MINISTER OF State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Errol Ennis, says that the challenge for the sector, is to begin immediately to transform traditional practices from a "cultural" approach to that of a modern, profit-oriented business enterprise driven by local and international stimuli.Mr. Ennis was speaking to the board of directors of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) at their monthly meeting on Wednesday.
He told the JAS:
"The Agricultural Sector has a vast body of analytical data/literature: studies, enquiries and reports as to causes of economic and social under-performance, together with the accompanying prescriptive remedies, but respective administrations have failed to recognise or give effect to these findings and recommendations.
"We have consistently been unable to combine the endowment of outstanding scholarship, brilliant achievements through research, excellent climate and resilient human resources to produce tremendous wealth for all the agricultural stakeholders and the nation as a whole and to dominate the Jamaican economic landscape.
"The issue and formidable challenge for all of us, therefore, is that we have to begin, immediately, to transform our traditional practices from a "Cultural Way of Life" approach, to that of a modern profit-oriented business enterprise, driven by local and international competitive stimuli. We must cease to treat the sector as one of basic subsistence and as a social welfare system.
"Those elements of traditional agriculture that currently fall within the ambit of social agriculture and is resistant to change, or utterly incapable of transformation, must be properly identified as such and repositioned to the ministry of social welfare.
"The mission of the modern profit-driven, technological system-based Jamaican agriculture sector, therefore, is to achieve the following objectives in the shortest possible time: Food security and product diversification; Agricultural commercialisation with increasing productivity; Optimum level of value-added, through agro-processing; Expansion of non-traditional export crops; Import substitution; Increase in employment; and, Rural Development and Community Enhancement.
STRUGGLES
Without a significant increase in agricultural investment, the wherewithal for other development will not occur and it is precisely for this lack of Jamaican agricultural development that the country now struggles at the periphery of economic and social development. Productivity increases will come from capital investment and production-oriented technology, coupled with persons able to adapt to the use of modern methods in a situation where the sizes of farms are relatively small and the total acreages under production are declining. Investment, technology and educated farmers are the critical input factors of modern commercial agriculture.
Agriculture continues to suffer from outmoded economic thought that no long term financial opportunities are safe in the sector, due to the presence of a backward sloping demand curve for agriculture. On the contrary, farmers will respond to normal economic and financial incentives. The marginal productivity of farm labour is not necessarily destined zero or low, but can be positive with the introduction of modern technology, higher levels of investment, the creation of new markets and higher value-added content of agricultural output.
