Jamaican coffee has long been established as possessing all the attributes to make for the ultimately pleasurable drinking experience.

In fact, long before it is consumed, one's appetite is superbly massaged by its stunning aroma which stimulates all the senses.

The highly restricted growing region in which the coffee is produced is now being registered as a geographical indication zone where much of the coffee's intrinsic qualities are nature-derived, with exclusivity to that zone.

However, as it is with any real jewel of nature, how it is presented to the world is going to be critical.

The marketing of Jamaican coffee needs to be more deliberately put on a wider scale, with every attention to checks and balances.

We must continue to treat the product with great finesse, and get the whole industry to show a greater understanding of a specialty product's need to be chaperoned around the globe where the coffee can then find its true match in a set-apart companion.

Over the years, our coffee may have staggered through the market-place, largely fending for itself on the basis of its quality advantage.

While it is true that the coffee can afford its own brand protection as well as to economically secure the future of its farmers, it is full time that we engage the process more comprehensively.

The local industry has long recognised that a huge plan of product diversification in the highly unique market in which we operate, has to include adding flair to the product. Jamaica as a brand in the coffee world market, has perhaps missed - to our grave peril - a fuller appreciation that the mostpotent tool of leverage in a market is one where the technicalities of the brand ought to be well used to culture both the appetite and level of fickleness within that market dynamic.

When this is achieved, then the industry will be better able to sustain itself.

Congratulations to those segments of the industry which have struggled for accommo-dation for a processed good.

Processing is the only arena in which even the wildest imagina-tion of the consumer can be effectively played upon. This creativity must, of necessity, come from the country of origin and as is the case with good football, the object is to keep possession, while improving your offensive, and then unleashing to the apprecia-tion of the spectators.

It is worth trying to bring present and potential buyers into the picture to further explain that quickly letting go of coffee in the 'green bean' stage into unseasoned hands overseas may be the dictum for high-volume mass pro-duction coffee, rather than for a specialised niche.

While we have virtually per-fected the green bean trade, there is also much to show for our custodian-like effort of jealously guarding the coffee on its way to wherever it finds a socially accepted companion.

This needs to be expanded to the point where less can be spent on brand protection since the upgraded product will lend itself to greater difficulty in terms of adulteration.

The further we can take local production up the value-added chain, the less vulnerable we will become to problems of over-bloated inventories and consequential threats of price suppression, which have been exacerbated by the recession.

Where prices are suppressed in a market, it is usually followed by a raft of measures to further discount, engender rock-bottom sale, and make it generally difficult for such products to restore pride of place to even its distant competitor, who would have gone in for the kill.

Derrick Simon is a coffee farmer and president of the Coffee Growers Association.

derricksimon@yahoo.com