Federal help is on the way for local farmers battling the effects of coffee leaf rust, a destructive fungus that could potentially jeopardize the state’s $500,000 coffee industry.
What You Need To Know
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded $1.37 million to the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center to address coffee leaf rust
The funding comes from NIFA’s Specialty Crop Research Initiatives program and will be used to reboot the organization’s coffee breeding program to produce coffee with CLR resistance
CLR was first detected in the state in 2020, in Haiku, Maui
Roughly 1,400 growers on six islands produce $62 million in Hawaiian coffee each year, which in turn generates approximately $500,000 in economic activity annually, according to the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded $1.37 million to the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center to address CLR, U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, announced last week.
