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State officials want a permanent quarantine on Big Island coffee infested with the dreaded .

That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to buy the popular kona coffee in grocery stores and specialty shops throughout the country. But it could mean that the cost could go up as farmers may have to spend more on treatments to prevent the spread of the infestation.

Since the presence of the beetle was confirmed last year, Kona farmers say it has wreaked havoc on coffee crops. Treatment measures have increased costs by as much as 30 percent, they say.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what we are going to do,” said Bob Smith, owner of , who has been growing Kona coffee for 23 years. He said he could have a failed crop this year. The beetle burrows into coffee berries where it lives out its life cycle, killing crops and damaging the quality of coffee beans.

“We’re just taking it day by day,” he said. “I think it does have the potential to bring the industry down, at least for the next few years until we get this under control.”

The Board of Agriculture passed an emergency measure last year, banning coffee plants, unroasted coffee and used coffee bags that haven’t undergone costly treatment procedures from being exported to the rest of the state. The ban, which expires in December, affects roughly 600 Big Island coffee farmers.

Now the board is considering making the ban permanent. A to discuss the measure is set for Wednesday in Honolulu and the Board of Agriculture is expected to vote on it at the end of the month.

Hawaii’s Department of Agriculture lacks statistics on the financial damage that the beetle has caused so far on the state’s $27 million industry. Worldwide, the financial toll of the beetle is estimated at $500 million annually, .

The quarantine is aimed at preventing the beetle from infecting coffee farms on other islands, particularly Kauai and Maui, which have significant farming operations.

State agriculture officials have been testing for the beetle throughout the islands and haven’t found any sign of it outside of the Kona region other than an infestation at a Pahala farm in the Kau district that has been eradicated, according to Neil Reimer, manager of the Department of Agriculture’s plant pest control branch.

During the past decade, the beetle has caused a global scourge, damaging crops throughout Central and South America, and countries like Ethiopia and Kenya. Hawaii is considered to be one of the last coffee-growing regions to be afflicted.

While Reimer said that it had yet to be determined how the beetle got to Hawaii, its proliferation is believed by to be the result of climate change. Slight temperature changes are believed to be increasing the beetle’s survival rate.

One bright spot for local farmers has been that a locally occurring fungus is proving to be an effective deterrent. The spores of the , which can be mixed with water into a spray, attack and kill the insects, said Reimer.

Farmers hope that will largely contain the problem.

“Next year we should see a much lower infection rate,” said Smith. “That’s really the good news.”

He joked that farmers always think next year’s crop is going to better.

“Us farmers are always optimistic,” said Smith. “It’s always going to be a better year next year.”