St Bess farmers face losses and poverty

Aubyn Hill, Financial Gleaner Columnist

This year has been a bad one for many farmers in Jamaica and none more so than those in south and south-eastern St Elizabeth.

They have suffered losses in multiples of produce and vegetables they have grown.

Very low prices or no prices at all have left farmers in substantial debt to their farm stores and other suppliers. Their debts to local mechanics and grocery shops remain unpaid.

This year, the farmers' 'bad luck' seemed to have covered a whole array of crops.

Watermelons, which at a sale price of about J$50 a pound would turn a little profit, have been fetching farm-gate price as low as J$7 per pound. That low price proved to be a disincentive to the farmers to even reap their watermelon crops, and the lovely fruits were left in the fields to rot or are fed to pigs.

Farmers also have had to reap their cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower and feed them to pigs.

In many farming communities across Jamaica, farmers are supported by adequate and even too much rainfall.

Not so in south St Elizabeth. When the dry months arrive, and the drought has been more severe this year, farmers have to buy truckloads of water to keep their plants alive and productive. Add the cost of fertiliser, labour, tractor-ploughing service and pesticides, and the feeding of farm products to pigs - there is also a glut of pigs on the market! - and leaving produce to rot in the field is absolutely pathetic. This is poverty-breeding reality.

CIRCULAR ARGUMENT ON GLUT

Every year, the issue of glut on the farms followed by scarcity in the markets and supermarkets is debated. Some of that debate is fed by the fact that farmers tend to plant when rains fall and plant less during dry seasons.

The perennial lack of well or catchment water to support farming is woeful commentary on the absence of enabling and necessary infrastructure to support our farmers.

Successive political administrations have given little more than lip service to this water problem in our 'land of wood and water'.

This is a self-defeating argument for the country, and self-serving to many of its proponents, that farm supplies are infrequent and unreliable therefore hotels always have to import vegetables, potatoes and other produce to keep their guests satisfied.

Our governments have given permission, sold lands - in some instances at prices many call giveaways - granted licences and issued tax waivers in such quantities, and for such almost immorally large amounts to hoteliers and others, that the IMF has identified these gifts as unseemly and unsustainable revenue leaks.

The sad part about all that giving and tax-waiving, is that our governments did not use those tax-revenue-sapping gifts as economic levers to secure part of the shareholding of these foreign-owned hotels for Jamaican shareholders, nor did they secure agreements from these hoteliers to purchase local produce.

Such agreements, properly crafted, monitored and enforced, could have been the economic centre around which our farmers could have been organised and the necessary farming, storing, transport and distribution infrastructure put in place to make Jamaica farm produce a reliable source of food to hotels and general consumers.

Our political leaders appeared to have relished the ephemeral spotlight of the big announcements about big foreign hotels breaking ground on some piece of our prime real estate, and cared little about fostering and insisting on the more important economic linkages that could have been, should have been, part and parcel of these tax-leaking hotel investments.

We apparently have not learned very much from these past mistakes. The added insult to our poor small farmers - many from St Elizabeth - is that some of these tax-leaking-incentivised hotels take many months to pay farmers for the produce they 'sell' to these institutions.

In effect, some of these powerful hotels turn poor farmers who are often living from hand-to-mouth into their unwilling and unable-to-fight-back 'bankers'.

These poor farmers are forced to give their produce on unilaterally taken consignment, even as they drift deeper into the quagmire of poverty.

CUT BACK ON FLOur, RICE

As with so many of our economic ills, we as Jamaicans - Government and people - have in our hands the tools to make things quite incredibly better.

Let us calculate how much rice and flour we use to feed students, hospital patients, police and soldiers every day. Do another set of sums and put the US dollar value on just those two imports.

Let us start the change in our schools.

Twin the ministries of Education and Agriculture to start a combined effort to educate our children as to the health and economic benefits of eating sweet potatoes, yams - throw in a little Usain Bolt for athletic prowess and flavour - green bananas, and bammies made from cassava - especially now that Minister Roger Clarke has so fulsomely endorsed the bammy - instead of flour and rice.

Arrange for these local farm products to become the carbohydrate staples for our children, who will take home the nutritional values and palate changes to their parents.

Let flour and rice fade away, fast, we hope. A timely set of non-tariff and tariff barriers would help. Use the hard-to-earn hard currency spent on rice and flour to build our farming economy and agricultural and food-security culture.

Don't stop at schools and other taxpayer-assisted institutions. Take the culture-changing education to restaurants, clubs and places of entertainment.

Readily, I can get some imported rice and flour-based food at restaurants, but it is very hard to get sweet potatoes and yam and some local vegetables.

Farmers in St Bess and elsewhere have to fight drought, too much rain sometimes, poor infrastructure and distribution, low demand and market manipulation by some middlemen, being forced into consignment selling and the role of bankers.

And if those obstacles were not enough, many 'two-foot-puss' engage in praedial larceny which inflicts the ultimate pain at reaping time.

We, the GOJ and citizens, have the tools to even out the bumps in farm produce supplies at serious economic gain to the county. Let us just do it.

Aubyn Hill is the CEO of Corporate Strategies Limited and was an international banker for more than 25 years. Email: writerhill@gmail.com. Twitter: @HillAubyn Facebook: facebook.com/ Corporate.Strategies.