Coffee Farmers to get Insurance Money June 18

Come June 18, insurance money amounting to some $72 million will be paid to coffee farmers across the island.
This disclosure was made by Minister of Agriculture and Lands, Roger Clarke at the 112th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston on (June 14).
According to Minister Clarke, the money will be distributed to some 3,236 coffee farmers, who were selected from a group of approximately 5,872 persons.
He said the number was selected as a result of investigations which showed that some of the claims made on the insurance company were in fact false.
The Minister pointed out that farmers who did not qualify for reimbursement under the $72 million scheme would be reviewed case by case and would be compensated from the remaining $25 million.
Explaining how the insurance scheme worked, Mr. Clarke said that, “if you insure for 100 boxes.if we have a storm and you reap 80 boxes, you are not entitled to any money regardless of how much you lose,” adding that there was a clause in the contract that had a 20 per cent deductible amount. “If you plant any amount and you don’t insure it, you cannot get paid,” he reiterated.
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Coffee.2Additionally, the Minister said that another major problem for the industry was that of the ‘cash pot system’, where farmers were able to sell coffee beans to dealers who were able to offer a one-time cash payment to them rather than dealers who chose to pay in installments. This, he said, had many consequences for the sector. “You must understand that for everything you do, there is a consequence,” he warned the farmers.He stressed that the Ministry understood the concerns of the industry and was doing all that was humanly possible to make life possible for farmers.