JAMAICA Labour Party (JLP) senator and caretaker for South-West St Elizabeth, Dr Chris Tufton, said that more needs to be done to enable the agriculture sector to be benefit from tourism development.

Senator Tufton said that efforts being pursued by agencies like Jamaica Trade and Invest (JAMPRO) were inadequate, and involved more talk that action.

“We need an effective supplier development programme, which should include the farmer, hotelier and Government. And this is not just about bringing the parties together, it should also involve government’s technical input,” Senator Tufton told guests attending a JLP divisional conference in Hampstead, Central St Mary, recently.

He said that too much is being left to chance and luck for farmers in terms of securing a relationship between the hotels and themselves.

“While we cannot force any investor to do anything, we must be more proactive in establishing appropriate relationships between the farmer and hotelier. These relationships must be based on mutual respect, where farmers are paid on time and, in exchange, provide quality products and timely deliveries,” Senator Tufton said.

He said that once this relationship is developed, it would lay the foundation for Jamaican farmers to increase their competitiveness, both here and in the global market.

The solution to improving the competitiveness of he Jamaican farmers must be linked to adding greater value to the country’s agricultural output, Tufton added.

“We have to do more from the primary to the value-added stages of the production process and agricultural marketing is fundamental to this process. The Government must use institutions like the University of the West Indies and external experts, if necessary, to boost the capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture to modernise the sector,” he said.

He said that Jamaican farmers are ill-prepared to compete and find new markets because of the government’s ad hoc approach to boosting agricultural productivity and competitiveness.

He noted that while the agricultural sector engages 20 per cent of the Jamaican workforce, it only accounted for six per cent of the island’s gross domestic product, clearly indicating low levels of productivity.

Over the past 18 years, Dr Tufton said, the PNP government has left farmers to “fend for themselves”, while locking them into international arrangements, through the World Trade Organisation, that will see international competition forcing them to barely survive from subsistence activity.

“This is tantamount to pushing agriculture and the Jamaican farmer into the dark ages, as the rules are changing but their capacity to adjust and compete is not advancing,” he said.

He said that while accepting that the Government cannot fundamentally change new developments in international trade allowing increasing liberalisation and competition, it has been off the mark in providing guidance and leadership to the farming community on ways to improve productivity and secure markets.

“This administration has been engaged in an 18-year experiment with little to show from the farmer’s perspective,” Tufton said.

The Hampstead division is represented by JLP councillor, Barton Oliver. The party’s candidate for Central St Mary is Leonard Richards, who will be opposing sitting MP Dr Morais Guy of the PNP.