JAMAICA
Struggling small coffee farmers in Jamaica have new resources available thanks to a $60 million donation from philanthropist and businessman Michael Lee-Chin. The donation, announced on Sept. 10, will be managed by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA).
Disbursements will be available to more than 7,000 registered coffee farmers and will be based on need. Farmers will describe what they need in the way of tools and other supplies to improve productivity. RADA then will purchase the materials.
The donation also may help boost a slumping coffee industry.
“We used to produce 700,000 boxes of Blue Mountain coffee,” Audley Shaw, minister of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, said in announcing the Lee-Chin donation. “We are targeting 230,000 or 240,000 right now – that’s a pretty sharp decline.” He also said 20,000 boxes of High Mountain coffee are now being produced, where it previously yielded 400,000 boxes. Unlike standard 60-kilo bags, Jamaica ships its coffee in 27-kilo boxes and wooden kegs that once earned $44 to $55 per kilo ($10,000 per box).
“It is most unfortunate that while the demand for coffee consumption globally has either been steady or generally increasing, our coffee industry is going in the opposite direction. Something has to be done about it,” Shaw said.
Parliament member Juliet Holness said she approached Lee-Chin to discuss the plight of coffee farmers and ask for his help.
“This one-time gift to the farmers means that many are going to be comfortably able to send their children back to school this term, and many will be in a position to be able to access, through RADA, some amount of assistance,” Holness said.
Lee-Chin said he understands that the government cannot afford to provide financial help and that his gift is “a stop-gap solution to the plight faced by our farmers” in an industry that “is in crisis”.