At a press conference, she said the effort — the first initiative to fight the berry borer — will distribute effective treatments to local farmers  and fund research on the genetic makeup of the beetle to find its weakness.

“Our state produces some of the world’s best coffee, and coffee is an important export from our state. But the livelihood of Hawaii Island coffee growers is increasingly being threatened by the coffee berry borer, as many farmers are forced to abandon large portions of their yields due to infestation each year,” Hirono said.

Hirono had been working to get the funding. In a letter in April, she asked for Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack’s “urgent assistance.”

She wrote, “The coffee berry borer was first identified in Kona in late 2010; since that time, the insect has multiplied rapidly and the damage is so extensive that many farms cannot be commercially harvested.

“Abandoned coffee fields are a source of insect population increases so the situation keeps getting worse. We need to quickly get control of this situation and to prevent the spread of this pest to other coffee producing areas on the islands of Kauai, Maui, Molokai, Kauai, and Oahu.,” she wrote.

— Kery Murakami