AT least one technocrat in the Ministry of Agriculture is disgruntled over the use of prime agricultural lands — against its advice — for housing and other developments.

The technocrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, insisted that agricultural lands, such as those found in Whitehall, St Mary and Spring Gardens in St Catherine, should be left alone.

"Our duty is to protect agriculture lands for agriculture, not just for our generation, but for future generations... When we as technocrats say no to lands that we know are suitable for agriculture, they may just go ahead and decide that they want it and they just go ahead and do it. And as a result of that we are facing a challenge. Even the Spring Gardens now, take for example, we told them no and they have gone ahead and started doing things," the technocrat told Environment Watch of such stakeholders as the Town and Country Planning Authority (TCPA) and private sector interests, notably private land owners.

The technocrat added that food security concerns aside, it was also important to preserve agricultural lands given the implications for the loss of property and investment where such lands are used for other purposes. A case in point, the technocrat said, is Nightingale Grove housing development in Clarendon, which is plagued by problems with flooding. The technocrat predicted a similar fate for Spring Gardens where there is a river.

There is concern, too, over the change in land use policy related to Caymanas Estate.

"When you look at Caymanas, Caymanas is just a small section of the agriculture land that was left in cane — Bernard Lodge — and I see where they start clearing the lands to put it into industrial village. And we had told them no because Caymanas was just a small section of the dwindling agriculture lands that are left in the St Catherine plain. And yet they go ahead and they do it," the technocrat noted. "We can't stop them. We can just say no, those lands are suitable for agriculture. But they just throw it one side and choose what they want to do same way."

The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) -- the administrative arm of the TCPA -- has, however, insisted that the agriculture ministry's position was never simply disregarded. Instead, the agency said their position is evaluated relative to the position of other players involved in the decision-making process and within the context of a broader development agenda.

"The Authority (TCPA) is the one that decides on land use, not the Ministry of Agriculture. So the Ministry of Agriculture may say that this can remain but the authority can overrule the Ministry of Agriculture," NEPA boss Peter Knight told Environment Watch. "You have to look at the broader planning construct. The Ministry of Agriculture has a vested interest in preserving land for agriculture. The planning authority always has to look at the bigger picture, as to development for the country or for an area. I am not aware of any wholesale ignoring of the recommendation or advice of the RPPD (Rural Physical Planning Division of the Ministry of Agriculture)."

He was quick to add that where a change in land use was approved, it did not automatically mean that development would take place, as in the case of Spring Gardens.

"The TCPA re Spring Gardens made a recommendation for change of use of a percentage of that. There is no application in front of NEPA (for any development). Change of use doesn't mean application nor (does it) mean development. Now that change of use has been offered for a section of the land, whoever got that change of use has to now come to do the subdivisions, which ought to be approved by all the agencies and signed off by the minister with responsibility for planning," he said.

"Change of use doesn't mean approval to do anything. It means you have to go through the review process to do anything. The applicant will have to go through all the various processes... commission a land surveyor to subdivide the land, which has to be submitted to the local planning authority (the parish council). The parish council will then send it on to NEPA for review and recommendation," Knight added.

Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton has himself expressed concern over the use of agriculture lands for other purposes.

"Far too much of the most arable lands have been transformed into permanent non-agricultural uses. We have in Jamaica 2.7 million acres of land and only 17 per cent or 460,000 acres are flat mechaniseable, arable lands. We have lost approximately 25 per cent of this amount to other forms of development," Tufton told Parliament during his budget presentation in June this year.

To help tackle the problem, he noted that the Agriculture Land Use Policy would be completed to "specify how agricultural lands are to be utilised and in the case of government leases, the terms and conditions of leasing arrangements".

"We will no longer allow persons to lease government agriculture lands and not use it. We intend to standardise leases and the general message will be 'use it or lose it'," Tufton said then.

Permanent secretary in the ministry Donovan Stanberry suggested that the non-use of agricultural lands was the reason there was an issue to begin with.

"If our agriculture lands are lying there not being put to use in terms of farming, then it is so much more difficult to defend keeping them in agriculture. If something were planted... probably somebody wouldn't even approach. We are taking steps in that regard. We are consolidating quite a bit of government-owned land that we have in the Agro-invest Corporation... over 8,000 acres of government land," he told Environment Watch. "We have also asked them to find a private sector partner who is interested in farming to do joint ventures and use our ands as leverage. So we are not going to sit down passively; we are going to go out there and say to people, 'look, we have land... we are prepared to give you so and so support, come and invest in it'. We have started to do that."

"We are also encouraging private players to put their land into production because just saying the land is agricultural so it can't be used in any circumstance will not hold very long. And if they were in production, the argument would not arise," Stanberry said further.

Diana McCaulay, chief executive officer for the Jamaica Environment Trust, has, for her part, said that lands taken out of agriculture, if at all, should be used in an environmentally sustainable way.

"When you take land out of something like agriculture and put it into other uses like housing, mining, industrial development, you basically cannot go back to that position. You can go from agriculture to a forest (such as) if you decided to reafforest an area, those kinds of options. But there are certain land-use changes that are irrevocable and we think that decisions are being taken to convert agriculture land into these other uses that allow no other — in the absence of a proper planning framework and also, it seems to us, having got some information, against technical advice," she said.

"That is always a concern that we have. We don't want ministers or whoever is taking the decisions to take decisions (when) the technical people are telling them other things. We want them to follow the decisions of the technical people; that is why you have technical departments," McCaulay added.

She said further that where agriculture lands are to be used for other purposes, there should be public consultations.

"If we are going to take agriculture land and rezone them for housing, that needs to be looked at on a broad basis and I would say that there needs to be public consultation about it and you need to consider some other things like housing and final end use and proximity to jobs and that kind of thing," McCaulay said.

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