Ironically, up to the day before Hurricane Charley passed, residents of the bread basket area of south St Elizabeth had been fervently praying for rain, as increasingly infertile soil was parched by months of drought.

Suddenly the area was transformed into a torrential river bed. In a matter of days, farmers who had been paying up to $2,500 to fill their water tanks from Rapid Response water trucks to do a few days’ watering of the parched fields, were now flooded out of their homes.

Tears welled up in the eyes of Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) president Senator Norman Grant Friday as he surveyed the terrible conditions in which some flood victims were existing, nearly two weeks after the devastation wrought by Charley’s destructive winds and rains.

Grant, leading a team of agricultural sector representatives and the media on a visit of the area, explained the tears: “I am not an emotional person, but I can’t help shedding these tears when I see what is happening to some of these people.”

The tears became infectious, as the visitors listened to young Juliet Blake explain how she, her boyfriend and four children have been sleeping on the floor of their home, without much to eat, since the flood rains destroyed all their household furniture, leaving only a bed and a soaked mattress.

Blake said they had had to pick up their children – aged three to eight years old – and jump through a back window to the safety of a rising behind their home, after the flood water swept chest high into the house.

The drenched mattress was drying in the backyard, beside her day’s washing and a few mangoes she had collected from the tree in the yard for the children to eat.

Her neighbour, Conrad Banton, complained that he did not know where to turn after losing 150 chickens, his entire crop of condiments, watermelons and two cabbage nurseries. He said since being flooded he had only been visited by a representative from the Red Cross.

Banton was hoping that the team passing through on Friday would be able to help him back on his feet. But the JAS president was in a position only to promise an additional tractor for the parish from the society’s tillage programme.

“We can’t leave people to find their own way out of things like these. Ten days have already passed and nothing has been done to help them back on their feet,” Grant exclaimed.

In Banton’s yard, a couple of broken bamboo rafts dumped on the cracked, red earth recalled the difficulty the neighbourhood had moving around for almost two days after the rains.

“I never believed water could rise so high,” Banton said, gesturing to show the waters had risen shoulder-high. “I felt safe inside the house until I heard the goats making noise and when I looked outside, I had to run out to save them and the car from washing away.”

And, talking about what happened to cars in the area, teenager Marlon Williams showed the 1997 Mitsubishi motorcar parked in his backyard, at Bull Savannah, with its roof covered with red mud, testimony that the water had submerged the parked vehicle.

Behind them, the playing field of the famous Uprising Sports Club lay bare of its greenery. Red, cracked mud, like dried blood, covered the former oasis, as the ominous presence of Shaddock Hill in the background reminded them of the source of their misery.

Experts suggested that the water from the hill had descended on the valley during the outburst inundating property, livestock and people. But, none of the villagers could fathom what had brought so much rain in one night.

Marlon Williams’ relative, Judith Simpson, said that the night of the hurricane she had to run up the road in the darkness with her eight month-old in her arms through water as high as her breasts, to save their lives. She lost everything in her house. As the team passed through, neighbours were helping her family load refuse into a compactor.

“Everything gone, only life save,” Simpson said. She admitted that she had received some foodstuff and offers of help since the flood, but was still waiting to replant.

In Comma Pen, the torrent removed most of the red top soil and left white rocks. Farmers were irritated that an area which produces close to 20 per cent of the country’s gross agricultural output was still waiting for help to replant their fields 10 days after such a devastating flood.

Whatever happened to numerous teams which had visited the area, representing both sides of the political fence? they asked. “They probably passed by on the main road,” one resident suggested.

“This thing needs swift and quick assistance,” Senator Grant admitted. “I am really unhappy at the rate at which assistance is being provided for these people.” He warned that if something was not done quickly to help them get back on their feet, there would be a scarcity of local produce, in the midst of the JAS high-profile campaign to get Jamaicans to eat local products.

“We will have a surge in demand, a scarcity in supply and the prices will rise, and this could eventually derail the whole economy. There is no reason why the authorities cannot act more swiftly in dealing with matters like these,” he said.

The JAS and other farm sector representatives who made the tour Friday were surprised at the level of devastation which people in areas like Bull Savannah, Comma Pen, Ballards Valley and other villages had experienced on the night of August 11, and why they were still waiting for some help to start putting their lives back together.

Farm experts in the party suggested that the best hope for the farmers was a grant from the Government. The idea of crop insurance, which has been proposed for years, was out of the question as, they said, no insurer was willing to take that chance in such an unpredictable environment.

At Comma Pen, the team visited Glen Cain’s farm where he employs about five labourers, some of whom stuck around hoping that some help was coming. Cain said that he lost over $600,000 in crops and irrigation equipment and would now have to seek a loan to resume his production and re-employ his staff.

He said that no one had visited his farm to assess the damage or offer any assistance since the rains.

Another farmer from the area, Trevor Sinclair, complained that no one had come to the area to help them. “This is the first time anybody turn up,” he said of Friday’s visit. But, he admitted that it was the first time that area had been so flooded.

He said that while Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 and the terrible June floods two years ago had caused problems, the flooding had never been as extensive as this time, as the water would normally run off to lower ground. “This time water flood some place it never flood before,” he said.

The JAS team, which included vice-president Kingsley Clarke, announced a help line, 1-800-527-4357, which it has set up to promote a national appeal for contributions, in cash or kind, to assist the St Elizabeth farmers.

Senator Grant promised that the society would contribute some seeds and bags of fertilisers. However, he insisted that the $1-million the JAS hopes will be injected into the recovery programme would not be a grant, but would have to be repaid by farmers through some arrangement with their Central Marketing Company.

One of the first companies to support the initiative is Antilles Chemical/Bayer Cropscience, which has donated a total of $81,000 in insecticides, fertilisers and seeds to the farmers. The announcement was made during the tour by the company’s CEO, R Pat Rose. He added that more seeds and herbicides would be sold at discounted prices to the JAS and the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) for distribution to farmers.

In addition, Clinton McGann Farms has offered $5,000 in cash plus eggs and meat; Jamaica Broilers spent $20,000 on transporting the agricultural officials to St Elizabeth Friday and Juici Beef provided food and refreshments.

Grant said that the JAS would be discussing with the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) and the People’s Co-operative (PC) Banks a programme of restructuring and rescheduling of loans already being serviced by these farmers to ease their repayment burden.

The touring party, which also included representatives of the DBJ, the PC Banks and RADA, agreed that the damage they had seen first-hand suggested that the cost was much more than the speculated $100 million.