By Damion Mitchell, Farmers Weekly Co-ordinator 
Joan Beckford explains the disastrous effects of the drought on her father's farm in Ballards Valley, St. Elizabeth, which has resulted in significant financial losses. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
WITH JUST one month since the beginning of the 2004 summer season, St. Elizabeth farmers fear that this will be one of the driest periods, and they are projecting losses of agricultural crops worth thousands of dollars.
"We are fearing the worse," Kenrick Morgan, who cultivates vegetables on a three-acre property in Nain, St. Elizabeth, told Farmers Weekly on Tuesday.
He said that although he had access to irrigation for his current crop of cucumber, the supply was inadequate, resulting in losses of approximately 25 per cent of his production as some of the leaves of vegetables withered before the plants reached full maturity.
"It (the dry period) mash me up," he said. According to Mr. Morgan under conducive weather conditions, he usually reaps 20,000 pounds of cucumber each week for six weeks, but this year the amount has been reduced to just under 15,000 pounds, with the harvest continuously declining.
Mr. Morgan also said that in an attempt to retain moisture in the soil, he had covered the area under cultivation with dried grass, but even this was costly, as he incurred a $30,000 bill to source a truckload of grass and to have it prepared to lay on the farm.
TRUCKED WATER
In the meantime, farmers in a more southerly community of St. Elizabeth say their situation has been even worse as they rely heavily on the rain to provide water for their crops.
Trucked water is their only option, but it comes with what they said is a burdensome cost of $4,000. "Things rough now," Calbert Gordon, 70, bemoaned. He cultivates vegetables and condiments, such as escallion and thyme in Ballards Valley.
Earlier, his daughter, Joan Beckford, had taken the Farmers Weekly team on a tour of their farm where there were rows of scorched thyme and escallion. She said that although a significant percentage of the thyme and escallion had been destroyed because of the lack of adequate water since April, they had still managed to earn "a little" from the crop. However their tomato harvest was especially disappointing.
The Government has promised that the irrigation would improve the parish this year with the rehabilitation of the Hounslow irrigation system and the drilling of three wells at Little Park and one at Beacon.
The total annual value of the increase in production from the St. Elizabeth projects is projected at $398 million (US$8.6 million) of which about one-third is from potential export crops, such as thyme, peppers, pumpkin, and
sweet potato.
