By David McFadden
March 2, 2012
BRANDON HILL, Jamaica
(AP) — 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 2,000 to 5,000 feet (610 to 1,525 meters) 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 $40 a pound in the United States, 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 $34 for a 100-gram (3.5-ounce) package.
But 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
of coffee almost doubled, jumping from $3,400 to $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 $50.57 for every
60-pound (27-kilogram) box of Blue Mountain coffee cherries they produced
during the 2006-2007 season. Last year, they got $28.91.
Over the same period,
the price of coffee elsewhere roughly doubled, according to the World Coffee
Organization, as consumer demand has risen for mostly inexpensive commodity
beans.
McLaren said the problem
has gotten 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, looking over his mountainside farm from a ledge.
"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 nearly 90 percent of Jamaica's crop and
helped the island develop its brand. Now Japanese importers buy around 60
percent at depreciated prices and have stopped advance payments for green
coffee, shifting the costs to Jamaican exporters.
Toyohide Nishino,
executive director of the All Japan Coffee Association, 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.
"Consumers really
have to watch their budgets, and Blue Mountain coffee is an expensive
brand," Nishino said. "So instead of Blue Mountain, coffee from
Colombia and Brazil is more popular these days."
This year, Jamaica is
projected to produce just 140,000 60-pound (27-kilogram) 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 due
to 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. The government, meanwhile, is distributing small aid
payments to help with fertilizer purchases.
Gusland McCook, advisory
officer with Jamaica's Coffee Industry Board, said the island has to get the
borer population down or else its "going to be catastrophic." And the
fall in prices for Blue Mountain beans makes that tougher.
"A true, faithful
coffee farmer can deal with the borer, (and) with more storms. But if the big
man makes it so he can't make a living, well, that's another story," said
Danavan Edwards, a 29-year-old farmer with a plot near McLaren's land.
Derrick Simon, president
of the All Island Jamaica Coffee Growers' Association, argues that the industry
is in trouble largely because it foolishly relied on Japan almost exclusively
for years and failed to diversify its markets.
McCook agrees that
Jamaica needs to push into new markets. "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."
Jamaica has been trying to
expand the market for Blue Mountain coffee in Europe and the U.S., where
adventurous 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 $35.75 for each box they produce.
Not all Jamaican growers
face the same hardships. Farmers with a do-it-yourself approach at higher,
cooler elevations find they don't need to spray often for the damaging beetle,
which is far more common at lower altitudes.
David Twyman of the Old
Tavern Coffee Estate brand cultivates and roasts coffee at his family's
150-acre property and relies largely on mail order customers in the U.S.,
Canada and Taiwan who come back year after year.
"We've found that
once we get people to try our coffee, they will be back," Twyman said at
his lush farm perched high in the mountains perch where he gives tours and
steaming cups of black coffee to tourists and other visitors. "Our
customers want a more personal connection."
---
Associated Press writer
Eric Talmadge in Tokyo contributed to this report.
On the Net:
·
Coffee Industry Board: http://www.ciboj.org/cib
·
Old Tavern Coffee Estate: http://www.exportjamaica.org/oldtavern/ourcoffee.htm