KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica’s iconic Blue Mountain coffee sector, long a cornerstone of the country’s agricultural export economy, is facing an unprecedented crisis following consecutive devastating weather events and soaring global production costs. In a public statement released this week, Dr. Norman Grant, president of the Jamaica Coffee Exporters Association (JCEA), has issued an urgent call for targeted investment in infrastructure and expanded mental health support for thousands of small-scale coffee farmers reeling from repeated catastrophic losses.
The industry’s current struggles stem from a perfect storm of overlapping shocks that have hit production over the past two years. First, Hurricane Beryl made landfall in July 2024, destroying significant swathes of growing land across the Blue Mountain region. Barely 16 months later, Hurricane Melissa struck in October 2025, delivering an even more severe blow to the already vulnerable 2025/2026 mature coffee crop. Compounding these climate-driven disasters are skyrocketing input and logistics costs, driven in large part by ongoing geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, which has sent global fuel and shipping prices surging to multi-year highs.
The scale of the damage is staggering. Grant confirmed that Hurricane Melissa alone wiped out nearly 40 percent of the current season’s mature harvest, eliminating approximately 100,000 boxes of coffee and causing an estimated JMD $1 billion in direct on-farm losses. Across the entire two-year crisis period, overall coffee production has plummeted dramatically: output fell from 288,000 boxes in the 2023/2024 crop year to a projected 150,000 boxes for the 2025/2026 season. This 48 percent production drop has translated to a total estimated loss of around JMD $1.5 billion for more than 5,000 independent coffee farmers across the island, with export earnings projected to fall by roughly US$15 million this year.
Beyond the tangible financial damage, Grant emphasizes that repeated crop failures have inflicted severe emotional and psychological strain on tight-knit farming communities that have relied on Blue Mountain coffee for generations. Many smallholder farmers have lost their primary source of income for two consecutive seasons, leaving many facing uncertainty about their ability to remain in the industry. For this reason, Grant stresses that psychosocial and mental health support must be paired with traditional agricultural recovery programs to address the full scope of the crisis.
“While the Blue Mountain coffee industry has always shown remarkable resilience in the face of past challenges, the cumulative impact of back-to-back hurricanes and runaway costs means we can’t afford to wait for recovery to happen on its own,” Grant said. “Urgent, coordinated action from both public and private stakeholders is required to restore production levels and build long-term resilience for farming communities.”
The JCEA is currently advocating for a suite of targeted policy and investment initiatives to reboot the sector, including the formal implementation of the Coffee Crop Resuscitation and Establishment Programme (CREP), critical rehabilitation of crumbling farm access roads that have been left impassable by storm damage, and targeted grants to help smallholders rebuild their production capacity from the ground up.
Despite the grave current challenges, Grant reaffirmed that Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee retains its status as one of the country’s most valuable and internationally recognized agricultural brands, supporting tens of thousands of jobs across the production and export supply chain and maintaining a premium reputation among specialty coffee consumers around the globe. He also expressed gratitude for the ongoing recovery support already provided by the Jamaican government, the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority (JACRA), and international partners, which has included funding for critical farm inputs and donations of thousands of coffee seedlings to help farmers replant damaged fields.