Call for more certified coffee testers
THE Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority (JACRA) is encouraging more persons to take advantage of instruction offered through its Coffee Training Institute to become certified to evaluate coffee quality.
The institute, which certifies regulatory cup testers, was established in 2019.
During a recent interview with JIS News, JACRA’S Director General Peter Thompson said that three staff members, who were trained at the institute, are now classified as Q Grader trainers, which is the highest level of training one can receive in coffee testing and assessment.
“We hope that within the next year or two we will have some more persons becoming trained so that they can train others in the industry to ensure that the quality of the Jamaican coffee brands is maintained,” he said. Two such brands are the Jamaica High Mountain and the Jamaica Blue Mountain, which are owned by JACRA.
Thompson told JIS News that “every ounce of coffee that leaves our shores must go through a rigorous testing exercise”. The JACRA does a random cup testing of all the coffee it receives before they can be distributed or exported.
Thompson said that since the establishment of the institute there has been significant improvements in the quality of the country’s coffee products.
“Quality begins at the farm, so from land preparation all the way up to consumption you have quality control along the value chain. We do capacity-building with our farmers to ensure that they comply with the standards that would have been established, and we have seen improvements,” he said.
He added that, in the future, the hope is that “our quality will be tied to pricing, so the higher the quality the better the price that you will get”.