LOCAL coffee farmers, led by Donald Salmon, who is president of the Jamaica Coffee Growers Association, are asking for a direct meeting with the Government over issues affecting the sector.

Salmon said the challenges are leading to a haemorrhaging of small farmers, a development which is likely to affect the prized Blue Mountain coffee brand and also high mountain coffee production.

The farmers outlined through Salmon that they dislike their treatment by the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority (JACRA) and want new lease agreements for over 1,000 farmers on Wallenford lands. The absence of leases reduces access to capital.

Salmon asked rhetorically, “How can you farm if you have no tenure [relating to farmlands used]? It takes three to five years to get into production. How can you invest without being sure of the future?” He blames the institutionalised bias of JACRA for many of the sector’s problems as well, noting that there is bias in favour of large operators.

Reliable sources, meanwhile, indicate that Michael Lee Chin, owner of Wallenford through Portland Holdings is considering reselling farming acreage under lease on the 5,000-acre property back to the Government of Jamaica.

The farming sector, Salmon said, now has 5,000 coffee farmers down from 15,000. “We have lost 10,000 farmers since [the year] 2000,” he stated.

Salmon told the Jamaica Observer that coming out of workshops held between June 13 and 15, with 35 leaders present, the coffee farmers are asking to meet with Government representatives to discuss how small farmers “can increase production and move up the value chain”.

Salmon outlined: “The JACRA issue concerns how they relate to small farmers, in terms of getting information to us in a timely way and the licensing regime. A farmer can be locked up for selling his own coffee because he does not have a licence. These are colonial laws. You need a licence if coffee must be sold. A farmer who takes his coffee to the Coronation Market to sell can be locked up.”

“You need a licence to roast coffee. You need a licence to sell it abroad. You have to produce 6,000 boxes before you can get an export licence. An export licence costs US$2,000 per year.” All of this, he said, places small producers at a disadvantage.

Sub-licensing

The Jamaica Coffee Growers Association has been asking for sublicensing to be permitted. Salmon explained, “If there is someone abroad who wants to start up or even [someone] locally, we would like to sub-licence farmers so they can sell their own brands to them. We have been in discussion about this for two years. We have written and we have done everything. We have shown how we could make sales abroad, but there has been no acceptance by JACRA, which is saying that sub-licensees must have a shareholding in the company from which they want a sub-licence. Salmon commented, “The licensing regime is to protect the coffee, but some things need changing.”

The Jamaica Observer reached out to JACRA for comment but failed to receive any.

Wallenford lease

In 1999 the Government divested coffee lands to farmers under direct contracts lasting over 49 years. The Government was the lessor. Payment was to be made in coffee. The maximum being five boxes per acre per year. It was an equivalent of $17,500 per acre per year.

Salmon said, “We protested and it came down to between $1,500 and $2,000 per acre.”

However, another major challenge for farmers islandwide who grew coffee on government-owned lands occurred when in 2013 the Government divested Wallenford to Portland Holdings, led by investor Michael Lee Chin. The divestment included about 5,000 acres of land plus factories and buildings in every parish.

As a result, Salmon outlined, “We became sharecroppers. We were told that we had to sell the coffee to Portland/Wallenford and if not we would be removed off the land. We had to sell at the price they determined, even if a better price was available from another buyer.

Farmers demonstrated and negotiated and Mark McIntosh, head of Wallenford, offered to pay the highest price per box for coffee. However, Wallenford also installed gates and security that prevented sale of coffee outside.

Salmon recalls, “Many of us lost millions of dollars because of this.”

CEO of Wallenford Mark McIntosh told the Business Observer that he would not comment on any issue raised.

Salmon said that when Wallenford could not sustain that price and the demand for local coffee fell, the farmers are now allowed to sell anywhere, as long as they make the lease payment which is now in the region of $2,000 per acre per year.

After the divestment, Wallenford’s operations were consolidated into Mavis Bank after Portland Holdings also acquired that company. What was left on Wallenford was the leased land with farmers on it.

Today, around 1,200 farmers are still working on Wallenford lands. In one stand-off between farmers and the company, some farmers were taken to court to be removed. Jamaica Coffee Growers Association won the case. Salmon commented, “Wallenford realised it had no standing in telling farmers to move. Wallenford has not been farming much of its own farmlands so they have no standing in forcing farmers when and how to farm.”

The current challenge, Salmon said, is that farmers on Wallenford have no security of tenure. He outlined, “We want a new lease from the Government. We need a real negotiated lease directly from the Government. Many farmers are not paying any lease to Portland Holdings. For whatever reasons, farmers are not paying any lease.

Salmon said that Mark Mcintosh, CEO of Wallenford, offered an amnesty of 50 per cent on lease payments owed if farmers paid some of the money. But, he said, farmers are still insisting on getting “the Government to change the status of the lease so that we pay directly to the Government instead of Wallenford. The Wallenford lease is illegal. We had the Government lease before. Our lawyers have told us not to sign the Wallenford lease as presented.”

Proposal

Reliable sources told the Business Observer, “Wallenford went to great lengths to formalise leases for the farmers. The vast majority of the farmers signed the leases because it gave 15 to 25 years tenure. This was basically free rent at $2,000 per acre per year. Yet fewer than 5 per cent of the farmers pay the rent. They also don’t like that the lease requires that they sell their coffee to the landlord but they don’t follow that term either.”

The source said that to avoid threats and security issues and protests, the owner cannot enforce terms in any way. The owner has proposed many times, starting as far back as 2017, that Government reacquire the land and distribute equitably to farmers, but no response has come from the Government.

The source clarified, “ The lease farms are proposed for sale back to Government. The Government sold the lease farms to the buyer of Wallenford. Now the buyer of Wallenford thinks Government should have considered giving the farms to the farmers since they don’t want to pay for it. So the buyer of Wallenford would be OK with returning the lease farms to the Government and that portion of the purchase price returned to them. Portland Holdings paid property value for lease farms, including fully owned and those leased for 49 years. Then the Government could consider giving the farms to the farmers who are using them — just the farms occupied by lease farmers.

The source said Wallenford has raised the issue multiple times and finally a formal proposal was made to Government in 2019. However, there has been no response yet.

Value chain

Salmon told the Business Observer, “Farmers are demanding sustainability through price or movement up the value chain; the Government must meet farmers and hear their side of the story first-hand.” He added, “High mountain coffee must be put back on the agenda; the Wallenford land issue must lead to a comprehensive land reform for coffee farmers; JACRA must change and be more coffee-farmer friendly; and the issue of extension services and the need for capital must be addressed.”

Other matters to be addressed, he said, include infrastructure in farming communities, such as roads, clinics, schools, and rural-urban migration which is leading to labour challenges.

The grower’s association is pursuing a case study to review why several farmers’ cooperatives have failed. They are also looking at new business models which would be more effective in helping farmers as a group to move up the value chain.

Salmon said, “In our retreat we looked at the cooperative and other business models. The cooperative as structured is not the best . We are mobilising farmers to move up the value chain, but we are working on a model that farmers can benefit from. Cooperatives over the years have failed. We are doing a case study on what went wrong. We don’t want to go down that road anymore because farmers and their families suffer.