Continental Baking (National) has listed 11 companies who will be showcased in their sponsored programme ‘Bold Ones’ to recognize outstanding new Jamaican manufacturers. Sunday Finance will feature a different company for each of the next several weeks.

AGRICULTURE is a demanding mistress. She can take all one’s energy, dedication and ingenuity and still, for all that effort, may choose to withhold her finest. Or it may be that through trial and error and apparent disappointments, one is led to the discovery of even greater riches.

Prof Harvey Reid certainly experienced the first part of the analogy. Even as he pursued his academic career (at The University of the West Indies), the self-confessed “born farmer” also grew yam and sweet potatoes for export from a property in south Manchester. But he was stymied by drought and other vagaries of weather. Undaunted, he ventured into agro-processing, making sweet potato chips. But here again, nature rebuffed him and inconsistent supplies added to his problems.

It was enough to turn off the most persistent suitor, but instead of being frustrated and giving up Prof Reid was led on a detour that has since become his mainstay: lemongrass. “As a child, I was given lemongrass, or fever grass as some call it, to tackle not only my asthma, but colds and flu,” he recalls. “So I began to get more interested in the plant and its therapeutic benefits.”

That interest led him to begin making lemongrass tea in individual packets, which he sold to health stores. He had good success, but realised that he needed to formalise and modernise his business. Fortunately, he had been planting out his property and by the time he approached the Scientific Research Council to develop a formulation, he had at least three acres planted in the hardy perennial, all organically grown without chemical pesticides or fungicides. This was enough to make him self-sufficient in raw material.

Reid then branched out into body care products and before long he was self-sufficient in the essential oil that forms the basis of many personal care products. He extended the Country House line to include body lotion, body wash, hand wash, hand sanitiser, shampoo, conditioner, and an innovative body spritz, which he says can be used as either a fragrance or in the traditional medicinal manner. Beautiful and aromatic candles are also made from 100 per cent essential oil of lemongrass. In addition to being anti-viral, antibacterial, antifungal and antiseptic, lemongrass is said to promote good digestion, and a preparation of lemongrass with pepper has been used for the relief of menstrual troubles and nausea. As an ingredient in citronella, it is well known as a mild insect repellent.

Still based in the south Manchester district of Warwick, Reid employs five persons on the farm. He is now seeking to delegate administrative tasks so as to free up his time for the critical activity of growing the business and expanding the product line even further as next on his list is a lemongrass drink.

Through links with Jamaica Trade and Invest and the Jamaica Business Development Corporation, he has established a retail presence locally for the lemon grass line and also had the privilege of attending the Natural Products Expo — billed as the World’s largest natural and organic products tradeshow, in Anaheim, California. “I was blown away,” he says. “It took me a couple of days just to walk the entire show floor before even getting into some of the more specific product lines and their suppliers.”

Reid’s investment, he has so far avoided borrowing, has been augmented by grant funding, including from the Bureau of Standards and the Government of Jamaica-European Union Private Sector Development Project (PSDP). He’s about to consult the Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) to assist him in establishing a humidity/temperature control system, which will allow him to dry as much as 500 kilos of the plant over an eight-hour period, a much greater throughput than he now enjoys.

Prof Reid also has his eye on developing export markets. In the US alone, nutrition industry sales totalled approximately US$110 billion in 2009, up $10 billion from 2008, according to the industry guide, Nutrition Business Journal. Reid says that there is a UK company interested in natural products for an Expo planned to coincide with the 2012 London Olympics. He is very keen on this as the Jamaican diaspora market in the UK is huge. Further afield, a sports editor in Austria is looking at the spritz as an after-game body splash.

To reach those wider markets, Prof Reid is working to heighten his visibility in the home market, to develop more buzz around the line, and to set up his website for online trading. Even though he’s eased up on the new product throttle temporarily, Prof Reid feels that prospects for his agri-business concern are more than encouraging. Nature, it seems, is ready to smile on him at last.