THE government is planning to bring several thousand hectares of unused and underutilised crown lands into production under its Alliance with Farmers project, Prime Minister P J Patterson announced Monday.

Patterson, speaking at the Denbigh Agricultural and Industrial Show in May Pen, Clarendon on Monday, said a loan of $9.5 million from the Development Bank of Jamaica had been providing farmers already participating in the project with working capital support.

Discussions, Patterson said, were in progress to extend the programme islandwide.

“In today’s world we can’t have one acre, we have to put idle hands to idle land so that they can be constructively engaged in building our economy. We have to give the right motivation to our farmers by way of incentives, by way of your access, by way of research and training and development,” Patterson said.

The prime minister said his government was committed to the agricultural sector as a critical part of national development, noting that agriculture must play a major role in Jamaica’s economic growth and social relations.

Patterson said support to the agricultural sector by the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) grew in the financial year April 2003 to March 2004, moving to $547.4 million, an increase of 64.2 per cent over the previous year.

Among projects supported by the DBJ were the Tillage Service for Small Farming and the Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme. “A $3.7-million grant from the DBJ is helping to rehabilitate cocoa production in the major cocoa-producing parishes of St Thomas, St Catherine, Clarendon, St Mary and Portland,” said Patterson.

He said that the programme had resulted in the number of boxes of cocoa delivered to the factories increasing from 1,738 in November 2002 to 8,516 boxes in November 2003.

At the same time, he said the Central Marketing System (CMS), being established by the Jamaica Agricultural Society, was receiving a $10-million loan from the DBJ, of which $5 million had already been disbursed.

The CMS, which is to be established on a phased basis, will purchase, process, store and distribute selected farm produce. The CMS will start in the parishes of Trelawny, St Elizabeth, Westmoreland and Manchester.