A Quarantine

A Quarantine was Originally Posted on November 18, 2010 by lavarock

You may have already heard about a problem in the Kona District involving our coffee. That problem is a coffee cherry borer, which is affecting quality and soon, the price of Kona Coffee.

Although the pest has been found worldwide in coffee growing regions, it has been recently reported found in at least 21 farms in South Kona. Elsewhere in the world it is being addressed.

There has been a quarantine proposed and it may come to pass. The quarantine is not for roasted coffee but for the transportation of plants, parchment and green (unroasted) coffee around the region. Once the coffee beans are processed, the beetle is no longer an issue as it can only live in the cherry and not on dried beans.

Farmers here have been against the ban because they have been told that the beetle has actually been identified here years and perhaps a decade ago and although now being found, has already spread and thus a quarantine is “shutting the barn door after the horse has left”. It will mean that farmers may be unable or severely limited in their ability to ship green coffee to coffee roasters on the mainland without extra costs. Kona Coffee is already an expensive boutique product.

The committee recommending the quarantine stopped short of recommending fumigants, which we already are against. The main fumigant used is methyl bromide, which has been stopped in most other countries by the Montreal Protocol because it is a suspected carcinogen and known greenhouse gas depletory. Organic farms would be taken out of business should they be required to use a fumigant on their organic green exports.

Not all farmers or the “industry” are in agreement on the quarantine. Many of us feel a quarantine will not slow the beetle and that a quarantine will just cause us more cost and problems.

The USDA feels that a quarantine will help, perhaps feeling guilty that they did not move quickly enough to stem the tide of the coqui frog which has taken over most of the Big Island. Also, quarantine for bunchy top banana virus, I am told, has not helped.

We also are fighting a coffee twig borer, however it is not as devastating as the cherry borer.

When traveling to and from the islands, you are asked about what fruits you might be carrying and where you are coming from, etc. There are very important reasons for you to accurately report these things. The coqui frog is suspected to have come in on a plant, imported from South America, which slipped by fumigation. It only takes one female (the size of a dime) to now create a noise and pest problem that has covered our island and may cover the state in the next few years.

It is said that we are the largest populated area in the most remote places on the earth. We are therefore careful what we ship in and out. Being shipped from the mainland to here, a dog without proper documentation and waiting period after rabies shots, will spend 120 days in quarantine, at significant cost to the owner.

So as far as the quarantine for unroasted coffee, time will tell as the USDA will hold a meeting on Tuesday.