It’s been another rough legislative session for Kona coffee growers who want only local products to carry the local label.
Following the death of bills that would have required clearer labeling and higher contents of locally-grown beans in coffee blends sold as Kona, many West Hawaii growers are now upset about the exclusion of coffee and macadamia nuts from another, broader bill that would set up a system of identifying and labeling crops as Hawaii grown.
The two crops were cut this week from House Bill 1051 in the Senate Committee on Agriculture. The body is chaired by Puna Sen. Russell Ruderman, a staunch advocate of truth in labeling.
Ruderman said he couldn’t get the support from his committee needed to pass the bill with coffee and mac nuts included, and opted instead to protect other crops “to keep the travesty of the blending debacle from happening to them.”
“I’m trying to do something rather than nothing,” Ruderman said. “Hopefully in the future we will have the political will to protect our two most important crops.”
The bill tasks the Hawaii Department of Agriculture with establishing standards, certification programs and labeling requirements for agricultural products that claim to originate from Hawaii. Among the requirements is a provision that the products be 100 percent grown in Hawaii.
The bill received a broad base of support from coffee growing associations, the Hawaii Restaurant Association, and the Department of Agriculture itself, which had this to say in testimony: “Protecting the identity of Hawaii’s high-quality and high-value agricultural products is critical in preventing unscrupulous individuals from fraudulently marketing agricultural products originating from outside a specified Hawaii geographic region.”
Local macadamia nut growers have long complained about imported nuts being mixed with island-grown ones and sold as a product of Hawaii.
“Coffee and macadamia nuts are Hawaii’s two crops most subject to deceptive and fraudulent labeling, and most in need of fair marketing protections,” Holualoa coffee grower Bruce Corker said.
But John Cross, president of the Hawaii Macadamia Nut Association, said processors are forced to look to nuts imported from places like Central America and Australia to meet their market demands because not enough product is being generated locally. Growers who want to distinguish nuts that are 100 percent grown and processed in Hawaii can use the Hawaii Seal of Quality, a state-backed labeling initiative launched in 2006, Cross said.
The watering down of the bill is just another example of the Legislature folding to corporate interests and leaving farmers out in the cold, said Corker, who said it may be time to look beyond the Capitol for solutions after decades of disinterest there in changing the status quo.
“Russell Ruderman is one senator against a crowd from Oahu,” Corker said.