THE National Irrigation Commission (NIC) has expressed concerns about the transfer of prime agricultural lands to non-agricultural purposes, saying this will have a negative effect on irrigation projects.

“This is continuing unabated, even in areas where government has committed substantial sums to improve irrigation and other infrastructure to enhance agricultural development,” Milton Henry, the NIC’s director of engineering and technical services, told last week’s meeting of the Senate committee reviewing the use of prime agricultural lands for housing, especially along the Highway 2000 corridor.

Henry singled out the Clarendon and St Catherine plains and St Thomas as the main areas where NIC irrigation schemes were being affected by land use changes. He said that prime agricultural lands in Jamaica represented a resource that will be lost to agriculture forever, “whenever they are converted into other uses”.

“The lands on the plains, especially, are some of the most productive and appear to be the most threatened,” he said. “As government balances the competing needs of different sectors of the country, the NIC believes that there is a clear case for improved policies and programmes to better protect and utilise Jamaica’s agricultural land resources.”

Henry said that the NIC currently operates irrigation schemes in five parishes – St Thomas, St catherine, Clarendon, St Elizabeth and Trelawny. He said that there were substantial infrastructure installed and personnel deployed in these areas, but land use conversion was threatening the viability of those schemes.

Proposed new schemes under the National Irrigation Development Plan (NIDP), a 20-year plan to expand Jamaica’s irrigated area by 60 per cent, was also being threatened. Under the plan, there are 51 projects to be completed at a cost of US$106 million. Changes in land use from agriculture could obviate the need for some of these projects while challenging the viability of others, he said.

He said that in St Thomas, 60 acres of the former Tropictulre lands had been transferred to Operation Pride for housing and 50 acres to urbanisation in Norris, while squatting and building of shacks has affected 50 acres more in West Albion.

In St Catherine, 220 acres of land, formerly belonging to Bernard Lodge estate, has been transferred for the development of the Caribbean Estate housing scheme. Also affected in the parish were: Bushy Park, which now accommodates the Vineyards Housing Scheme; Old Harbour’s Aviary scheme; Whitewater Meadows; as well as the intervention of squatting in Bodles, illegal sandmining in Bernard Lodge and the proposed New Town in Old Harbour, which is part of the Highway 2000 re-development project.

In Clarendon, the Cecil Rhoden housing lots on 50 acres, the Four Paths housing lots on another 50 acres, sand mining in sections of the Rio Minho and the proposed Highway 2000 development projects were threats, he said.

While in Trelawny, the continued development of permanent residences at the Braco Scheme, as well as the proposed development of the Braco airstrip were all creating problems for the irrigation programme.

Henry said that the affected irrigated lands in St Catherine and St Thomas produce high percentages of the national agricultural output notably sugar cane and vegetables, have some of the highest production potential and are already equipped with substantial infrastructure.

“The viability of irrigated agriculture in these parishes, we believe, is definitely being threatened by land use conversions,” Henry insisted.