THE EDITOR, Sir:
EVERY TIME I pass over the Rio Minho and Rio Cobre rivers in spate during the rainy seasons, and see their muddy brown colour, I recall a ditty that we used to sing in elementary school and 4H club "Muddy water, Muddy water taking all our precious soil away." It leaves me very concerned about agriculture in the Jamaica of the future.
After each flood and particularly the floods of September and October last, I noticed a significant amount of erosion on the hillsides in the Devon, Spaldings and Chudleigh districts, which are some of the countries most important agricultural areas. In many instances, the land was ploughed downhill rather than on the contours, because tractors which have replaced animal-drawn ploughs are not suitable to operate on steep slopes. The agricultural interests need to make more suitable equipment available as well as regulate hillside farming by prohibiting some types of crops over a certain degree slope.
NOT FARMERS, BUT GARDENERS
Back in the 1950s, an English minister serving at the Bethany Moravian church, (the home of the Irish potato in Jamaica), remarked that who we call farmers in Jamaica are really gardeners, because they use garden tools such as forks, hoes and cutlasses to cultivate small plots of land. This system of subsistence agriculture can never compete with high-tech agriculture required today. Land settlement schemes have been around for generations and have served the country well. However, with each succeeding generation, the plots get smaller as children claim their inheritance and further subdivison takes place. Other agricultural lands are taken over by housing developments.
I am not aware of any new major crop being introduced to Jamaica since Independence. Most of our crops are the efforts made in our colonial past. I have seen good grapes and peaches grown in some areas of Jamaica, especially the Yallahs Valley and other areas in St. Thomas. Maybe apples can also be grown successfully and we could also experiment with olives and sunflowers to assist the ailing coconut industry as a source of edible oils.
In recent years, the beef cattle industry went into serious decline. The number of small farmers' cattle which could once be seen in northern Manchester are no longer obvious and calves are scarce and expensive. Building a cattle herd is a slow process but the process can be hastened by importing calves, making them available at reasonable cost.
By the way, is the mule on the road to extinction?
I am etc,
TREVOR SAMUELS
tsamuels@N5.com
25 Lords Road
New Kingston
