High mountain coffee ‘in trouble’

Farmers of coffee in Jamaica’s high mountains have witnessed a two-thirds dip in production from pre-pandemic levels.

Jamaica produces many varieties of coffee but two mountain regions define the brew: high mountain and the Blue Mountains, the latter being the highest elevation on the island and the source of premier coffee that is world renowned.

The fall in high mountain production comes amid a double-digit rise in Blue Mountain production.

“High mountain coffee really is in trouble,” said John Minott, general manager of Jamaica Standard Products Limited, JSP, in an interview with the Financial Gleaner.

JSP is the largest producer of high mountain coffee in Jamaica.

In 2023, high mountain production, covering the central and western regions of Jamaica, plummeted to 300 tonnes, which was two-thirds lower than the six-year average of 980 tonnes, according to the Economic and Social Survey Jamaica, produced by the Planning Institute of Jamaica.

Concurrently, Blue Mountain coffee production, in the east, surged to 7,845 tonnes, which was 40 per cent higher than the six-year average of 5,600 tonnes.

“It is not very profitable, and high mountain production continues to decline,” Minott said.

JSP operates a factory in Williamsfield, Manchester, but also owns Baronhall Estate, Baronhall Farms, Blue Baron Estate, the Island Blue brand of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, and holds stakes in cafés.

Blue Mountain coffee offers tones of chocolate, spice and fruit. High mountain coffee offers deeper chocolate tones with hints of spice. To difference in taste comes with a large variance in price. Blue Mountain coffee can retail locally for $10,000 a pound, which is double the price fetched by high mountain coffee. It is even more expensive in Japan, Europe and the United States.

Since the pandemic, however, farmers in the Blue Mountains have seen their earnings double, while for high mountain cultivators it’s unchanged, according to the PIOJ report.

“High mountain prices have stayed the same for the last five or six years,” said Minott. “Input costs have gone up, but the market price for high mountain coffee hasn’t kept pace with inflation.”

Blue Mountain cherry coffee commands prices of around $367,500 (US$2,450) a tonne, compared to $120,000 (US$800) a tonne for non-Blue Mountain varieties. To generate $1 million, a Blue Mountain farmer needs to produce three tonnes, but it would take nearly nine tonnes for high mountain coffee.

Farmers abandoning coffee

Added to that, local purchasing power has lost more than one-third of its value since the start of the pandemic. That exacerbated the situation and resulted in many non-Blue Mountain farmers abandoning coffee, according to Blake Widmer of Deaf Can Coffee, a social enterprise.

Deaf Can operates a small three-acre coffee farm in Mandeville. It’s a source of beans for Deaf Can’s cafés in Kingston and the Falmouth cruise pier. Integrating the farm to other businesses is critical to success, Widmer said.

“If you want to do high mountain coffee on a small scale, that is the only way to do it,” he said.

Deaf Can was the first company listed on the Jamaica Social Stock Exchange.

“It showed that deaf people are capable of achieving anything,” Widmer asserted.

The Deaf Can social exchange project, which began in 2020, received $7.5 million from donors and $1.2 million from Deaf Can members, and ended in 2022, with a $3 million deficit as at April 2024, according to financials posted on the JSSE site.

“The project was never intended to be profitable in three years, more like seven years,” Widmer said, reflecting on the bitter-sweet reality of the high mountains. “The financial loss was only part of the wider social success,” he said.

steven.jackson@gleanerjm.com