He is quiet and unassuming, but make no mistake, agro-processor Vaughn Orr knows his trade. He can also surprise you with his knowledge of Thai cuisine, or talk you through making a food dehydrator from scratch.

Orr, who is from Little London in Westmoreland, was one of several exhibitors in the Westmoreland Parish pavilion at the 65th staging of the Denbigh Agricultural, Industrial and Food Show earlier this month.

The parish pavilions, under the guidance of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), are usually filled with crops and a variety of exhibits from the parish. In the case of Westmoreland, there were a lot of packaged products, such as banana flour and yellow yam punch, many of which Orr said he made just for the show.

But this may have been a hidden fact for many visitors, who probably overlooked the quiet Rastafarian seated in a corner of the pavilion with his own line, ‘Lemongrass Solutions’, on display.

However, his range of products far surpass lemongrass, as he has powdered spices and seasonings as well as flour and ‘food’ drink punches made from sweet potato, breadfruit and plantain, among other crops.

But as Orr would tell you, the inspiration for agro-processing did indeed come from lemongrass, however not quite the way he had expected.

“The Scientific Research Council tell everyone to plant fever grass and we plant fever grass and nah get no sale. Nobody nuh know weh fi do… so mi continue and mi start do mi ting, but realise mi cyaan reach nowhere, so mi seh ‘alright, mi a go do something with this’,” Orr told the Jamaica Observer.

He explained that he went online where his research efforts eventually led him to find that Thai restaurants used lemongrass extensively as a spice for cooking. That resulted in him deciding to to make his own spices for local consumption.

Having garnered the knowledge about the lemongrass spice-making process, Orr then set about gathering the tools for his venture.

“Then mi say, ‘mi haffi go get one grinder now’… so I sell a pick-up weh mi have and buy the grinder and start grind, and den mi realise now say mi can do other things, and mi say mi a go do mango and all dem other things to,” Orr stated.

He soon started to notice that the drying process was not taking place quickly enough and so, with the money he had left over from selling the vehicle, he bought a small food dehydrator.

“It dry di things dem, but it nuh dry so good cause it nuh go more than 160 degrees, so some things can’t dry properly, dem tek all two day to dry. So mi know say we want a big one. I start search fi it on the Internet but mi can’t buy dem cause dem over $250,000 and when you get them here, fi clear it about half a million dollars,” Orr said.

With the ready-made option too expensive, Orr, driven by his desire to continue agro-processing, decided that he would find a way to do it himself.

“So mi get one a di man who tek tings from hotel fi dash (throw) weh, get one old food warmer from him and mi go buy a old washer and dryer machine and tek out the element out of it and adjust it to how mi want it. When it start dry, mi can get up to 300 degree out of it,” the Westmoreland resident said.

But Orr later made a modification to his model by adding a fan after noticing that his raw produce would bake rather than dry, due to the lack of a fan to provide the air needed for drying.

Although he started the processing and packaging of spices and flour around five years ago, Orr explained that the dried mango, which is packaged as a snack, only started being processed this year, although plans were in place to do it as early as the spices.

He told the Observer that he has plans to make a bigger food dehydrator and wants to try his hand at making a grinder, even though he admitted that it seems a much more difficult experiment than the food dehydrator.

“But mi can’t do it on a big scale as di grinder mi have, yu haffi crush up di tings to put in it because it nuh big enough to hold everything whole. But with a bigger grinder, yu just throw it in deh and grind it, yu nuh haffi bruk it up. With dis grinder it tek too long, man, anybody mek an order soon stop,” Orr said.

His hope for external funding was crushed after approaching a bank and being denied a loan.

“Somebody give me a contract fi turmeric and the bank say them can’t give me it (loan) because people can change them mind tomorrow, so them want to see how much money you a mek fi give dem some of dat, so if yu nah mek a certain amount of money yu can’t get the loan,” he lamented.

But while external funding remains a roadblock for the agro-processor, he is still optimistic about his business and his work, especially the products he made for the show.

Fortunately for Orr, his own exhibit cost him nothing as RADA took care of everything and he got an opportunity to showcase his products and make new connections.

“So far, JBDC (Jamaica Business Development Corporation) a go start buy from mi. And a di quality mek dem a buy, because dem see whole heap a other people a do it, but them say a quality mi have, and ever since mi have dat quality, it don’t change,” Orr said.