Coffee borer fight needs more help

Weekender

By DR REUBEN SENGERE & CORAH MOABI
AS continued efforts are being made into the 14th week of the coffee berry borer operations, National Agriculture, Quarantine and Inspection Authority (NAQIA) and Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) are zeroing down on other operational activities to keep the fight going.
However, both organisations will run low on funds in the next couple of weeks.
This concern was raised at the first national emergency response committee meeting held in Goroka.
The meeting was chaired by Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL) secretary Dr Vele Ill’ava, who urged coffee industry representatives in Jiwaka, Eastern Highlands and Morobe to combine efforts and resources to address the coffee borer incursion.
“It is a situation that presents opportunities, let us not see this as a crisis but to continue to grow coffee industry in PNG and improve border security and bio security issues in the country.”
Dr Illa’ava said it was a big responsibility as the industry supports more than three million people.
NAQIA managing director Joel Alu said the organisation had also put an internal coffee borer coordinating team to work with the Coffee Industry Corporation. He said the organisation received very little funding from the government and had already spent K1 million on coffee borer work – money that was not budgeted for.
“We see this as a national emergency that the government and every Papua New Guineans must take ownership of,” he said.
CIC general manager operations Steven Tumae said his organisation had used over K2 million in the past 12 weeks on awareness programmes, delimiting surveys, mitigation and containment exercises.
He stressed that between now and January next year, the organisation will need over K6 million to continue its coffee borer work.
The CIC has implemented a number of strategies to address the incursion of coffee borers, he said. Delimiting surveys, roadblocks to control the movement of unprocessed coffee, rehabilitation of infested coffee gardens have been some of the major activities carried out.
The objectives of CIC interventions were to immediately conduct awareness programmes among coffee growers and other stakeholders, conduct a delimiting survey to ascertain the spread of the coffee borer and implement eradication and control measures. The outputs of CIC to date have been able to implement most of these activities. NAQIA collaborated in delimiting surveys and recently deployed people to man roadblocks that controlled the movement of infested coffee beans.
The awareness of the incursion was conducted in major coffee-growing provinces of Jiwaka, Western Highlands, Simbu and Eastern Highlands. Awareness has been concurrently conducted by the team that is also engaged in coffee rehabilitation exercises. Additionally, stakeholder’s consultations were conducted in Mt Hagen, Kundiawa, Goroka and Lae. It was purposely carried out to inform the stakeholders on the status of CBB incursion and to solicit their support in containing the spread of CBB.
The delimiting survey has covered Hela, Southern Highlands, Jiwaka, Western Highlands, Simbu, Eastern Highlands and Morobe – covering Bulolo/Wau areas and parts of the Finisterre Range (Boana, Finschhafen and others). The pest is only confirmed to exist in Jiwaka (parts of Banz and Minz area) and in EHP (parts of Asaro and Goroka areas).
Less than 100ha of coffee farms have been confirmed to be infested with the borer. Fourteen borer-infected coffee gardens have now been confirmed in Jiwaka and 60 in Eastern Highlands. Farm sizes vary from smallholder gardens to portions in coffee blocks and plantations. With the consent of the coffee garden/block owners, CIC officers, with the help of service providers and local labour, have undertaken eradication tasks in Minz, Banz, Asaro and Goroka areas. Some of the efforts include:
For the eradication and containment exercise to be carried out effectively, weeds have to be controlled. Hebicides were sprayed in infested gardens so that the soil is bare to enable picking of fallen cherries for burying under soil about a metre deep or burnt.
Chlorpyrifos, an insecticide which is capable of killing the adult beetles, has been used in highly infested gardens.
During the stripping of harvesting, the cherries are put into plastic bags or buckets with ethanol so that the adult coffee borers do not fly away. About 75 kilograms of infested cherries have been harvested and either burnt or buried. In some gardens, coffee trees were either pruned or stumped to allow new shoots to grow.
Pruned twigs and branches are burnt. Pruning is carried out to reduce the canopy and tree density in the affected areas so that it enables sprayers to go in with mist blowers for insecticide application.
On a positive note, processors and exporters have been able to comply with the directives issued to the industry. As a result of roadblocks, mills in Jiwaka have begun to process parchment sold by growers. Prior to roadblocks, parchment coffee used to make their way to Simbu or Goroka for processing to green beans. At Kondopina, vehicles with cherries were asked to return to Banz for processing.
CIC and NAQIA have organised mobile fumigation agents to assist in fumigating unprocessed (parchment) coffee in Goroka and Mt Hagen so that fumigated coffees can pass through the checkpoints. Request for fumigation was made by coffee processors and exporters during the stakeholder consultations.
As the clock ticks on, the fight for this serious pest cannot be scaled down as the livelihood of millions of people are at stake.
The committee has endorsed the coffee borer emergency response plan proposed by the technical team from CIC and NAQIA to eradicate the coffee borer in Eastern Highlands and Jiwaka provinces, with a budget of K115,458,978.00.
CIC and NAQIA teams have been instructed to prepare a revised NEC submission to fight the borer in Jiwaka and Eastern Highlands over the next three years. The committee also recommended to CIC to revise the coffee levy formula to support the borer emergency response plan over that time.
In the meantime, the NERC will pursue the release of K20 million through Treasury and Finance which has been approved by the National Executive Council.