AF/462/21
Impacted by COVID-19, and having to deal with being employed only two days per week, Denise Williams Bailey overcame the challenges to become an agricultural entrepreneur. The 35-year-old was trained in accounting and hospitality and worked in some of the major service establishments over the past decade, both in Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Mrs. Williams Bailey is now Head of Denden’s Farm and Supplies, in Kellits, Clarendon.
Returning from Trinidad and Tobago in 2015, she obtained employment at a top food outlet in Kingston. Two years later, she moved to another similar establishment, and started a small agricultural venture in Kellits, Clarendon, to supplement her salary.
At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, she travelled from Portmore, St. Catherine, to her childhood town of Kellits to attend to the farm, but with the uncertainty of which days she would be rostered to work, and the progress being made with the farm, she decided to resign.
“I was seeing my way out with my farming more than me working, so I decided to call it quits. I resigned, and just went full-time into the farming,” Mrs. Williams Bailey says. She expanded the farm from producing yellow yam to other crops and rearing chicken, delivering weekly supplies to several food entities in St. Catherine and the Corporate Area.
The young entrepreneur also purchased from other farmers to supply her growing market. Her business almost collapsed when she lost her first crop of chickens, due to the malfunctioning of a refrigerator used to cool the birds overnight before they were delivered to one of her clients.
“I cried,” she shares, adding that encouragement to continue came from her husband, who had provided the start-up capital to enter into the business. As the next crop was ready for market, Mrs. Williams Bailey tells JIS News that she did the packing of the chickens into the refrigerator, and “got up every two hours [in the night] to check the refrigerator”.
“I wanted to make sure that it was freezing because I could not afford to lose another batch,” she notes.
Mrs. Williams Bailey tells JIS News that her husband’s support in the early days was very important, as investing in farming is very risky.
“I told him about me going into farming, and what the start-up cost was going to be. He asked me if I was sure that I wanted to do it, and I told him yes, and he said, ‘OK, I will support you’. And he gave me the cash to start, and he has been there with me,” she adds.
Mrs. Williams Bailey says that greenhouse farming is the next move for her, as well as exporting her produce.
She tells JIS News that “good treatment” of her workers is as important as making profits, as without “trustworthy” persons, failure of the enterprise is sure.
While Mrs. Williams Bailey supports males in the farming business, she has a “soft spot” for female farmers and buys their scallion, which she supplies to her clients.
She wants to see more women taking charge of their economic empowerment and more acceptance of farming as a viable profession.
“We all need to survive, and I feel good that I am helping my family, and can help others around me as well. Don’t look at farming as dirty work, don’t look at it like that. It is very rewarding, and knowing that you are feeding the nation, it is a good thing,” Mrs. Williams Bailey says.
Denden’s Farm and Supplies maintains an active social media page, which has taken them to clients as far as Portland,
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BY: GARFIELD L. ANGUS
