Drought and fire impact Jamaican coffee industry

The immediate future for Jamaica’s coffee industry does not look promising. A sustained period of drought, coupled with a bush fire that tore through 50 acres of coffee plantations recently, has seen Senator Norman Grant, the President of Jamaica’s Agricultural Society, state that production will be low and export targets are likely to be missed.

The news was delivered on the eve of Denbigh’s annual agricultural show, which began earlier this week.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a result of the drought, we lose maybe 10 to 15 % of what we were expecting,” said Grant to a glum audience. The value of the crop lost has been estimated to be in the region of $2.5m, or J$281.

Grant, who is also the managing director of the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory, also noted that the estimated harvest was scheduled to come in at around 180,000-200,000 boxes for this growing season, a figure that now will not be achieved.

This season’s yields could even be lower than the 160,000 boxes produced in the previous year, and with the demand for Jamaican coffee steadily rising, any lost boxes equate to lost revenue.

“In general, the drought situation has affected the coffee sector. We are assessing the full effect on the total production for the 2013-14 crop. We were expecting a better crop based in the bearing that we saw on the trees…but the drought has dampened the level of growth.”

And that was without taking into account the fire, which burn crops of a number of well-known Jamaican coffee entities, including coffee set for the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory.

To make matters worse, it is believed that this combination of drought and fire will also set the island’s industry back in its attempt to recover from the impact of coffee rust and an infestation of the berry borer.

Rain is forecast in the coming days, but if a sustained period of precipitation does not occur in the near future, then the barren weather could well have a further impact on the quality of the current crop, as John Minott explains:

“It wouldn’t be so much the yield but the quality,” begins Minott, the general manager of Jamaica Standard Products.

“We would end up with smaller beans and small beans in the coffee industry is not necessarily good…So the more small beans you have just reduced your exportable outturn.

Hopefully, things take a positive turn.

photo: Travis Modisette (Flickr – Creative Commons)