Trump's bid to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development is impacting research into coffee.
The Synergistic Hawaiʻi Agriculture Council supports specialty crops, including coffee. It said a $6 million USAID grant to develop coffee trees resistant to the fungal disease coffee leaf rust has been halted.
The council said it has reached out to Hawaiʻi's congressional delegation to see if the money can be transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to resume the research.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda represents the state's major coffee growing regions on Hawaiʻi Island.
"USAID, everyone thinks that it's just about sending money outside of the country, but people don't realize that for the last 30 years, USAID has also been extensively supporting coffee research," Tokuda said.
"We're talking tens of millions of dollars over the last 30 years. You cut USAID, you eliminate that money that's gone to research."
Tokuda has started a bipartisan coffee caucus and plans to use it to advocate for the importance of research to support Hawaiʻi's coffee industry.
"When we started the caucus, we had no idea that we would be in this situation," she said. "Now, flashing forward to today, I believe this caucus is even more critical because the impacts of the recent funding freezes and the [executive orders], it's going to hurt our coffee growers."
