MAROON TOWN, St James
It has been a long and painful process, but banana farmers in South St James say they are now on the road to recovery after absorbing heavy blows from the deadly Moko disease and Hurricane Ivan, nearly three years ago.

CLARKE. we gave them some help in the form of fertilisers and so on, and I believe that they got $500,000 to help them with Moko

"We really had it rough after (Hurricane) Ivan and Moko. Moko destroyed most of our plants and then about six months after, Ivan flattened our fields," said Leslie Hayles, a farmer from the Maroon Town area.

Hayles, like most of the more than 300 banana farmers in the hilly sections of St James, say their recovery was due mainly to the generosity of businessman Robert Chambers, CEO of the Maroon Pride Banana Chips factory in Maroon Town.
The St James businessman had donated to the farmers more than 500 bags of fertilisers, valued at just over $300,000 to be used on their banana seedlings.

"Mr Chambers was really good to us," Hayles said, adding that the farmers also used their "little savings" to assist in replanting their fields.

Additionally, some of the farmers used the funds generated from the cultivation of a wide variety of cash crops in their recovery efforts.
Now the farmers say they have sufficient fruit to supply the local trade and are aggressively pursuing avenues to export their crop.
"We have a lot of bananas now and the banana chips factory at Maroon Town where most of us sell can't take all of the bananas," said Theophilus Whittaker.

The factory, Maroon Town Banana Chips Company, established almost 17 years ago, buys the fruit from farmers at $6 per pound.
But although the factory buys an average of 25,000 pounds weekly, farmers are left with excess fruit.
Some of the excess, they say, are ripened and then sold to vendors who sell in markets throughout the western region.

Two Maroon Town banana farmers are about to take this bunch of green bananas from a tree. (Photo: Mark Cummings)

Farmers also sell the fruit to several other banana chips manufacturers.
But despite their recovery, the farmers say they remain upset with the Government for its handling of the banana sector post-Moko and Ivan.
They argued that the Government reneged on its promise to provide meaningful assistance to them during that "crisis".
"We got very little help from the Government," said Whittaker, a farmer in the German Town area. "They said they were going to help up, but they didn't do much."

In September 2004, Ivan, a category four storm with winds of up to 150 miles an hour accompanied by heavy rain, caused an estimated $500 million in damage to St James' banana sector.
Less than a month after the catastrophe, then Prime Minister P J Patterson said that the Government would deliver $220 million worth of agricultural stamps to the island's farmers whose crops were destroyed by the hurricane.

In addition, Patterson said, the Government would be providing agricultural inputs, such as fertilisers, insecticides, and seedlings to the affected farmers. Earlier that year, the Government had also promised to assist the banana farmers in re-establishing fields affected by Moko.
The disease resulted in the destruction of more than 50 acres of bananas valued at just over $40 million.

Last week, Agriculture and Lands Minister Roger Clarke told the Business Observer that farmers in St James had received assistance from the Government in their recovery efforts.
He was, however, unable to state precisely the level of assistance.
"We gave them some help in the form of fertilisers and so on.... and I believe that they got $500,000 to help them with Moko," Clarke said.
Meanwhile, Chambers has established a disaster fund geared at assisting banana farmers in the event of any catastrophe in the sector.

"What we do is to put one dollar in the fund for every pound of banana we buy from the farmers," Chambers explained. "At the end of November, if there is not a disaster, we will use the money in the fund to purchase inputs which will be distributed to the farmers."
At present, Maroon Pride pumps roughly $25,000 weekly into the fund.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World