture issued a Pest Advisory announcing the discovery of CBB beetles heavily infesting coffee berries in the Kona region.
On Nov. 8, the DOA said of about 65 coffee growing sites surveyed throughout the state, 21 of them were infested with the CBB. All infested sites were in Kona area.
Kona coffee buyer Jim Wyman recently told West Hawai‘i Today that some 25 percent of Big Island coffee farms have the CBB, and about one-third of those farms are experiencing heavy infestation. Other reports say at least 100 farms in Kona are showing signs of the beetle.
In a mid-November press release, the DOA said it is still unknown how the CBB will affect Kona coffee yields, but researchers estimate the damage worldwide is about $500 million annually in a global industry worth $90 billion.
Hawai‘i produces an estimated 6.5 million pounds of coffee per year. Last March, the USDA reported total coffee farm revenue was $25.6 million for Hawai‘i, down 13 percent from last year’s $29.6 million and 31 percent lower than its decade peak in 2005 of $37.3 million.
Kaua‘i Coffee Company is Hawai‘i’s largest coffee grower with approximately 3,000 acres in active cultivation and, in 2009, yielded approximately 2.6 million pounds of green coffee, says Katayama.
To date, their crop is 80 percent cultivated, and they will ship more than half of their green beans to off-island roasters, including Starbucks, Kaua‘i Coffee visitor center employees said.
“Kaua‘i Coffee is concerned about the potential spread of this pest,” said Linda Howe, community relations manager for Alexander and Baldwin, the coffee grower’s parent company. They are monitoring their fields closely, she said, and management is supportive of efforts to slow the spread of the pest.
The tiny CBB is widely considered the most harmful coffee pest in the world and is capable of destroying an entire harvest.
The tiny CBB is widely considered the most harmful coffee pest in the world and is capable of destroying an entire harvest.
It was found in Brazil about 80 years ago and has since made its way to Columbia, Guatemala and Mexico. It can been found in more than 70 countries today, but exists primarily Latin America
The female CBB bores holes into mature and immature berries through the scar on the blossom-end of the berry. Once inside the berry, the insect creates “galleries” where it lays its eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat their way into the green bean inside of the berry. A single berry can host 100 beetles.
There are no chemical insecticides available in Hawai‘i that can effectively control CBB, because the insects live most of their life inside the casing of the fruit, says the DOA. In some parts of the world, it has reduced coffee yields by 90 percent.
“Any measures to restrict the spread of the coffee berry borer outside of the Big Island will provide valuable time for the entire Hawai‘i coffee industry to develop management practices to control, reduce or hopefully eliminate the CBB,” Katayama said.
House Agricultural Committee Chair Clift Tsuji said the state’s coffee industry has lasted 200 years, and he doesn’t want to see it collapse because of a lack of efforts to contain the beetle, the Associated Press reported.
On Tuesday, the Hawai‘i Board of Agriculture approved quarantine rules that require fumigation and a six-step protocol for all green beans leaving infested areas of the Big Island.
“You cannot enforce it,” Ebesu said of quarantine measures. “They don’t have enough resources… Coffee roasters buy beans from Kona and bring them to other islands to roast. Not everybody grows their own coffee… You can fumigate, unless you’re selling organic coffee. The other alternative might be to freeze it, and it can still be organic.
“Other parts of the world use pesticides that we can’t,” he said. “Right now, we have a fungal pesticide that occurs in nature and is effective, but Hawai‘i cannot use it until it’s approved by the USDA and environmental agencies.”
In the meantime, Ebesu advises travelers against bringing anything out of the Kona area that could contain the CBB beetle, including coffee cherries and reusable burlap sacks.
“It is very important that coffee growers, even gardeners and coffee roasters, not bring any coffee beans from infested areas to Kaua‘i,” he said. “Think of it as a self-imposed quarantine to prevent the coffee berry borer from becoming another invasive species on Kaua‘i.”
