FAO project to teach farmers, fishers disaster risk management
Published:Wednesday | July 18, 2012 | 12:00 AM
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an agency of the United Nations, has initiated a project aimed at reducing losses from natural disasters which can cost the agriculture sector as much as 50 per cent of revenues.
Funded by the Belgian government, the project is being implemented in concert with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority and Panos.
The total effort, aimed at a shift from reactive emergency relief to proactive disaster risk reduction, is budgeted to cost €1.33 million (J$145m).
It includes support for the preparation of disaster preparedness contingency plans at the community level in selected vulnerable areas in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
"While we have a national policy to do with agriculture risk management, not only is the knowledge of the policy not strong on the ground but, at the level where people live and work, there is little connection made between their actions and the impact of climate change," said Robert Kerr, project coordinator. "The project is aimed at redressing this problem."
'Ivan' depleted funds
Kerr points out that in 2004, agriculture contributed J$13.8 billion to GDP, but Hurricane Ivan cost the industry J$8.5 billion or 62 per cent of the amount in damage.
"If agriculture is to be sustainable and sustained, we have to make sure these events which are increasing in violence and frequency will be minimised in impact and also facilitate recovery," he said.
For the local effort, costed at €334,000 (J$36.5m), five communities identified as especially vulnerable have been selected for training in safeguarding against "hydrometeorological hazards" under the project labelled 'Strengthening Community Preparedness and Resilience to Natural Disaster in Selected Vulnerable Areas in Jamaica'.
The five are Rocky Point in Clarendon; Old Harbour Bay, St Catherine; Halls Delight, St Andrew; Cascade, Portland; and New Market in St Elizabeth.
Dr Jerome Thomas, FAO representative to Jamaica, said critical to the project is its focus on livelihoods of the most vulnerable families.
"The project has prioritised those rural communities and small-scale farmers and fishers who are most exposed to natural disasters and have extremely limited coping capacities."
Hazards to communities
He noted that the principal hazards in Rocky Point were hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding, storm surge and loss of gear. Old Harbour, also a coastal village, is prone to similar hazards. New Market, a farming village in the mountainous interior, is prone to extreme flooding. Cascade, another farming community, has principal hazards of land slippage and flooding. And in Halls Delight, the danger is mostly related to fire, wind damage and land slippage, the FAO representative said
The FAO intervention includes prepositioning of agricultural inputs to be ready for use in case of disaster as well as steering farmers towards risk-reduction techniques.
"Climate change is an aggravator of old problems. If there are bad practices, for example the overuse of herbicides and insecticides, then with climate change which brings more rain, such soils will not have the rooting structure to prevent slippage," said Kerr.
"In Cascade, Buff Bay, many millions of dollars have to be spent in maintaining access to coffee areas for this reason. In Halls Delight, there are similar problems and in Rocky Point there are extensive issues to do with storm surges and loss of equipment. Preparedness is vital to saving millions of dollars and allows people to sustain production," the project coordinator said.
CAPTION: James Rawle (centre), general manager, Nestlé Jamaica Limited, explains the testing methodology for Supligen to Derrick Kellier (right), minister of labour and social security, while Kellier toured the Bybrook Plant in St Catherine last Thursday. Looking on is Muhammad Zia Ul Haq, factory manager of the Nestlé plant. The plant workers are unidentified. Nestlé Jamaica has invested US$7.6 million in the Supligen line to boost. Ian Allen/Photographer