John Mahfood is the CEO of Jamaican Teas, a company which produces herbal tea bags, among other products, for both local and export consumption.

Popular among Jamaican Teas products are its ginger-based tea bags, for which the company imports US$1.5 million worth of the root/spice each year, primarily from Nigeria and China.

Mahfood is one of several food manufacturers who has found it easier to import ginger for better pricing and ease of use.

“We have to use dry and ground ginger for our needs and this is what we import. When we buy ginger locally, we buy it green and dry it and grind it. There is very little ginger available locally and what is available is very expensive because it is not grown in commercial quantities,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“Currently, we pay about US$3.60 landed per pound for the dried and ground product, which is imported. This is the equivalent of paying US$0.30 per pound for the green product ($45.00 per pound). [ In reality] Jamaican Teas currently pays $120.00 per pound for the green product locally, when we can get it. This price is way too high and it would make us uncompetitive,” Mahfood added.

In a nation in which ginger is used widely — for teas and as a spice for food — the level of importation of a crop which was once widely grown is shocking. Jamaican Teas alone imports 1.5 million kilogrammes of ginger each year.

Another Jamaican company, Salada Foods Limited, uses local ginger to manufacture its Jamaica Mountain Peak Ginger and Ginger Turmeric products.

CEO of Salada Foods Diane Blake-Bennet informed the Business Observer that her company has purchased approximately 150,000 lb of local ginger root in the last year from several local farmers with whom the company has had a relationship over the years. She, however, did not share the price the company paid for the raw material.

Over the last two years the company head said supplies have been steady but in prior years, local ginger has been affected by rhizome rot, which had impacted supply. Blake-Bennett notes that there has been government intervention with the provision of clean or unaffected ginger used in planting, which has been beneficial to the local crop.

According to data from Agro-Invest Corporation Limited, the projected marketable yield for a 0.4 hectare ginger farm is 6,075 kilogrammes. The cost of production amounts to $101 per kilogramme of ginger. That price is more than twice the cost of Mahfood’s ginger imports.

The cost of producing ginger in Jamaica is high, Byron Henry, general manager of the Export Division in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MOAF), which plays a role in crop distribution locally, admits. The division purchases ginger for manufacturers.

“[But] we haven’t been buying much ginger lately. We buy only on special order from a processor. The price point is too high for the segment of the market that we normally buy and supply to,” he told the Business Observer.

He explained further that the sector faced challenges including “high input cost, low productivity, manual labour, and poor-quality planting materials due to the disease rhizome”.

On the other hand, Henry noted, “Farmers have not been paying attention to recordkeeping and hence, price their produce based on gut feeling and perception. Farmers are not aware that they are competing in a global marketplace where agro processors have easy access to cheaper imports from countries with farmers getting subsidies, cheap financing, cheap labour, and better access to mechanisation.”

With the local ginger industry characterised by small farmers, the MOAF has in the past encouraged the doubling of the current average ginger farm size from 0.25 acre to 0.5 acre, and it has been pushing to engage about 6,000 farmers in open-field ginger cultivation. The ministry has also tried to support the sector with disease-free plant material.

Here in Jamaica the major ginger-growing area is 450–900 metres above sea level in the hilly central parishes of Manchester, Clarendon, St Ann, and Trelawny.

In 2020, 13 per cent more of the spice was harvested — some 869 tonnes from 268 hectares — than the year before. In 2019 production totalled 712 tonnes from 233 hectares. Still, the production is not enough to meet demand

Dr Alexander Powell, CEO of Agroinvest, explained that due to low field productivity affecting the consistent supply in the market, local manufacturers have resorted to importing the raw material (ginger).

“The quality of Jamaican peeled, dried ginger is considered among the best in the world and in the past fetched higher prices on the global market,” he commented.

“But the growing concerns now facing our farmers/investors are now adapting to new protocols in cultivating the crop in the 21st century.”

He stated that the way forward is the certification of ginger production in Jamaica, which is geared towards establishing a system of standardised protocols.

“The new protocols to be implemented, moving forward ,is an effort to address the production constraints being experienced due to the ‘rhizome rot’ disease,” the agricultural expert explained.

The system of production being introduced is the single bud technology in field production, which provides a means of multiplying the limited available clean planting material and its propagation under nursery conditions. Hence, this technology forms the basis for the ginger certification.

Gusland McCook, head of the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority notes that green ginger is not exported. Further, he says local production is way below local needs.

He noted, “Arising from a JACRA/FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] value-chain assessment, Jamaica is only producing approximately 19 per cent of the almost 17,000 metric tons of fresh ginger demand. This does not leave room for export as this is not adequate to meet local demands.”

“In spite of the strong recognition of Jamaica’s ginger for its culinary, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic attributes, the country has been unable to meet demands for fresh ginger. The primary hurdles to meeting this demand can be attributed to phytosanitary and socio-economic factors.”

The Ginger Rhizome Rot has been the principal phytosanitary challenge facing the industry. At the same time residual issues affecting the Caribbean agricultural sector, such as low productivity, high cost of production, low adoption of technology, fragmented small farmer base, rudimentary market access, low value addition, inconsistency, and poor-quality supply have been some of the socio-economic challenges, McCook outlined.

He notes that the technology is available for improved crops: a JACRA/FAO model which arose from a ginger value chain assessment. Since 2018, he indicated, the MOAF has been promoting single-bud nursery technology for the provision of healthy planting material and lowering cost to farmers.

Agro-investmen Corporation says that should the island ever reach higher levels of production, the markets with greatest potential for Jamaica’s exports of ginger are Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Germany. Among them, The Netherlands has the highest demand potential for ginger.

The total untapped export potential of ginger stands at US$665.8 million.

The Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), meanwhile, asserts in its literature that the quality of Jamaican peeled, dried ginger has “remained the best in the world, commanding the highest prices”.

Jamaican ginger, it outlines, is positioned in niche markets, and is estimated to have global demand of about 21,000 tonnes of fresh or 4,200 tonnes of dried ginger.

Peter McConnell, managing director of Trade Winds Citrus winds, a producer of some of the ingredients for juice manufacture, said it is easier, at this time, to simply buy the ginger the company requires. Ginger is widely used in juices as it is loved by Jamaiccans.

“We use ginger in a lot of our juice products, in keeping with the Jamaican palate,” he shared.

Trade Winds Citrus, which McConnel heads, has partnered with Wisynco Group Limited for the distribution of brands including Tru-Juice, Freshhh Juice Drinks, Squeezz Fruit Drinks, Wakefield Juices, and Calico Jack Rum Punch. Tru-Juice is the flagship brand of Trade winds Citrus.

McConnell explained, “We don’t purchase ginger root. We purchase all our ginger extract from local suppliers that do the processing and give us in an easy-to-use format.

“We do process ginger from time to time for Salada, but they supply the ginger and we simply process. The product has great potential but we have too many other projects working on now to focus on ginger. At this point we prefer to purchase our needs.”