ELEVEN years ago, Dr Bravo Brown transported his entire pepper harvest in his Honda Accord motor car. Now, his farm, BGB Farms Inc in Quincy, Florida, USA, produces more than 700,000 pounds of Scotch bonnet peppers annually, making him one of the largest producers of the pepper in the North American country.

What began as a modest half-acre plot yielding just 10,000 pounds of Scotch bonnet peppers has blossomed into a thriving 20-acre operation, with production lines now including habaneros, pumpkins, and crushed peppers.

“The journey since 2014 has been good. There has been a lot of ups and downs, but it’s been predominantly good…It has grown, in part, because the demand has increased, and I have been able to maintain good quality,” Dr Brown told the Jamaica Observer.

That focus on quality has been the cornerstone of BGB Farms’ success, with the flavourful hot peppers building trust and loyalty among his customers.

“There are other Scotch bonnet [peppers] out there, but I’ve maintained that quality over the years,” he stressed. “I haven’t lost any customers, I only gained customers.”

Currently, BGB Farms supplies primarily to retailers in South Florida, particularly in the Miami area. His distribution network also includes New York, Maryland, Georgia, and parts of Connecticut, with recent entry into Detroit.

“I sent my first 100 boxes of peppers to Detroit a few days ago, which is an achievement. Detroit is very far from here,” he said, visibly proud.

With his eyes on the global market, Dr Brown is now looking to expand BGB Farms’ reach beyond the US borders.

“The roadmap is to put BGB in more of the big supermarket chains, like Walmart, Publix, and also to export to Canada or Europe, and reach more of the Caribbean Diaspora all over the US,” the 54-year-old farmer told the
Sunday Observer, adding that one of his proudest achievements was shipping 200 pounds of crushed pepper to Australia in 2018.

Noting that BGB Farms is guided by a clear North Star to scale operations, Business Engagement Consultant Desrine Lawson noted its competitive advantages within the US.

“We have a robust and responsive distribution network, enabling faster delivery to customers across the US and competitive pricing due to the absence of imports and tariff costs,” she said.

“We can reap today, and within two days, if you’re on the east coast or the west coast, we can deliver fresh from BGB Farms,” Dr Brown added.

His agricultural roots stretch back to Trelawny, Jamaica, where he grew up in the farming community of Duanvale, working alongside his father — an avid sugar cane and cattle farmer. After deciding to pursue studies in agriculture at Brown’s Town Community College and getting an associate degree from College of Agriculture, Science and Education, he migrated to the US in 2001, hungry for higher education. He later earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in plant science, followed by a PhD in Environmental Science. The concept for his business was sown in graduate school.

“BGB stands for Bravo Gladstone Brown. I used to study with a group of students, and when I come in, the girls used to say, ‘What’s up BGB?’ So when I decided to form a company, it just clicked to me,” Dr Brown explained.

With a tag line of ‘Pure peppers, pure passion’, what sets BGB’s produce apart from others is simple — quality and love.

“Our quality starts from the picking…We have a grading truck that the people actually do their grading [sorting and classification of the peppers] on. So the quality control starts from the picking of the peppers, straight up,” he told the Sunday Observer.

His unique fertilisation method, which he refers to as his “birthright”, is a guarded trade secret. Despite refraining from referring to it as “smart technology”, Dr Brown said his secret is highly effective.

“I think the advantage that I have is in my fertilisation technique…And also it’s TLC, tender, loving care…If you want to do this you have to have love it, you have to have that passion…because it is demanding, it’s challenging,” he said.

“What propels us to where we are now is that love which I developed for it and also that quality, because, the thing is, we market our peppers to the Jamaican Diaspora and so on, and you know, as Jamaicans, we nuh easy fi please. If the pepper nuh good, them seh straight up, ‘Mr Brown, the pepper nuh taste right.’

“The quality that we have supersedes any other pepper on the market, and it’s not just talk. You can see whenever our peppers hit the market in Miami or New York, it basically shows up anything else, they become second best, so our trademark is just quality,” he added.

He explained that at BGB the approach is as much about science as it is about instinct. The plant scientist employs drip irrigation systems, mechanised pesticide and fungicide applications, and most importantly, crop staggering to ensure year-round availability and to optimise yield.

“I don’t plant all of my habanero or my Scotch bonnet at one time, and this is based on demand. So I plant about 60 per cent of the habanero earlier, and then I stagger it so that it will come in at a later time,” he said.

Dr Brown also outsources his seedlings to a trusted nursery, ensuring “good quality seeds” and reliability in every planting cycle.

Though Scotch bonnet peppers are his specialty, he explained that he expanded into habaneros due to the high demand from the Latino community.

“There’s a great demand, as a matter of fact, there’s even a higher demand for habaneros than Scotch bonnet peppers because of the huge Latino population that we have, like in Miami and all around…I’ve been growing it for probably five, six years now, and I continue to plant more and more each year,” the farmer said, pointing to about four acres currently in production.

BGB Farms owes much of its success to its dedicated team, some of whom hail from Jamaica. The farm’s long-time manager, Devon Patterson, has worked alongside Dr Brown for more than nine years.

“When I come here, mi never really into farming, but I just find myself stuck on it…I just like it, so I just stick to it so mi would prolong it,” Patterson told the Sunday Observer.

With 25 to 30 workers and a core management team, BGB Farms runs like a well-oiled machine, but Dr Brown is still hands-on.

Each morning starts with a critical task: Checking the refrigerated containers that store thousands of dollars’ worth of harvested produce.

“Whatever is on the tree is live — it’s being protected, it’s living — but what’s in the cooler is dead, so you have to protect it, make sure it has the right temperature and stuff like that. So that’s the first thing I do in the morning, I make sure I check that cooler.

“If the cooler goes bad, you may have US$60,000, US$70,000, US$80,000 [worth of produce] in there…That’s the last thing I do before I go, too, check them [the coolers], make sure they’re okay,” Dr Brown said.

Farming, for the Jamaican, is more than a profession. It is his “happy place”.

“And people who know Bravo know I refer to the farm as my happy place. I like being here. With all the elements there, it’s like my happy place. So to succeed, you have to have that love, you have to have that passion. As we said, it’s ‘pure pepper, pure passion’,” he said.

– See related story on Page 10

Dr Bravo Brown, the Jamaican who owns BGB Farms Inc in Quincy, Florida, examines his pumpkin field during a recent visit to the 20-acre property.

The view of a section of the Jamaican-owned BGB Farms Inc in Quincy, Florida.

Owner of BGB Farms Inc in Quincy, Florida, Jamaican Dr Bravo Brown (left) pauses for a moment with members of his team Devon Patterson (centre), farm manager; and farm worker Lenworth Weir, on his farm after talking to a Jamaica Observer team recently.