The alarm goes off before sunrise at our farm in Holualoa. By the time the first light touches the slopes of Hualalai, we are already walking the rows. The air smells of damp earth and something faintly sweet. The coffee cherries are turning. Some are already a deep, arterial red, and that is a beautiful thing to see after months of watching the trees flower and set fruit.
But on a morning last October, something else caught our eye first. A small, almost invisible hole bored into the base of a cherry near the stem. Barely a millimeter across. Easy to miss if you are not looking. We were looking. We know what that tiny hole means: coffee berry borer. And we know that finding one means scouting harder for more.
This is the central tension of growing Kona coffee on a small family farm. You are tending one of the most prestigious coffee-growing regions on the planet, on land that took volcanic centuries to build, and every pest management decision you make either honors that or erodes it. Synthetic chemicals can offer a quick fix, but they carry costs: to the soil, to the ecosystem, to the certifications and market positioning that make Kona coffee worth growing in the first place, and to the values that brought many of us to this work.
So we chose a different path. And this article is our honest, thorough account of how pest management on a Kona coffee farm can be handled through organic approaches, from the science of biological controls to the discipline of soil health, from the daily rhythms of field sanitation to the emerging threat of coffee leaf rust. We are going to cover all of it, because we think the people who buy our coffee, visit our farm, and care about where their food comes from deserve the full picture.
Here is what you will find across the following sections: why organic pest management matters more than ever in Hawaii's coffee industry, a clear-eyed look at the pests that actually threaten Kona farms, the biological controls we rely on and why they work, the foundational role of soil health, the specific cultural practices we use at Buddha's Cup, the new reality of coffee leaf rust, and what all of this looks like when you experience it firsthand on one of our farm tours.
We are not going to pretend this is easy. But we are going to show you that it works.
Why Organic Pest Management Matters More Than Ever on Kona Farms
The Scale and Stakes of Hawaii's Coffee Industry
Hawaii's coffee sector spans more than 7,000 bearing acres across more than 1,000 mostly small, family-run farms on five islands. That number might sound substantial in the context of specialty coffee, but it is remarkably modest compared to the global commodity market. And that is precisely the point. Hawaiian coffee, Kona coffee in particular, has never competed on volume. It competes on quality, provenance, and the story behind every cup.
Buddha's Cup sits in Holualoa, a small village on the slopes above Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. We are at an elevation of roughly 1,400 feet, squarely within the Kona Coffee Belt, that narrow band between about 800 and 2,500 feet where the combination of morning sun, afternoon clouds, volcanic soil, and consistent rainfall creates conditions that cannot be replicated anywhere else on Earth. Our farm is small. Every acre matters. Every tree matters. Every decision about how we manage pests carries weight, not just for the current harvest, but for the long-term health of the land and the viability of our farm as a generational enterprise.
Organic pest management is not simply a philosophical preference for us. It is an economic strategy. Synthetic chemical dependency raises input costs every season. It can disqualify farms from premium certifications and from the pricing premiums that come with them. And it creates a kind of agricultural debt: short-term pest suppression in exchange for long-term soil degradation, beneficial organism die-offs, and a narrowing of the ecological resilience that small farms depend on when weather turns against them.
The specialty coffee market increasingly rewards farms that can demonstrate how their coffee was grown. Transparency has become a competitive advantage. And in Kona, where the premium over commodity coffee can be substantial, maintaining the quality signals that justify that premium is not optional. It is the entire game.
What "Organic Pest Management" Actually Means
We want to be direct about something, because we hear confusion on this point from visitors and coffee drinkers alike. Organic pest management does not mean no pest management. It is not a decision to do nothing and hope nature sorts itself out. That approach would cost us our crop.
What organic pest management actually means is a disciplined, layered system of interventions that work with ecological processes rather than against them. The framework that responsible Kona coffee operations typically use is called Integrated Pest Management, or IPM. IPM is not a single tool. It is a decision-making approach that combines monitoring, threshold-based action triggers, biological controls, cultural practices, and, only when necessary, targeted low-impact inputs.
The key concept in IPM is the economic threshold. That is the pest population level at which the cost of intervention becomes justified by the crop damage being prevented. Below that threshold, we observe and monitor. At or above it, we act. This prevents the reflexive spray-everything response that characterizes conventional pest management and that we actively avoid.
IPM also means being honest about complexity. Different pests require different responses. Some are best managed by encouraging their natural enemies. Some are best controlled through harvest timing and field sanitation. Some require targeted biocontrol agents. A good organic pest management program uses all of these tools in coordination, and it adapts as conditions change season to season.
The distinction between certified organic and what we might call organically oriented farming is also worth acknowledging. Certified organic carries a specific regulatory definition and requires third-party verification. Many small Kona farms, including farms like ours that operate with strong organic values, may be in various stages of that process or may practice organic methods without holding formal certification. The practical commitment to low-chemical, ecologically responsible farming is what matters most on the ground. You can learn more about what that looks like for Kona farms at our FAQ on organic Kona coffee farming.
Consumer Demand and the Kona Premium
The people who seek out genuine Kona coffee are not casual buyers. They are making a deliberate choice to pay significantly more than they would for commodity beans, and they want to know that the choice is worth making. Increasingly, that means they want to know how the coffee was grown. Not just the region. Not just the elevation. How it was actually grown, what went into the soil, what was or was not sprayed on the trees, and how the farm treats the land it depends on.
This shift in consumer expectation has real implications for how we farm. Healthier trees, managed through organic practices that build soil biology and encourage ecological resilience, produce cherries with more complexity. That complexity shows up in the cup. The connection between farming method and flavor is not marketing language. It is agronomy. The micronutrients available in well-managed volcanic soil, the absence of chemical residues that can interfere with fermentation and processing, and the overall vitality of a tree grown without synthetic dependency all contribute to what ends up in your mug. For more on what Kona soil actually delivers to the coffee cherry, see our FAQ on nutrients found in Kona-grown coffee.
Farm tours are one of the most powerful transparency tools we have. When visitors walk our rows, see the traps, touch the soil, and watch us scout for pests, the abstract idea of organic farming becomes something concrete and credible. We will return to this in the section on farm tours, but it is worth naming early: showing our work is part of how we earn and maintain trust.
Know Your Enemy: The Pests That Threaten Kona Coffee
Coffee Berry Borer: The Most Costly Pest in Kona
Hypothenemus hampei is a beetle so small you could fit a dozen of them on your thumbnail. It is also the single most economically damaging coffee pest in the world, and it has been present in Hawaii long enough to become a defining challenge of Kona farming. Understanding how it operates is the first requirement of managing it.
The coffee berry borer's lifecycle is entirely organized around the coffee cherry. The adult female, which is the only form capable of flight, bores into the cherry through a tiny hole at or near the fruit's crown. Once inside, she lays eggs in the coffee seed itself. The larvae hatch and feed on the endosperm, destroying the bean from the inside. They pupate within the fruit, and new adults emerge to infest additional cherries. The male never leaves the cherry. The female, having mated, flies off to begin the cycle again.
What makes CBB particularly dangerous in Kona is the interaction between the beetle's biology and our climate. Holualoa sits at an elevation that modulates temperature, but the humidity that comes with our afternoon cloud cover, combined with the rainfall patterns on the western slope of the Big Island, creates conditions that favor CBB activity during and after harvest. Research on sustainable pest management programs has shown that even during El Niño weather conditions, which strongly favor CBB outbreaks, validated integrated approaches can keep borer levels low while increasing farmer income by reducing chemical inputs and improving cup quality. That evidence matters to us. It means the organic path is not idealistic. It is demonstrably effective.
Kona's elevation variation adds another layer of complexity. Farms at different elevations experience different temperature and humidity profiles, which shifts the timing of CBB flight activity and egg laying. A farm at 800 feet may face a different CBB pressure calendar than one at 1,800 feet. We factor this into our monitoring schedule every season. For more on how rainfall specifically affects pest dynamics in our region, see our FAQ on the impact of rainfall on Kona coffee pests.
Coffee Leaf Miner and Other Foliage Threats
Leucoptera coffeella, commonly called the coffee leaf miner or white coffee stem borer in some references, is a moth whose larvae feed within coffee leaves, creating serpentine mines through the photosynthetic tissue. Heavily infested leaves lose their ability to convert sunlight to energy, reducing the tree's overall vigor and, by extension, its fruit production and its resistance to other stressors.
In Kona, coffee leaf miner is a secondary concern relative to CBB in terms of direct economic impact, but it demands monitoring because stressed trees are more vulnerable to everything else. A systematic review of control methods for Leucoptera coffeella and related species has found that biological control agents, plant extracts, and cultural practices including cover crops and intercropping are emerging as validated non-chemical management tools. This aligns with how we approach foliage pest management on our farm: address the conditions that allow infestations to establish, support the natural enemies that prey on the larvae, and use physical or botanical interventions before reaching for anything stronger.
Soil-level pest pathways also deserve mention here. Certain nematode species can damage coffee roots in ways that cascade up through the plant, reducing its ability to take up water and nutrients and making it more susceptible to foliage pests. Nematode-resistant rootstocks are one tool being explored in coffee research. At the farm level, maintaining healthy soil biology, including the predatory nematodes and fungi that suppress parasitic nematode populations, is a first line of defense. Good soil management, which we cover in depth in the section on soil health, is the most reliable way to keep the belowground pest community in balance.
Coffee Leaf Rust: The Newest Threat on Hawaii's Radar
Hemileia vastatrix deserves its own full section in this article, and it gets one later. But we want to introduce it here because understanding the full scope of pest and pathogen pressure on Kona farms requires knowing that CBB and leaf miners are not the only threats we are watching.
Coffee leaf rust is a fungal pathogen, not an insect, but it functions like a pest in terms of management strategy. It spreads through airborne spores, infects leaves, causes defoliation, and can devastate a farm's productive capacity in a single season if unchecked. The first detection of coffee leaf rust in Hawaii marked a significant moment for the state's farming community, triggering a coordinated response across growers, researchers, and agricultural agencies. The economic implications for a coffee industry that depends on premium positioning and healthy tree populations are significant.
For now, it is enough to know that our pest management planning has expanded to include rust monitoring as a formal element. The threat is real, the community response is active, and the organic-compatible tools for managing it do exist. We will return to all of this in the section on coffee leaf rust. For a broader look at the farming techniques that underpin our overall crop protection strategy, see our FAQ on farming techniques optimal for Kona coffee.
Biological Controls: Letting Nature Do the Heavy Lifting
Beneficial Insects and Predatory Organisms
The appeal of biological control is straightforward: instead of introducing a chemical that disrupts the ecosystem, you identify or encourage an organism that already exists within the system and is naturally inclined to suppress the pest you are managing. In practice, it requires patience, observation, and a willingness to accept that the results are measured over seasons rather than days. But the results are durable in a way that spray programs cannot match.
The most well-documented biological control agent for coffee berry borer is Beauveria bassiana, an entomopathogenic fungus that infects and kills insects, including the CBB adult and larvae. It is naturally present in many soils and can be applied as a spray. When CBB adults come into contact with Beauveria spores, the fungus colonizes the beetle and kills it within days. It does not harm humans, most beneficial insects, or the coffee plant itself. And because it is a living organism rather than a synthetic molecule, it can persist and even reproduce in the right environmental conditions, providing longer residual activity than a conventional insecticide application.
Predatory ants, particularly Azteca species used in shade-grown coffee systems, have also shown effectiveness against coffee pests in research settings. Their applicability to Kona's mid-elevation, partially shaded farms is limited by the differences in Kona's farming structure compared to, say, shade-coffee systems in Central America. But the broader principle, that encouraging ant populations as natural predators in and around coffee rows contributes to pest suppression, is one we keep in mind when making decisions about ground cover and shade management.
At Buddha's Cup, we actively monitor populations of beneficial insects as part of our ongoing observation protocol. This is not a formal survey with entomological precision, but it is a consistent, practiced habit of paying attention to what is living in our rows and what it is doing. Spiders, parasitic wasps, lacewings, and predatory beetles all contribute to the biological balance that keeps pest populations below economically damaging thresholds. We do nothing that would unnecessarily harm these allies.
Birds, Bees, and Ecosystem Services
Pollination services are now recognized as a critical yet underused ecosystem function in coffee farming. Research on sustainable Kona agriculture has increasingly documented that strong pollinator populations directly enhance fruit set and yield stability, meaning that supporting bees and other pollinators is not separate from pest management. It is part of the same integrated strategy of maintaining ecological balance.
Coffee is a self-fertile crop, meaning individual trees can pollinate themselves. But cross-pollination by bees consistently increases cherry set and improves bean quality. Kona's farming landscape, with its patchwork of farms, wild vegetation corridors, and mixed agricultural uses, provides reasonable pollinator habitat in many areas. We work to maintain and enhance that habitat on and around our property. Flowering ground covers, native plantings at field margins, and the absence of broad-spectrum insecticide applications all contribute to a farm environment where bees can thrive.
The local honey produced in areas like ours carries the character of the landscape: the flora the bees visit, the elevation, the season. We love the connection between our farming practices and the broader edible ecosystem of the Big Island. For more on how local honey connects to the herbal traditions of Hawaiian farming, see our FAQ on the benefits of using local honey with Hawaiian herbal teas.
Birds also play a meaningful role in pest suppression on Kona farms. Several species, both native Hawaiian birds and introduced birds that have established in the islands, actively feed on soft-bodied larvae, leaf miners, and other insects in coffee canopies. We are careful not to do anything that discourages bird activity in our rows. This means maintaining some structural diversity in our canopy, avoiding noise or chemical deterrents, and thinking about our farm as a habitat, not just a production unit.
Mamaki, the native Hawaiian tea plant that we grow on our farm alongside coffee, plays a genuinely interesting role in this ecological picture. Mamaki plants attract pollinators and support a small but meaningful insect community in the areas where they grow. The integration of mamaki into our farm's planting mix is one expression of a mixed-farming philosophy that naturally enhances biodiversity. For more on how tea and coffee coexist on farms like ours, see our FAQ on where tea and coffee co-exist on mixed farms.
Microbial Controls and Rhizosphere Science
Below the soil surface, an entire civilization of microorganisms is constantly at work. Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and micro-arthropods form a living web that determines how nutrients move through the soil, how water is retained, and how resilient plant roots are to soilborne pathogens. Research published in Frontiers in Microbiology in 2026 documented how the rhizosphere and fruit microbiome of coffee plants varies significantly across conventional, transitional, and organic management systems. The implication is profound: how we manage our farm shapes the microbial community in ways that cascade through plant health, pest resistance, and even cup quality.
Organically managed soils consistently support more diverse and abundant microbial communities than conventionally managed soils. That diversity matters for pest management because many soilborne pathogens, including fungi that attack coffee roots and nematodes that parasitize root systems, are naturally suppressed by competing beneficial microorganisms. When those beneficial communities are disrupted by synthetic inputs, the suppressive capacity of the soil is diminished, and pest pressure often increases as a result.
Research on good agronomic practices for enhanced Coffea arabica production has reinforced this connection between soil biology and overall plant performance, noting that management practices that support root health contribute directly to the tree's ability to withstand pest and disease pressure. A tree that is not stressed by poor soil conditions has more resources to allocate to its immune-equivalent defense responses. It produces secondary compounds that deter herbivores. It seals wounds faster. It recovers more quickly from defoliation events.
At Buddha's Cup, supporting soil microbial health is a core management priority. Everything else we do, from composting to cover crop selection to our avoidance of synthetic fungicides that would disrupt fungal communities, flows from this understanding that the soil is the foundation of everything.
Soil Health as a Pest Defense Strategy
Volcanic Soil Advantages and Vulnerabilities
Kona's farming identity is inseparable from its geology. The Big Island of Hawaii is the youngest of the Hawaiian Islands in geological terms, and its soils are formed from relatively recent volcanic parent material. At the elevations where coffee grows best, particularly in the 1,000 to 2,000 foot range that includes Holualoa, the soil has had enough time to weather into a productive medium that is mineral-rich, reasonably well-drained, and naturally structured in ways that benefit coffee roots.
The volcanic minerals available in Kona soil, including iron, manganese, and a range of trace elements that are often depleted in older agricultural soils elsewhere, contribute to the nutritional profile of Kona-grown coffee cherries. They also support a soil environment where beneficial organisms can thrive. Volcanic soils tend to have a natural acidity that falls within the range coffee plants prefer, though pH management remains an active part of any good fertility program.
But volcanic soil also has vulnerabilities. Its porosity, while excellent for drainage in normal conditions, can make nutrient leaching a problem in high-rainfall periods. And where management practices have led to compaction, through heavy machinery or improper tillage, the natural drainage and aeration benefits are compromised. Compacted soil holds excess moisture around roots, creating conditions that favor soilborne pathogens and that stress trees in ways that make them more vulnerable to pest attack. Poor drainage is a pest management issue, not just an agronomy issue.
Proper drainage management and consistent additions of organic matter to maintain soil structure are essential practices for maintaining the volcanic soil advantage that Kona farmers start with. We think of our soil as an asset that can be built or depleted depending on how we treat it. We are building it.
Composting, Cover Crops, and Ground Management
One of the most satisfying things about organic coffee farming is the closed-loop logic of composting. When we process our coffee cherries, the fruit pulp, also called cascara in some contexts, does not go to waste. It is returned to the soil as compost, bringing organic matter, nutrients, and biological activity back to the rows where the next harvest will grow. What the tree gave to produce the cherry is returned to feed the tree's successors. We love this cycle. It is both philosophically and practically sound.
The processing that creates this material also happens on our farm. If you are curious about where and how we ferment and process coffee cherries on-site, our FAQ on coffee processing management walks through the details.
Cover crops are another tool we use deliberately. Planting low-growing legumes, grasses, or other vegetation in the spaces between coffee rows accomplishes several things at once. It prevents soil erosion on our sloped terrain. It fixes nitrogen in the case of leguminous species. It suppresses weed growth without tillage. And critically for pest management, it provides habitat for beneficial ground-dwelling insects while reducing the bare-soil conditions that some pests prefer. Research on the coffee leaf miner and related foliage pests has identified cover crop and intercropping systems as validated non-chemical control methods, partly because they support the beneficial insect communities that prey on pest larvae.
Ground management also means thinking carefully about what we leave on the soil surface and what we remove. We are deliberate about where we allow organic material to accumulate and where we clear it. Fallen cherries left on the ground become CBB breeding sites, so those are removed as part of our sanitation protocol. But the broader layer of mulch and decomposing organic matter that accumulates naturally under the trees is valuable, feeding soil organisms and moderating soil temperature and moisture. The distinction matters: sanitation targets specific pest reservoirs, while ground management builds overall soil health.
For more on the full-circle philosophy that guides how we approach these systems, see our FAQ on Hawaiian full-circle farming.
Compost Tea, Foliar Sprays, and Low-Input Fertility
Compost tea is brewed by aerating water with mature compost, drawing out the microbial populations and soluble nutrients and concentrating them in a liquid form that can be applied directly to soil or sprayed onto foliage. When applied to soil, compost tea delivers a dose of diverse microbial life that can reinvigorate the rhizosphere after stress events. When applied as a foliar spray, the microbial film it deposits on leaf surfaces can compete with and suppress fungal pathogens that would otherwise colonize the leaf tissue.
We use compost tea as a low-input fertility and microbial support tool, not as a substitute for a full soil management program, but as a complement to it. The goal is never to replace one spray program with another. The goal is to build systemic plant health so that the tree itself is more resilient, and so that the soil community provides ongoing suppressive activity that reduces our need to intervene at all.
Naturally derived foliar inputs, including neem-based products and other plant-extract formulations, can function as both mild pest deterrents and foliar nutrient supplements. Neem, derived from the seeds of Azadirachta indica, contains azadirachtin and related compounds that disrupt the development of soft-bodied insects and have some repellent activity against adult beetles. These products are permitted under organic standards when properly formulated, and they degrade rapidly without leaving persistent residues.
Research published in Frontiers in Microbiology on the coffee microbiome noted that fertilization regimes, including the type and timing of nutrient inputs, shape microbial community composition in ways that affect pest and disease suppression. This means that how we feed our trees is not separate from how we protect them. The two are linked through the soil biology that mediates both processes. And research on fertility-pest management interactions in Coffea arabica has reinforced the point: trees that are optimally nourished, neither starved nor over-fertilized, are simply less appealing targets for pests and less vulnerable to disease.
Cultural and Agronomic Practices We Use at Buddha's Cup
Pruning, Canopy Management, and Airflow
If you visited our farm during pruning season, you might be surprised by how much material comes off the trees. Proper pruning of Kona coffee is not a light trim. It is a deliberate shaping of the tree's architecture with specific goals in mind: directing energy into fruit-bearing wood, removing dead or diseased material that could harbor pests, and opening the canopy to allow light penetration and airflow through the tree's interior.
That last goal, airflow, is directly relevant to pest and disease management. CBB adults prefer the humid micro-environments that form within dense, unpruned canopies. Fungal pathogens, including coffee leaf rust, depend on moisture remaining on leaf surfaces long enough for spores to germinate. A well-pruned tree with an open canopy dries faster after rain. It stays cooler and less humid internally. It is simply a less hospitable environment for the organisms we are trying to suppress.
Pruning also reveals problems. When we work through a tree carefully, we see damage we might miss during routine scouting: CBB-infested cherries tucked in dense interior wood, early signs of fungal infection on shaded branches, evidence of boring insects in older wood. Pruning is a pest monitoring opportunity as much as it is a production management practice.
Our pruning schedule follows the rhythm of the Kona harvest season. We prune after harvest, giving trees time to push new vegetative growth before the next flowering cycle. What visitors observe during tours in the post-harvest period often includes pruning activity, and we love the opportunity to explain what we are doing and why. For more on the farming techniques that structure our annual calendar, see our FAQ on farming techniques optimal for Kona coffee.
Harvest Discipline and Post-Harvest Sanitation
Not all coffee harvest methods are equal from a pest management standpoint. Strip picking, where all cherries are removed from a branch at once regardless of ripeness, is faster but introduces green and overripe fruit into the harvest that must be sorted out later. Selective picking, where only ripe red cherries are harvested by hand, takes more time but produces a cleaner, more uniform harvest. At Buddha's Cup, we practice selective picking. That discipline is not only about cup quality, though it certainly delivers a better cup. It is also about CBB management.
Here is why harvest timing and selectivity matter for pest control. CBB females overwhelmingly prefer overripe or green cherries as oviposition sites. By picking ripe cherries promptly and removing them from the tree before they overripen, we eliminate the preferred breeding substrate. Each cherry left too long on the tree is an invitation. Each clean, timely picking reduces the available habitat for the next borer generation.
Field sanitation extends this logic into the period after picking. Any cherries that fall to the ground, any that remain on the tree after the main harvest, and any raisins from the previous season represent potential CBB reservoirs. We remove these as thoroughly as practical. It is tedious work, but research on multi-pronged validated sustainable pest management programs consistently identifies timely harvest and removal of fallen and mummified fruit as a critical component, one that works synergistically with biological controls and monitoring to keep CBB populations below damaging thresholds.
Post-harvest processing decisions also carry pest management implications. How quickly cherries are processed after picking affects CBB reinfestation risk and determines what happens to the fruit environment that beetles might exploit. For details on how we handle our beans through drying and processing, see our FAQs on ideal humidity levels for drying Kona beans and on when new trees get planted for sustainable farming, which addresses the longer-term renewal cycle that keeps our block structure healthy and productive.
Monitoring, Trapping, and Record-Keeping
All of the biological controls and cultural practices in the world are only as good as your ability to know what is actually happening in your rows. Monitoring is the intelligence function of pest management. Without it, you are either reacting too late or intervening unnecessarily. Neither serves the farm well.
Our monitoring toolkit for CBB includes alcohol-methanol traps, which attract and capture flying female borers using a blend of food-grade ethanol and methanol that mimics the fermentation volatiles of ripe coffee cherries. We deploy these traps at regular intervals through the farm and check them on a schedule that intensifies during the periods of highest borer flight activity. The trap counts give us a population index. When counts rise above our threshold, we intensify other interventions. When they remain low, we maintain our baseline protocols.
Visual scouting complements the traps. Walking the rows with trained eyes, looking for the characteristic entry holes on cherries, checking for the powdery frass that indicates active boring, counting the percentage of infested cherries in sampled sections of the farm. These observations feed into our threshold-based decision-making. We record everything. Season-to-season comparisons of trap counts and infestation rates are among the most valuable data we have. They tell us whether our management program is trending in the right direction and where we need to adjust.
Emerging technologies, including AI-assisted image recognition for pest identification and climate-smart modeling tools that predict outbreak risk based on weather data, are being explored in coffee research. We follow these developments with interest. Currently, most small Kona farms, including ours, operate with field-based monitoring rather than digital systems. But the principles are the same: collect data, interpret it in context, and act on it at the right time rather than on a fixed calendar.
Community-level knowledge sharing is another layer of our monitoring capability. The Kona Coffee Farmers Association produces newsletters and holds grower meetings where current pest pressure, new observations, and management recommendations are shared among member farms. This collective intelligence is invaluable on a small farm where our direct observation covers limited acreage. What our neighbors are seeing matters, because pest populations do not respect property lines. Knowing that a neighboring farm is seeing elevated CBB trap counts allows us to heighten our own vigilance before the pressure arrives.
When visitors join us for scouting walks during farm tours, they sometimes get to participate in this monitoring process firsthand. Looking for borer entry holes, checking traps, learning to read the landscape for signs of pest activity. It makes the abstract concept of pest management into something tangible and comprehensible. We find that visitors leave with a much deeper appreciation for what goes into their cup when they have spent time learning to see what we see. For information on