Whitehouse, Westmoreland — Wilburn “Bongo” Allen has a history of reaping oversized crops — a 57-pound pumpkin, a 10.5-pound sweet potato and a single root of cassava that weighed in at 60 pounds.

But his recent harvesting of a 151-pound yam still came as a surprise, especially since he reaped it ahead of time.

“I planted it April last year. I usually let them stay for two seasons, but this one start to have some burn on it so I decide to dig it out,” Allen explained.

The massive tuber was grown on Allen’s 11-acre farm, along with several other varieties of yam, pumpkin, cantaloupe, cassava, pepper, tobacco, sweet potato and plantain. But despite his past successes with oversized produce, Allen said he still struggles to earn a living from farming.

Allen said he leased the land for $25,000 a year, but the first crop usually failed annually because of bad weather or other natural disasters. He said business was also adversely affected by dwindling market and added that it was only the thought of losing his investment that kept him from throwing in the towel.

“It is when I look at how much I put in and how much I lose already, that I decide to still make a try,” he said, adding that hundreds of pounds of produce perished in his fields each year.

Against this background, Allen challenged the government to put measures in place to assist small farmers like himself to prepare and market their produce.

He maintained that although the old methods, such as manually tilling the soil with an iron fork were now outdated, farmers still had to resort to them because they could not afford more modern equipment such as tractors.

“Food is the staff of life, but it is not getting any support,” Allen complained.