Donovan Stanberry | Making the agricultural revolution happen

According to the Economic and Social Survey Jamaica 2018, the agricultural sector contributed some 7.1 per cent to the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018 and accounted for some 16.1 per cent of the labour force.

This mismatch between agriculture’s GDP contribution and its share of the labour force speaks to low levels of productivity within this sector. Without a doubt, the single biggest issue facing the agricultural sector is the issue of low productivity. The issue of low productivity in itself is a manifestation of structural issues bedevilling the agricultural sector for decades.

It is important to revisit the profile of our agricultural sector in order to understand the extent to which the problem of low productivity is entrenched. The last census conducted by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) in 2011 lists 220,000 people as farmers.

The Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) has registered over 90 per cent of these farmers on its Agricultural Business Information System (ABIS). The 2007 Agricultural Census conducted by STATIN reveals that 75 per cent of these farmers own only 15 per cent of all lands in farming, with the average size of a farm being less than one hectare.

With the average age of our farmers near to 50 years, with many being semi-literate, what kind of productivity can we extract from these small-sized farms, often on marginal, steep hillsides? What kind of technology can most of these farmers assimilate? With RADA’s complement of extension officers being about 200, how can they effectively reach most of our farmers?

The commodity model of agriculture might have served us well when we had highly protected and lucrative markets in Europe, but it did not encourage efficiency and innovation, because prices were basically high and guaranteed. When liberalisation set in, not only did these markets collapse, but these traditional commodities declined precipitously because productivity was so low, rendering them uncompetitive in other markets.

The entire agricultural sector and the wider economy suffered as a result because most of our best lands and farming infrastructure were devoted to these commodities. While these commodities were flourishing – that is, sugar, banana, coffee, cocoa, citrus and coconut – the small hillside farmers producing a plethora of other crops, some with significant export value, were somewhat ignored.

REVIVE TRADITIONAL CROPS

The new model of agriculture must seek to revive those traditional crops which still have potential for export to new markets, on a value-added basis, but must simultaneously develop new industries, like those I pointed out in the last article.

There needs to be a stronger linkage between agriculture on the one hand, and manufacturing and tourism on the other. Agriculture contributes 7.1 per cent to GDP in Jamaica, compared to one per cent in the United States and 1.2 per cent in the European Union.

The difference is, those developed countries have close linkage between agriculture and industry to create greater wealth than any focus on commodities can provide. This model must, however, be built on a new platform of cooperation between Government, the private sector and farmers.

The fact that in 2019 three quarters of our farmers own only 15 per cent of all farmlands, with average farm size less than one hectare, tells me that as an independent nation we have not corrected the historical ills of the immediate post-emancipation period, when freed men were systematically undermined in their efforts to gain access to good fertile land to develop the peasantry. These efforts were deliberate in order to keep ex-slaves on the plantation. They were literally relegated to marginal hillside lands.

Clearly, this inequity has not been sufficiently corrected by either the 1897 West India Royal Commission of Enquiry after the Morant Bay Rebellion, the Moyne Commission of Enquiry of 1938 in the aftermath of social disturbances in Jamaica, nor the brave attempts at land reforms by the Manley regime of the 1970s.

The fact of the matter is that the Government of Jamaica remains the largest landowner in this country, and therefore it is to the Government we must turn to put lands in the hands of those who want to participate in this exciting new agriculture.

Jamaica’s agriculture cannot make the quantum leap without larger farms. Vegetables can be grown using intensive protected agriculture technologies, but not fruits, coconut and cocoa, which were previously identified as having good export potential. We must therefore sequester our best, that is, fertile, irrigable and easily mechanised lands for this new thrust.

A number of large tracts of lands that Mr Manley acquired for his land reform programmes in St James (Shettlewood, parts of Montpelier and Seven Rivers) and St Mary (Tryall, Gray’s Inn, Fontabelle and Frontier) are still largely underutilised, and, of course, there is nearly 29,000 acres, mostly irrigated, in the plains of St Catherine and Clarendon. There are also lands in our Agro Parks, particularly Spring Plains, Ebony Park and Amity Hall, which, though allocated, remain largely underutilised.

Closely tied to the matter of land is the issue of proper infrastructure on those lands, particularly irrigation. According to the National Irrigation Development Plan, developed by the Government in 1998, there are some 187,000 hectares of irrigable lands in Jamaica. The plan proposed some 51 projects to irrigate most of these lands. So far we have only implemented six of these projects in Yallahs, Beacon/Little Park, New Forest/Duff House, Hounslow, Seven Rivers and Colbeck, with the seventh, Essex Valley, under construction, and together with other existing schemes covering less than 10 per cent of our irrigable acreages.

There is no way we are going to mount an assault on low productivity in agriculture with continued dependence on rainfall. The reality of climate change is only lending urgency to this call. Irrigation infrastructure and farm roads are public goods, just like highways, water, sewerage and ports.

INCENTIVIsE THE NEW AGRICULTURE

It is also in the Government’s power to use fiscal policies to catalyse this new agriculture. The truth is, it is much of government policies that have stymied agricultural development for a long time.

When I joined the Ministry of Agriculture in 2006, I was shocked at the ease with which import duties were waived to facilitate manufacturers, hotels and distributors to import agricultural goods. One day someone should compute the huge quantum of revenue lost in this endeavour.

This continued unabated until the International Monetary Fund stepped in, in 2013, and caused the abolition of a number of discretionary waivers and the legislation of those still deemed necessary.

We must now use fiscal policy to incentivise the new agriculture. Taxes on modern on-farm irrigation equipment, material for greenhouse and protected agriculture, farm equipment, etc., must be reviewed.

In the same way we incentivise hotel construction and grant generous waiver to the Chinese to whom we divested 70 per cent of our sugar industry, we can do the same for the new agriculture. Critically also, we have to look at innovative ways to increase agricultural insurance coverage.

The new agriculture is going to require vast investment from the private sector not only on the production side, but higher up the value chain in packing houses for sorting, grading and storing produce, systems for collecting farmers’ produce from the farm gate and the entire logistics of moving produce to the market.

Large farms, hotels, and manufacturers also need to integrate backwards to the farmers, in the process providing them with working capital/inputs where warranted, and technical services, in order to lift productivity on farms, get around farmers’ limited access to credit and secure their supply of produce/raw material.

The Government also has to insert itself into this, providing capacity building support to farmers and organising them into clusters.

Of course, every new enterprise/industry I have suggested must be subject to concrete feasibility studies in order to guide both public and private investment.

We can fund this as a nation. Without fanfare, the private sector of this country funded the buildout of our cable network. We are busy building out space for BPO. The stock market is breaking record every year with numerous new listings. We can mobilise the resources to build a great agriculture!

- Donovan Stanberry, PhD, CD, JP, campus registrar, University of the West Indies, Mona, and former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com