Business View Caribbean | July 2019

41 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN JULY 2019 these properties and transformed them into good productive ventures with the help of his son and his nephew. However, I do recall somewhere in the annals of history that his wife used to question why he was buying so much land. But he was a bit of a visionary; he saw where agriculture was going and encouraged his family to follow the path. His first-born son and his nephew were trained agriculturalists. There were five sons and two daughters and the youngest son did a veterinary degree. He came back as an animal doctor to help develop the beef and the dairy. Currently, my two sisters – one is a lawyer, one is a marketing specialist – handle all the legal transactions and marketing for our land development work. Fred’s nephew has a son who sits on our Board of Directors, as does the son of one of Fred’s daughters, so it’s still very much a family business.” FMJ is headquartered in Golden Grove, St. Thomas and employees 220 workers. The building is located where four roads meet and all the farm operations are centered around that. A portion of their sugar cane operations have been carried out on lands sub-leased from Eastern Banana Estates Ltd., but the factory that purchases the sugar cane closed in July, so FMJ is once again changing product lines. The new venture involves growing cassava on a substantial acreage of their land to supply the local beer company, Red Stripe, that uses cassava as a substitute starch element in its products. The remaining sugar cane lands are being put into pasture to upgrade the beef cattle operation. In addition, they are sub-leasing some of the leased lands to other farmers and potential farmers in 50-acre blocks, with the hope of creating new commercial agriculture businesses in the parish of St. Thomas. “We have to change,” says Nicholas. “You can’t sit still and let things die around you. The other big decision we took recently was to close the dairy because it just wasn’t pulling its weight. So, we’ve gone more into land development, and cassava, and we’re also busily planting coconuts because it seems to be a sought-after product in the cosmetic industry. Back in my Grandfather’s day, the company was producing about nine FRED M. JONES ESTATES LTD .