Sun, Mar 04, 2012 page11

• Jamaica’s famed Blue Mountain coffee industry faces hard times

  • By David McFadden / AP, Brandon Hill, Jamaica
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  A few years ago in this mist-shrouded mountain town, steep slopes were quilted with some of the world’s most valuable coffee trees. Farmers scrambled to increase acreage and pickers painstakingly filled wooden boxes with ripened berries at harvest time.

  Today, much of the terrain is overgrown with underbrush and bamboo as a declining luxury market in Japan and a voracious beetle drive thousands of frustrated small farmers away from tiny plots of leased highlands.

  Times are hard for the growers of Jamaica’s legendary coffee, especially those on isolated, low-tech farms such as the ones in Brandon Hill, a one-road enclave with no traffic lights.

  “We used to make a living, but now we’re working hungry,” said Colin McLaren, standing in his sloping farm of flowering coffee trees in Jamaica’s wild eastern mountains, where his father grew the gourmet arabica beans before him. “It’s tough and getting tougher.”

  Jamaica produces what connoisseurs rank as one of the world’s finest coffees, mostly grown on patches of a few acres between 610m to 1,525m above sea level. The moist, cool climate of the Blue Mountains lengthens the growing period from five to about 10 months, allowing sugars to develop in the beans that grow inside the berries. Many coffee lovers say the rich brew has a smooth, nutty flavor and a deep, intriguing aftertaste.

  The roasted beans often sell for about US$80 a kilogram in the US, up to four times the price of other gourmet coffees. In Japan, the main market for Blue Mountain coffee, the beans fetch as much as US$34 for a 100g package.

  However, consumers are buying less because of the global economic slump. And that has brought declines in purchases by coffee dealers, as well as big drops in the prices paid to Jamaica’s growers. Like farmers everywhere, they get only a small fraction of the retail price after middlemen, processors, shippers, retailers and others take their slices of the pie.

  Meanwhile, the cost of producing coffee has soared for Jamaicans as inflation has driven prices for fertilizer, insecticide and wages higher over the last decade and powerful storms damaged their trees. Between 2005 and 2009, the cost of tending an acre (0.4 hectares) of coffee almost doubled, jumping from US$3,400 to US$7,070.

  An increasing number of exasperated Jamaican farmers say they can’t even eke out a bare living growing the specialty crop.

  The nation’s Coffee Industry Board says Jamaican farmers received an average of US$50.57 for every 27kg box of Blue Mountain coffee cherries they produced during the 2006-2007 season. Last year, they got US$28.91.

  Over the same period, the price of coffee elsewhere doubled, according to the World Coffee Organization, as consumer demand has risen for mostly inexpensive beans.

  McLaren said the problem has become so bad that he would accept being paid in fertilizer instead of cash just so he can keep his coffee farm healthy and maintain his investment.

  “That’s what it’s come to now,” he said. “Fertilizer here costs more than a box of our coffee.”

  Demand for the island’s coffee has plunged in Japan, where coffee lovers have long paid top dollar for Jamaican beans. Japan used to buy almost 90 percent of Jamaica’s crop and helped the island develop its brand. Now Japanese importers buy about 60 percent at depreciated prices and have stopped advance payments for green coffee, shifting the costs to Jamaican exporters.

  All Japan Coffee Association executive director Toyohide Nishino said his country’s love affair with Blue Mountain coffee has dulled because even discriminating Japanese consumers are looking for cheaper products at a time of economic stagnation.

  This year, Jamaica is projected to produce just 140,000 27kg boxes of branded Blue Mountain coffee, far below the record crop of 529,704 boxes in 2003. Even in 2004, when Jamaica’s coffee business was ravaged by Category 4 Hurricane Ivan, it managed to produce 236,405 boxes of Blue Mountain coffee.

  As some farmers gave up in the lush Blue Mountains that tower over eastern Jamaica, their untended fields exacerbated a problem for those who remained by creating a breeding ground for the coffee berry borer, an invasive pest originally from Central Africa that is a headache for coffee growers around the world.

  Officials say some Jamaican farmers could lose as much as half of their coffee crop this year because of the borer, an opportunistic bug smaller than a sesame seed that flourishes in abandoned fields and then spreads to working farms, further diminishing supply.

  Industry leaders are distributing about 50,000 sticky traps containing a dab of pheromone that lures the tiny beetles inside and they’re trying to educate farmers about how to get rid of the pests by hand. Meanwhile, the government is distributing small aid payments to help with fertilizer purchases.

  All Island Jamaica Coffee Growers’ Association president Derrick Simon said that the industry is in trouble largely because it foolishly relied on Japan almost exclusively for years and failed to diversify its markets.

  McCook agreed.

  “I don’t believe we should be looking back with much regret, but we should have been looking forward in a better way. You could say we have been slow to react and look forward and make adjustments,” McCook said.

  Jamaica has been trying to expand the market for Blue Mountain coffee in Europe and the US, where coffee lovers can order it online from several sellers. The Coffee Industry Board also is looking for a toehold in China, where analysts predict coffee consumption will grow.

  Prices have edged back up, although they’re still far below what growers used to get. Mavis Bank Coffee Factory Ltd, a major Jamaican processor and exporter, just promised growers a final price of US$35.75 for each box they produce.
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