News
December 22 2025
‘Coffee and Jamaica are close to my heart’
5
min read
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Donald Berry, coffee farmer in Spring Hill, Portland, checks for disease on coffee beans on his farm.
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Coffee plants that survived Hurricane Melissa in Spring Hill, Portland.
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Jimmy Beckford, coffee farmer in Spring Hill Portland, checks for the American White Spot disease on his plants.
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Jimmy Beckford (left) and Donald Berry check on the farm road leading to their coffee farms in Spring Hill, Portland, that was extensively damaged during the passage of Hurricane Melissa. They say the roads were good enough for a car to travel on to reach their farms, but now a vehicle or person could fall into a trench, if not careful.
For nearly three decades, Donald Berry has put his energy and passion into producing Blue Mountain Coffee, and has had setbacks in the past. However, with the passage of Hurricane Melissa, he thought long and hard about throwing in the towel after the storm devastated around 65 per cent of his coffee trees and other crops. The hurricane came at the peak season of reaping when farmers had just started to pick coffee beans to sell the highly regarded brand of coffee to the world.
