A Love Affair with Agriculture
“I want to see my products globally and I want my name to be a name that you hear in the kitchen. When chefs say they are using a particular sauce, I want them to say this is Arona’s sauce or pepper seasoning. I want to hear my name in those kitchens.”
In a small office in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, Arona Forbes proudly displays samplings of her teas and spices. She has big dreams, that one day hers will be a household name in kitchens around the world.
It’s a tough time to be so optimistic about business, but where many see challenges, this woman sees opportunities.
“I see a lot of imported stuff coming into the BVI and I believe that the country can attain that level – to export what we have. We have some peculiar things here which we could harness… we just need to find creative ways to add value to these products,” she says.
What she decided to harness is the healing power of the plants and herbs she grows in the form of specialty teas and natural spices. The teas include lemongrass, basil, spearmint, peppermint, wild thyme, eucalyptus, bay leaf, and soursop leaves. On the spice side is the pepper bottle and dried seasonings, along with coconut oil and honey.
Arona’s love affair with agriculture dates back to her childhood, and the inclination to turn it into a lifelong career followed in the footsteps of her late father, Joseph Fahie, who was an avid tiller of the soil.
“I love agriculture so much that I would prefer to be out in the fields as opposed to being in the office,” she confesses. “From a young age, I noticed my father, the things that he was doing and I sort of gravitated towards that. He had both animals and crops and I have both animals and crops.”
Not content with just working the fields, Arona set out to broaden her knowledge about sound agricultural practices, earning a bachelor’s degree in agronomy and farm business management, and a graduate degree in horticulture in addition to an MBA.
In her day job, she is the deputy chief agricultural officer at the Department of Agriculture in the BVI. Her role involves providing assistance to the farming community on the main island of Tortola in addition to the sister islands of Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke.
But Arona’s yearning to take her agricultural exploits to another level has never been far from her mind. Always a farmer, she and her husband grow a wide variety of vegetables and herbs, and rear rabbits, sheep, goat, pigs and cattle to supply the local meat market. A few years ago, she saw an opportunity to take the business further.
“I started adding value to products about five to six years ago. First I was just selling (the herbs) fresh but often when I had a lot there was a lot of wastage. So I started to dry the excess and it lasted longer, and then God give me the idea to add value,” Arona shares.
Starting with the lemongrass, a highly aromatic plant known mainly for its ability to reduce fevers, Arona decided to package it into a tea. As demand for the product grew, other popular plants such as the peppermint, spearmint and soursop leaves were added to the line of teas. Not just content with packaging flavourful teas, she wanted to harness the plants’ healing powers to make it easier for the public to access them.
“Coming up you learned that these plants had different properties and we used them for different ailments, so I thought why can’t we package our teas,” Arona notes.
“You know that when you have a problem sleeping you drink the soursop leaf, so I packaged the soursop leaves in small quantities so that someone who may not be near a soursop tree or doesn’t have the time to make it can go and take it off the shelf when the need arises and utilize it,” she explains.
With what she knew about business, Arona knew that her products needed to stand out from the crowd of teas lining supermarket shelves. She struggled to find unique packaging that would make her products look different from common commercial varieties.
“I had a tough time finding out where I could have gotten the enclosure for the teas but then I thank God for showing me a place on the internet where I could get my products… I don’t want to have my teas in boxes like everyone else. I want to be different,” she adds.
The difference includes information cards inside the packages explaining the benefits of the different teas. She is also doing something different with another Caribbean product – the pepper bottle, a blend of peppers, vinegar, and spices.
“One of the things we also do here is that persons will get the peppers and will make it into a pepper bottle and that will last for a long time and they will put it on their fish… it’s done with different seasonings – not just the pepper itself. Some people put in garlic and it gives a nice flavor when you cook with it. I’m not saying it is not done in the other islands but it is not commercially available and that is where I want to have a competitive edge along with my teas,” she explains.
The competitive edge includes boasting products free from artificial preservatives. Arona is also experimenting with new flavours like mango, guava and lime to add an interesting twist to the existing line of teas.
For now though, she is concentrating on developing her brand, in order to make her products available beyond the shores of the BVI. She’ll begin with social media like Facebook to reach a wider market.
“Actually, tourists are already taking them out when come they. Some persons come and buy them to send them away to their relatives, and I am also able to ship them overseas,” she adds.
In preparing her products for export, Arona is already researching the requirements of various countries to ensure that her products match up to the often rigorous standards for these markets.
“I want to see my products globally and I want my name to be a name that you hear in the kitchen. When chefs say they are using a particular sauce, I want them to say this is Arona’s sauce or pepper seasoning. I want to hear my name in those kitchens.”
Her mission to be the premier global distributor for these products is an ambitious one, but Arona is not intimidated. She has a clearly defined path to market and promote the products under the Arona’s brand, and create an export market for the BVI.