The Editor, Sir:

Quite a few stakeholders in coffee have told me that this agricultural sub-sector is ready to avalanche into ruin. Jamaica National Building Society small business section is supposed to be developing a product which will better cater to the financial needs of coffee farmers. The farmers who face onerous credit terms want to revert to a crop lien as the preferred security for loans.

All the commercial marketing players depend on the farmer to get their stocks, yet there is a strained relationship between both groups while the farmer by himself faces bad weather. They can get little or no insurance despite paying the cess/premium and absorb high fertilizer and general input costs, and generally high inflation.

Impact of wider coffee promotion

However, far worse, is the wider impact of myopic promotion of Jamaican coffee to the international market which still sees us giving away 90 per cent of the farmers raw material (green beans) to Japan, and then closing the market ourselves with a dead bolt to other potential.

The tragedy of all tragedies though, is that despite education, the Jamaican coffee farmer still largely believes that it is the run-away inflation on farm inputs that will earn him a better price this year. There is nothing further from the truth. The fact is that the only benchmark for improved price this year is unsurpassed quality and value-added changes.

This is why we at the Coffee Growers Association were frightened by correspondence from the Coffee Industry Board intimating that it does not have the quality control data for this season's crop. As the guardian of coffee quality in Jamaica, the Coffee Board must explain whether this is a grave dereliction of duty on their part or not.

I am, etc.,

DERRICK SIMON

President,

Coffee Growers Association