JSIF to scale greenhouses

The establishment of greenhouses or sheltered infrastructure at scale is one of the outcomes that will be pursued under the newly announced US$50-million Project ADAPT, says Managing Director of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), Omar Sweeney.

JSIF is the main implementing agency for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) project – the largest global fund dedicated to help fight climate change – approved the project last Friday, five years after it was first floated by the Jamaican Government.

The project, announced on Monday, is expected to benefit approximately 700,000 farmers across six central parishes over five years.

Sweeny said while there will not be a full-scale moving away from open-field farming, greenhouses and sheltered infrastructure must become a central part of Jamaica’s approach to agriculture. Sweeny outlined that greenhouses offer more reliable productivity.

“This is the project that will scale greenhouse and sheltered infrastructure in the country over the next five to six years,” Sweeney said, adding that the project will also seek to tackle food loss and waste.

With Ministry of Agriculture data showing that Jamaica loses 30 to 40 per cent of its agricultural output, Sweeney noted the urgency of modern infrastructure. “When you have gluts, crops are wasted in the field. When you have storms, farmers cannot reap because there is nowhere to take the crops. This is the project that is going to bring cold storage to scale,” Sweeney said.

He noted that once the greenhouses and cold storage facilities are built out, pilot farms will be established to train farmers in the use of this new infrastructure.

“If you put in the greenhouses, the sheltered infrastructure, and you put in the cold storage, you are going to have to change the way people do things. You are going to have to change the way people think as farmers. You may be farming to reap [for] storage, not reap to sell,” Sweeney explained.

Sweeny also noted that the GCF Project is expected to have three main outcomes.

“We expect enhanced knowledge of climate-resilient techniques and cold storage. We expect that the production systems in Jamaica are now going to change in terms of produce ... and we also expect that we will now have greater resilience to what the environment will bring us. Not only hurricanes but that includes droughts,” he outlined.

Project ‘ADAPT Jamaica: Enhancing climate-change resilience of vulnerable smallholders in Central Jamaica’ will be implemented in Trelawny, St Ann, St Elizabeth, Clarendon, St Catherine, and Manchester.

These parishes supply approximately 70 per cent of the island’s agricultural produce and suffered severe damage during the passage of Hurricane Melissa in October 2025.