JAMAICA Producers Group, makers of the popular St Mary’s banana chips brand of the natural snacks, says it is no sell-out for sourcing some of its chips from Caribbean neighbour the Dominican Republic.

The company, reeling from public speculation early last week that it may be the entity fingered by the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) as having ignored local banana producers in favour of importing banana chips rushed to defend its actions, issuing a press release admitting that, yes, it did supplement its St Mary’s banana chips brand using chips grown and processed in the Dominican Republic.

But, the company argued, with good reason.

CEO of the Jamaica Producers Group Jefferey Hall told the Sunday Observer that bananas, which are seasonal, and very vulnerable to bad weather, were in short supply in the first few months of the new year. The decision to ‘outsource’ the chips was the result of high demand for the company’s product and a need to find an alternative, reliable source of the quality and quantity of banana chips it needed.

In fact, the Sunday Observer has discovered that Jamaica Producers actually part-owns the factory in that Caribbean country from which, in the course of a year, it sourced 25 per cent of the banana chips it used when local supplies proved inadequate. Board Chairman Charles Johnston was candid in his explanation that this was just good business.

“We had four hurricanes in five years and each time it not only affected our banana exports, but it affected our snacks, our banana chips business, because we were out of bananas totally. We had a brand that was good part of the year and then bad part of the year. So what we decided to do was to hedge and put a factory in the Dominican Republic,” he explained.

He echoed what Hall had told the Sunday Observer, that when there is no shortage of local bananas, not one chip is imported from the JP plant in the Dominican Republic. However, he said that if there is a hurricane tomorrow, JP would still have St Mary banana chips to take to the market.

“If we didn’t have that then the Ecuadorian and Costa Rican banana chips would come in and eat the market… so we have to protect ourselves, and in doing that we protect our local growers as well,” said the JP Chairman

However, the JAS doesn’t see eye to eye with JP officials. Last week, JAS president Glendon Harris told a press briefing that “…banana chips imported into the island are flooding the market, while 35,000 farmers who normally cultivate bananas are struggling to find the market for their produce.”

Friday, he told the Sunday Observer that he accepts that the nine months — which is how long it takes for bananas to mature — after Hurricane Dean wiped out the local banana belts the company had to find alternative sources of the product. But, to continue importing beyond that period spells death to small farmers.

“Beyond that it is suicidal. It is suicidal because it means that there is no hope for the small farmers that rely on banana production to get back on their feet. That is why the Rio Grande Valley, the St Mary banana belt, the St James banana belt and the Clarendon banana belt and the St Catherine banana belt cannot resurface,” Harris said.

He argued that the current state of affairs is throwing farmers in all those areas into ruin as if, he says, the end of the quota system for Jamaican banana exports to Europe had not been enough of a death sentence.

Harris said the ‘post-quota’ planning was unfavourable to especially the Western belt banana farmers, who he claims, were discouraged from remaining in banana production. When the European Union-funded banana farmer assistance programme was implemented, it did little to help their situation, he opined.

“It was skewed in such a way that the real banana farmers were not really enabled by it. I recall that they got a couple bags of fertilisers and banana coils (shoots). But it was skewed in such a way to directly get the small banana farmer out of production,” Harris insisted.

He suggested that the wealthier JP benefitted from this reduction in local small farm banana production to the extent where JP’s “high tech” or more marketable variety of bananas are now everywhere, even in the domestic ripe banana market.

‘”Every corner you go now, is the JP ripe banana you see. So, the small farmer that doesn’t do the right thing in the high-tech form, which is (seen as) more healthy, is being squeezed out of the ripe banana market as well, and is being squeezed out to the level where you don’t have the volume of banana,” said Harris.

But Friday, Hall and Johnston both asserted that the Group — which, through its subsidiary JP Tropical Foods is the largest manufacturer of banana chips in Jamaica — has a deep and abiding interest in supporting the local banana sector, especially the small farmer.

“We stand ready right now to buy bananas from any banana grower, who makes it available to us,” Hall told the Sunday Observer.

“If they want to sell to us, come and talk to us, and we will buy their bananas,” said Johnston. However, he suggested that given the cold snap and the current shortage of bananas for regular food consumption, local farmers’ banana prices may be too high for the company.

“Everybody is selling it at the best prices they can get, so the local market, the ripe (banana) market, the green (banana) market, they are not gonna sell it to us at the low prices we need it at for chips,” Johnston explained. “Snacks and chips is the lowest price you can get for the banana. So if you have a nice looking banana, you’re going to sell it to the supermarket or the housewife,” he added.

In response to a question from the Sunday Observer about whether there was any merit to the complaint by the JAS that the small farmers have been practically squeezed out of the market by the ‘big dogs’ (farmers) Johnston said: “We help a lot of small farmers in St Mary.

“We have a project called Project Care with the St Mary Foundation, and we help a lot of farmers growing sweet potatoes, cassava, and all of these things that are going through our factory, so you should come and talk to the Project Care people about big farmers helping small farmers.

“This Project Care is part of the resuscitation effort. It’s funded partly by the European Union and funded partly by us, and it is to help small farmers come out of bananas and go into other crops such as cassava, such as sweet potatoes, such as yams. And we provide a market for those products through our plants. So, we provide a market for those small farmers. We may not be doing it the way JAS wants us to do it, but we are helping small farmers,” he said.

Johnston argued that the JAS should get their farmers to grow more.

“They should grow their products and what the JAS should do is buy some shares in Jamaica Producers,” Johnston quipped.

JP says it is now in the process of planting another 200 acres of bananas to complement the 600 acres already in production, to ensure that come next year’s cold season, it does not find itself again having to supplement its local supply.