Gary Coulton closed a flourishing vegetable growing business in West Palm Beach, Florida that he ran for 9 years and moved back to Jamaica. He also left behind a construction company, albeit in other hands, to bringing his expertise to benefit Jamaica agriculture.

Eager to reestablish in his homeland, Coulton searched for 4 months to find suitable farm lands. He found 16-acres outside Hinds Town, St. Ann, lands formally owned by the Reynolds Bauxite mining company. 

Known in the area as “the farmer from foreign”, Coulton started planting a year ago to ascertain the potential of each intended crop. Systematically, he now moves toward full production in scotch bonnet pepper, tomatoes and cucumber and by midyear to resume supplying his Florida hot pepper market and meeting new local contracts.

Gary Coulton has been close to farming all his life. “My father was a member of the Agricultural Credit Board (ACB) and during the summer I use to travel with him to visit farms across the country”. Later moving to Florida he took up the challenge of growing scotch bonnet peppers in that climate where others were not doing well. He would also formally study agriculture.

From his St. Ann farm Mr. Coulton is determined to make a significant impact on local agriculture production. 

“I am definitely setting out to significantly impact the local crop market in a current situation where we spend much foreign exchange importing food stuff that we are able to produce locally. I will seek to have a consistent flow both in quality and availability which is why I acquired so much land for this project”, he said.

 His returning home to set up his farm, however, was initially impeded by red tapes, delays and mountains of frustration.  “It gets frustrating to deal with the red tapes, delays and many times not achieving what is required in a timely manner”.  Declining to elaborate, Gary Coulton bemoaned an administrative system that gives the run around and which forces individuals to traverse several different places to achieve a single objective.  He, nonetheless, singles out Agro Grace as a dependable source of the inputs he requires for his ambitious agriculture venture.

With the scarcity of water in the area, Gary Coulton is too aware of the challenges afoot to properly irrigate 16 acres of land to meet and maintain production targets to honour contractual arrangements.

“I design and build my own irrigation systems, dug a water catchment which will be fitted with a pond liner as a reservoir for irrigation”.  But, until this is completed the farm relies on a 25,000 gallon water tank that is connected to a micro drip irrigation system to economically distribute the expensive trucked water.  

 “When you are designing a water system you factor in how much water is going to be needed. We calculated how many gallons of water per minute will be required for each run [of the system] so basically that catchment we dug is of the capacity to keep the farm running adequately for a little over 3 weeks if  used every day. The farm employs five full time staff and temporary workers when needed. At full production it will produce hot pepper, pumpkin, root crops for the export market and tomatoes, sweet pepper, sweet potato, melons, ginger, callaloo for the local market.

Gary Coulton says despite the early frustrations he is definitely home to grow an agriculture business and, no matter the obstacles.