Whither agriculture?

Martin Henry, Contributor

Just a few days into his second cycle as minister of agriculture, Roger Clarke presided over a dreadful meeting with the heads of commodity organisations and commodity boards. In very inapt language, the communication and PR outfit of his ministry, in a press release the following day, said, "The newly appointed minister ... has hit the ground running"!

The dreadfulness of the meeting has nothing to do with the corpulent minister hitting the ground or with the quality of the chairing; I wasn't there. "The meeting was held against the background of a decline in several crops, including coffee, citrus, sugar, banana and cocoa."

For some strange reason, the decline, according to the MinAg news release, was benchmarked from 2006 (which just happens to be the last full year of the last People's National Party (PNP) administration in office): "It was noted that the export of sugar since 2006 moved from 140,445 tonnes to approximately 93,000 tonnes in 2010, representing a decline of just over 51 per cent. Coffee production also declined, moving from 12,390 tonnes in 2006 to just over 9,000 tonnes in 2010. That is a 36 per cent decrease. There were also recorded declines in the production of citrus, 56 per cent, and cocoa, two per cent, respectively," the news release said.

The long, slow decline of Jamaican agriculture is older than the last administration. When Christopher Tufton, as minister of agriculture, was trotting out growth data at regular press conferences, he was talking about growing out of a hole, a deep hole, not growth from the surface up.

The long, slow decline of Jamaican agriculture predates the last PNP administration. The heyday of Jamaican agriculture was before Independence, in the 1930s and '40s and '50s, when the largest volumes of almost any traditional export crop that you care to name were produced - sugar, bananas, coffee, coconut, cocoa, citrus, pimento, ginger.

Export agriculture has been pretty much downhill since Independence. Not one of our success stories at all. The statistics people at MinAg can provide the grim details. Mark Brooks, the Soil Disease Man, says it is not just laziness, markets, or praedial larceny; the soil is also sick, leading to declining productivity.

What was most troubling about Minister Clarke's meeting was the basic reason behind it: "Given the decline, Minister Clarke discussed with stakeholders strategies to increase production and productivity of the various commodities. He has also committed to meet with commodity boards one-on-one in the ensuing weeks."

When are we going to have a discussion, vital for the future of Jamaican agriculture, about getting out of the primary production of traditional commodities and about liquidating antiquated commodity organisations and commodity boards? We have lost preferential "sorry-fi-dem" export markets. Even with increasing efficiency of production, Jamaica is not likely to lower production costs to match international averages or the economies of scale of giant producers. Our sugar and bananas were getting to market with higher production costs than those of competitors. If Gustav had not shut down banana exports into the European Union/United Kingdom market, sooner than later pricing would have done so.

We have wisely sold, and the Chinese have bought, the previously state-controlled loss-making portions of the sugar industry, the majority part of the industry, and may have a good go at it both on the production side and the marketing side with their fabled efficiency. But they won't need Minister Clarke, his ministry, or the various sugar boards and agencies attached to the old moribund industry. That's private enterprise, which will swim or sink on its own account.

Statutory obligations

And only the most fiscally imprudent government would repurchase these sugar operations should they fail in the hands of a private operator with an impressive track record of sugar success in several other countries. The best the Government should do for sugar is to simply ensure that the new owners abide by the laws of the land and meet their statutory obligations.

When it comes to labour relations, it would be a disaster for Government to seek to force the owners to operate with one hand tied behind their back in order to 'protect' low-productivity labour for political reasons. Resistance to modernisation by the trade union-political party alliance going back to its emergence in the 1940s has been the bane of the sugar industry.

The agricultural landscape is littered with the remains of commodity boards, basically one for each commodity. The boards have long lost their rhyme and reason. Commodity boards had extension-services functions, marketing functions, and, very important, research and development (R&D) functions. In some cases, like the Banana Board and the Sugar Industry Research Institute, they have done well in the past, supported by cesses on the production of the commodities themselves in the boom years.

Modern agriculture has to be placed on a scientific footing, supported by serious R&D and extension services. MinAg's own research capabilities have been whittled away. The flagship Bodles Research Station is a stark index of that decline, as anybody who knows Bodles' past and present can attest. Services to agriculture must be consolidated, targeted and made more efficient.

And agriculture, down to the level of the small farmer, must be placed on a market-driven private-enterprise business footing instead of remaining a sickly ward of the State. We cannot continue to produce what we have to beg people to buy on special terms because we are uncompetitive.

Where agriculture needs to go is in the direction of extracting value-added products from primary commodities, producing non-traditional high-value exotica, and in domestic food production, all supported by carefully targeted research and development, including that important matter of soil health.

When it comes to agriculture, we might as well stop complaining about being a land of samples. Our size and arable land area constrain us, compared to larger producers, to be a land of samples, no matter what we produce in what quantities. What we want are world-class 'samples' with strong market demand, and delivered at prices (not necessarily low prices!) that global consumers are willing to pay.

Fiery missive

Some people regard avid emailer John Anthony as something of a crackpot. But the week after Minister Clarke's dreadful meeting with outmoded commodity boards to 'salimone' declining production of traditional export crops, Anthony fired off a fiery missive on the rich potential for Jamaican coconut water on the American and international markets. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), according to him, "studied Jamaican coconut water, and their analysis proved that it is superior to any sport drink product on the market anywhere in the world".

But Anthony didn't get there without taking a potshot at Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's anti-economics plea for businesses to just hire one more worker to ease unemployment.

If John Anthony is right on that FAO bit about Jamaican coconut water, Jamaica does not only have the best coconut water in the world, but the best coffee, ginger, pimento and Scotch bonnet pepper. You name the spice. Pimento and Scotch bonnet pepper get combined in the world's greatest jerk seasoning. And, by the way, Jamaica invented jerk seasoning.

Can you imagine Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee as a gourmet product linking up with a Starbucks-type marketer? Our R&D people would have to figure out how to grow 'Blue Mountain coffee' with the same flavour on coastal sugar lands, much of which are now idle from the long, slow decline of agriculture. Can you imagine real Jamaican ginger beer (sweetened with 'wet sugar') alongside our famed coconut water taking the world market by storm?

Recently, I discussed innovation with the country's leading S&T institution which is now studying the matter. Two of Jamaica's greatest food innovations with massive market potential did not come out of any lab through a white-coated PhD. These are the patty and jerk. Anybody can copy them. But only Jamaica can authentically produce the sentiment-laden Jamaican version of these products.

There has to be a great market future for jerk seasoning. Walkerswood Caribbean Foods and a couple of other companies have demonstrated the potential but can't get enough of locally grown ingredients like scallion to ramp up production.

I believe niche markets could be created for smaller, sweeter and more tangy Jamaican bananas against the inferior, 'big and so-so' Latin American product. In any case, aggressive marketing of novel Jamaican 'samples' should be something Government strategically leads.

Speaking in another forum, this one against praedial larceny, Minister Clarke called for us to produce to feed ourselves. Unfortunately, Jamaica will never be able to feed itself in any direct way. A food-self-sufficient country would have to have enough land area to produce a small range of staple carbohydrates for satisfying the calorie needs of the population, plus some adequate protein sources. Fats, minerals and vitamins, required in much smaller quantities, are less of a problem.

This is a rice and flour country. Unfortunately, both are imported. The closest possibilities for locally produced carbohydrate staples are banana, yam and Irish potato, in that order. And if we produced nothing else on our arable land, we would still not have enough. Plus, there are cultural barriers against living off ground provision.

Nonetheless, there is unmet demand for more local produce. And if Minister Clarke can help farmers to produce more at lower costs and better quality, a good deal of import substitution could be achieved. We can best feed ourselves by producing value-added stuff which the world wants, and using our export earnings to buy the rice and flour which we need.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.