Sat | May 4, 2024

Green appeals for help to fix coffee roads

Published:Monday | January 15, 2024 | 12:08 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
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Tanesia Brown prepares a cup of Betta Cup coffee for a customer who eagerly anticipates tasting the hot beverage. Occasion was Tuesday’s launch of the 2023 Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival at the Edward Seaga Suite, Devon House. The festival will ta
Christopher Serju
Tanesia Brown prepares a cup of Betta Cup coffee for a customer who eagerly anticipates tasting the hot beverage. Occasion was Tuesday’s launch of the 2023 Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival at the Edward Seaga Suite, Devon House. The festival will take place at the Newcastle Parade Grounds, St Andrew on Saturday, March 2.
A close-up view of the attractively designed one-serving sachet of Betta Cup coffee.
A close-up view of the attractively designed one-serving sachet of Betta Cup coffee.
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Agriculture Minister Floyd Green last week used the launch of the seventh annual Jamaica Blue Mountain Festival, to be held in Newcastle, St Andrew in March, to make an urgent appeal for a comprehensive rehabilitation of the access roads leading to coffee farms in the Blue Mountains.

Narrow, winding and precarious for the most part, these roads have been in a state of disrepair for years and Green used the event in the Edward Seaga Suite at Devon House, St Andrew on Tuesday to urge Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett and Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce Senator Aubyn Hill, to join his cause, given the deplorable conditions of these roads.

“I am very happy that we have the minister of industry and the minister of tourism here because it will take a holistic lobby effort for us to get a comprehensive programme to treat with the road network in the Blue Mountain Coffee area. This has to be outside of the regular farm road programme allocation and I think we all have to come together and sit down and craft a specific programme because we know the terrain of the area. It is the terrain of the area which makes the coffee so good, but if we are unable to get to our farms, then we will not be able to get to the most precious coffee in the world,” Green declared.

The agriculture minister also announced the launch of a programme set to start in the 2024-2025 financial year, the Crop Restoration and Establishment Programme (CREP) which over three to five years will focus on rebuilding the coffee industry. He went on to explain that in 2023 Jamaica produced 288,196 boxes of coffee, a little more than one million kilogrammes, which represents a 16.4-per-cent increased over the previous year, but this was not good enough.

“We know we are definitely not back at the place where we want to be and the production numbers that we want to see,” Green admitted, explaining that the objective was to move production to at least 450,000 boxes in the first place.

Meanwhile, Hill cited the need for more Jamaicans to invest in this very lucrative industry.

“There is money to be made, so I am encouraging Jamaican investors to make sure to invest in coffee. I know what I am saying. Yes, I want foreign investors, but, too often we say foreign direct investors and we have Jamaican money here. Put Jamaican money in this,” he insisted.

Each year, January 9 is observed as Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Day.