Today, I am a ...
Published:Tuesday | July 20, 2010 | 12:00 AM
As part of The Gleaner's focus on agriculture, from day to day we will raise issues from the perspective of products or people in the sector.
Bumpy road for farm produce
Damion Mitchell, Assistant News Editor
Today, I am a cabbage, one of thousands trying to keep fresh and firm in overloaded vans traversing bumpy farm roads in places like Manchester and St Elizabeth before hitting the major thoroughfares en route to markets across the island.
For years, the issue of a seamless transportation network for farm produce has been emerging, submerging and re-emerging, and it appears that, at present, the issue is being submerged, since the concern has seemingly fallen off the scale.
But the issue of poor farm roads has never been buried.
For Anthony Freckleton, president of the St Elizabeth/Manchester Vegetable Growers' Association, a solution to the issue of poor farm roads and the lack of a structured transportation system for agricultural produce is way overdue.
"Let's talk solutions now," Freckleton demanded. He said the farm road woes have perpetuated because they are under the portfolio of parish councils which do not have the resources to repair the thoroughfares.
"Every meeting that I have gone to with members of parliament and parish councils, you are hearing the same thing: 'It's not my road, it's their road'," Freckleton said.
He wants the farm roads to be placed under the portfolio of central government and for production zones to be established so that resources may be allocated in a more organised way.
Set up packing houses
On the issue of an uncoordinated transport system for farm produce, Freckleton said the Government should move towards setting up packing houses and providing concessions for farmers to acquire refrigerated vehicles.
"The ad hoc situation that exists in the transportation system right now cannot be allowed to continue," he said.
In September 2008, Transport and Works Minister Mike Henry told The Gleaner that the Government would be pursuing a new model called Pave-Zyme to improve rural roads. Henry had said Pave-Zyme would have been tested on farm roads and could ease years of woes, especially for people transporting agricultural produce to markets. According to him, Pave-Zyme was more cost-effective and longer-lasting than current methods.
"It has been tested and proven very successful," Henry told The Gleaner/Power 106 News Centre in 2008.
Repeated calls to Henry to provide an update on the programme have not been successful. In the meantime, there is no end in sight to the bumpy roads for farm produce.