Working with Rural Women in Jamaica

I have now been here for more than 10 days and my assignment is coming to a close as I head towards Montego Bay to spend a week with friends. Oh! what a stay! I will try to add pictures to this blog to help you visualize my travels.

First I had a 15 hour flight schedule to get through. Leaving at 6:30 am from the little airport near me on to Boston then Miami then Kingston, Jamaica. I spent a few days in Kingston getting an orientation of sorts from Mildred, the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers' president who has been my counterpart for the duration of my stay. Mildred is a vivacious local women who doesn't let any grass grow under her feet as she tries to attend to the need of her 300 members all over the country.
She started me out easy with a 2-day orientation in Kingston and meetings with founders and supporters of the JNRWP, who explain the plight of the Rural Women. They lack support, discretionary funds, access to credit, self esteem, health care, Included in my orientation is a visit to the Jamaica Agricultural Society’s (RADA) products store. The store is an outlet for small producers making value-added ag products. It was easy to see that a lot of help will be needed here with their labeling practices. There are great products; Mango or Guava Syrup for pancakes, coconut candies, nuts, jams, jellies like Sorrel jelly, and more... Many have not been able to resist putting the name of their company in big bold letters while the other information such as the product or the package content disappears into the background. “Just what is in there?” I ask, and the clerk is happy to tell me but she doesn’t get that a stranger to these products, will have trouble immediately identifying what the product is. “It’s Ground Cinnamon, can’t you see it’s written on the label.” “No I don’t but I see--- there is blue lettering here just about the same color as the blue background.”

The rest of my week is taken up with visits into what my host, Mildred C. calls the “Deep Rural” to the Top Mountain Juice Factory near Kitson Town and to Ebony Park Agricultural Academy. The Top Mountain Juice Ltd is producing “suck-suck” which are little individual juice plastic packets that are frozen and sold to school children. They are made into various flavors: orange, cherry, papaya juice etc… and sold to street vendors and retail establishments near schools. This is a community based project that has had the good luck to catch the Embassy of Japan’s attention. They have been given more than $88,000 USD by Japan to build a state-of-the-art juice-making plant which includes a new building complete with equipment. The group has been operating for 4 months and they can sell all they can produce keeping the 6 women and two men busy and employed, although they do not make enough yet to pay themselves. They plan to graduate soon from making the juice from flavoring to using the Top Mountain community’s local fruits to make better juices and in larger containers. A discussion with the employees about marketing and business management reveals that none are comfortable with the non-production side of their business. They have a space for the business office that includes an empty desk but haven’t set up their books, files or inventory management and do not know how to even begin setting up the business side of the production plant. They also need to develop a Business Plan for the new company. They would like to have a business manager but can’t afford one. I promise to contact the US Peace Corp office in Kingston and see about getting them someone assigned to them, for Business Development, from the new crop of Peace Corp volunteers that have just arrived for their two-year assignment in Jamaica.

This assignment is followed by another with the Ebony Park Agricultural Training Centre in Clarendon. This is a vocational school for High School age students learning hospitality trades, agriculture and food processing. I was invited to give a lecture on Marketing, Packaging and Labelling to the Agro-Processing students as well as a dozen local food producers. The Training Centre has a brand new Agro Processing Lab where they research, develop, and package new value-added products from Jamaican fruits and vegetables. The food producers and myself, were treated to a tour of the facility. Here, the students and faculty produce juices, jams, jelly, new types of spices, condiments, syrups. We got to taste a newly developed Pumpkin Syrup which is spectacular. I was asked to evaluate their labels and packaging by Mr Shaw, the Training Centre Director. Currently they sell only to an “internal market”-- mostly faculty, students, friends of the school, but hope to expand their market more broadly. The labels are picturesque and elaborate---perhaps too elaborate--and Ebony Park will want to redesign, simplify and integrate these under one recognizable label, if they wish to brand their products under the “Ebony Park Pride” label and reach out to outside markets. I was introduced to the processing of ground pepper from the waste of processed peppers. Below is the waste after drying then the grinding and packaging. The

two Agro-Processing professors, Lynch and Williams, are very advanced in their field, helping lead students towards employment by the Jamaica food manufacturing sector. Lynch is the former Director of the Jamaica Scientific Research Council, an organization that support the growth and development of the agro-industrial sector in Jamaica, and worked as a food scientist in the US for many years in work associated with Cornell University. It is my hope that students from US Universities will want to come here as volunteers, grad assistants or exchange students, where all will share mutually in their development.

Another memorable rural development experience has been my 3-day stay amongst the Mango Valley women. Mango Valley is in the Parrish of St Mary in a very pretty small village called Oracabessa, nestled in the mountains near the sea. During my time in Mango Valley, I conducted workshops for their community-based Training Center (another vocational school) -- for training in hospitality, home economics, entrepreneurship, and spent another day with a group of women ag producers that will produce food in the School’s agro-processing Center (currently under construction.)

The women are making value-added products such as banana flour, breadfruit flour, grounded kola nut, apple sauce, jerk seasoning, guava cheese, various jams, jellies, etc… A review of their labels showed consistency and simplicity in appearance with a good brand name “Mango Valley Pride” as well as good identification of the product. Only minor adjustments were needed in identifying ingredients and nutrition facts. The women received a rush order for Guava Cheese while I was there and they treated me to a demonstration of the making of their cheese. The cheese is sweet and guava is boiled and cooked to the consistency of our American fudge

products and it is spread and cut in squares much like fudge. Unfortunately, it was never finished while I was there and never got to taste it. Perhaps I will before I leave
here. Most endearing in my stay with the Mango Valley women was experiencing their boisterous devil-may-care attitude about life and the happy way most of them approach life. They love to laugh and dance and make merry.

Next, I will write about some of the farms and places where I am spend some of my leisure time while in Jamaica.