Pepper, pimento in short supply
Published:Sunday | September 22, 2024 | 12:05 AMLuke Douglas - Senior Business Reporter
A shortage of key inputs, such as scotch bonnet peppers and pimento, is hindering at least one local manufacturing company from filling export orders for its products.
Albert Bailey, CEO of Spur Tree Spices Jamaica Limited, says a series of weather-related events over the past two years have resulted in not enough of the raw materials being on the market.
“We had a significant period of drought in 2022, followed by excessive rainfall in the latter part of 2023. When there was some recovery in the (produce) market on the supply side, we had the passage of (hurricane) Beryl which seriously affected the parishes that we get most of our supply from,” Bailey said in an interview.
He said the output of pimento has been trending downwards for years, resulting in the price moving from $550 to $750 per pound since the passage of Beryl on July 3.
Spur Tree Spices uses about 25,000 pounds of pimento per year.
Efforts to get statistics on the annual production of pimento from the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority, JACRA, the state agency responsible for the regulation, promotion, standardisation and development of seven agricultural commodities, including pimento, have been unsuccessful so far.
JACRA Director General Wayne Hunter says the demand for Jamaican pimento remains strong overseas because of its physical and chemical characteristics.
Hunter noted that of JACRA’s seven commodities, the pimento sector was second only to coffee in the level of damage it suffered from Hurricane Beryl in early July.
The regulator has been providing assistance to recovering farms, including the distribution of fertiliser. But Bailey would like to see a more coordinated approach from the Jamaican government to support industries dependent on agriculture.
“There has to be better planning and coordination in the agricultural sector, especially to support exporting companies, and to support the growth in local demand. The majority of investors in agriculture are small farmers who do not have the cash flow to reinvest, so they need assistance to get back on their feet as quickly as possible,” he said.
Meanwhile, with very little scotch bonnet pepper on the market, Spur Tree Spices says it is missing out on sales.
“We are definitely losing revenue, because there are orders we are unable to fulfil,” said Rani Badaloo, the company’s head of marketing strategy.
Bailey said it would not be feasible to purchase scotch bonnet pepper at its current price of $320 per pound, even if it were available.
However, he said pepper from the company’s farm in Bernard Lodge, St Catherine, would become available in about a month.
Last month, the spice maker said he expected to reap 600,000 pounds of pepper from the farm, reducing Spur Tree’s reliance on local farmers for inputs.
President of the Jamaica Agricultural Society Lenworth Fulton said scotch bonnet pepper is a high-risk crop for farmers because they were often affected by viruses.
“Unless you get clean planting material from Bodles, for example”, scotch bonnet pepper “is risky to grow because of a virus that causes the leaves to curl up, resulting in malformed peppers,” Fulton said. Bodles is the name of the government-operated agricultural research centre in St Catherine.
In the case of pimento, its reduced output was partly due to the shortage of labour to reap the crop, Fulton added.
“There is pimento falling off trees all over Jamaica, but you can’t find people to pick the pimento and have them dried. People are getting out of it because they just can’t find the labour,” he said.