Some female Kona coffee farmers have stripped down to produce a semi-nude calendar that aims to strip away confusion over blended Kona coffee and draw attention to an industry effort to modify labeling requirements for the high-value Hawai'i crop.

The 2009 calendar — titled "The Naked Truth about 100% Kona Coffee" — is modeled after the oft-copied idea of a group of middle-aged English women who promoted leukemia research with a huge-selling nude calendar in a true story made famous by the 2003 "Calendar Girls" movie.

The Kona Coffee Farmers Association has a 100 percent packaging seal program to distinguish pure Kona coffee. The group maintains that bags of blended coffee with the word "Kona" on the label, but containing no more than 10 percent Kona coffee, harm consumers and the brand.

"This legal form of deception has riled the farmers and the KCFA will stop at nothing to educate coffee drinkers about it," the trade group said in a statement announcing the calendar.

The trade association's risque publicity effort follows a well-publicized 2004 Consumer Reports study that called some Kona coffees "second-rate" but included blends and pure Kona coffee in its survey.

Pure Kona coffee typically sells for $20 or more per pound, compared with blends that often cost closer to $5 a pound and are mixed with coffees of undisclosed origin. The brand is the most recognized and highest priced among a variety of Hawai'i-grown coffees valued as a crop last year at $37.5 million.

"A bold step was needed, and we took it," said Mary Lou Moss, a Kona coffee farmer who operates Holualoa-based Cuppa Kona and came up with the idea for the calendar.

The calendar, which sells for $12 on the trade association's www.konacoffeefarmers.org Web site, aims to "tastefully" depict farming activity that takes place each month of the year on Kona coffee farms.

Eleven farmers agreed to be featured in the calendar, including "Miss May" Cecelia Smith of Smithfarms, who said participating wasn't easy but was helped by champagne consumption.

"We're all over 50," she said. "Everything was done tastefully. It's not like we're contending to be in the garage with all those other (pinup) girls."

The idea to produce the calendar came partly out of frustration over failed attempts to have legislators redefine the law governing labels of Kona coffee blends.

A Hawai'i County Council resolution passed in November 2006 asked the state Legislature to require that any coffee labeled "Kona" or "Kona coffee" include at least 75 percent coffee grown in Kona.

The resolution led to the introduction last year of two bills at the Legislature. But the bills, House Bill 72 and Senate Bill 661, didn't even get a hearing.

"Kona coffee and Kona coffee farmers need to be protected," Cindy Whitehawk of 'Io Lani Kea farm in Honaunau said in written testimony. "Coffee is now labeled 'Kona' containing as little as 10 percent coffee actually grown in Kona, thus confusing the public and degrading the name of Kona coffee. This is fraudulent."

Two more bills introduced this year called for a legislative study on how such a change would affect Hawai'i's coffee industry, but they didn't pass either.

The industry study bills, House Bill 3304 and Senate Bill 2905, were derided by Kona coffee growers as a delay tactic supported by large processors and marketers of blended Kona coffee to avoid addressing the merit of amending Hawai'i's labeling law.

"The big processors make a lot of money selling small-percentage Kona coffee," Kona coffee farmer Kurt Weigelt of Captain Cook-based Edge of the World said in written testimony. "I consider them to be somewhat dishonest. I hope that you will put the interests of the people as a whole, consumers and farmers, before this special interest group."