IN ANOTHER few weeks, Portia Simpson Miller will become the seventh Prime Minister of independent Jamaica. She will take over leadership of a nation which has made progress in many areas, but has missed significant opportunities for greater development.
The high crime rate which places us among the most violent countries in the world has shattered Prime Minister Patterson's early dream of creating 'a kinder, gentler society'. And there has been enormous waste of our resources through inefficiency and corruption.
In spite of all that, Jamaica continues to be blessed with a wide array of resources including an incredibly creative people. As one example, the farming sector has many of these resources which have not been fully exploited.
Our columnist Hugh Martin, who has been a strong advocate for agricultural development, in his column on Monday, February 26, listed a number of crops that have great potential for development for both the local and the export markets. Among them is the sugar cane plant which he claims is the most efficient converter of energy and could provide the bio-mass for the production of electricity to satisfy most of our demand.
The most attractive aspect of this is the fact that, unlike petroleum, it is a renewable source and one that would guarantee continued employment to our people, while saving valuable foreign exchange. Surely this is not unknown to our leaders, but they have been content to rely only on the production of raw sugar because they believed that market would be there forever.
They have failed to capitalise on the products for which Jamaica is famous and for which we have a comparative advantage such as Blue Mountain coffee, cocoa, pimento, ginger, ackee, nutmeg. They have been satisfied with the status of primary producers and have failed to move to where the true value exists.
On Thursday in our Reclaiming Agriculture feature, we carried a front page story on a potential multibillion-dollar squid industry which remains untapped because of the unwillingness of the Government to assist a fishing co-operative to put in the necessary infrastructure. While it is true that private enterprise must find ways of developing their business, government has a responsibility to encourage and foster such development.
We support the view that rural development based on agricultural enterprises provides a useful way of reducing the crime rate. As such we strongly urge the new Prime Minister to place the hitherto neglected potential of the agricultural sector at the top of her priorities.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
