FARMERS in Kingston and St Andrew are anxious to know how they will be compensated for the losses they sustained as a result of Tropical Storm Gustav which flooded the island late last month.

At a farmers forum at the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) headquarters in Kingston Saturday, farmers met to report on the damage in their areas and to discuss their concerns.

Among the concerns were damage to crops, poor road conditions, no water supply in some cases and limited insurance for farmers on a whole.

President of the JAS, Senator Norman Grant, assured the group that he would be making several recommendations to Parliament on behalf of the sector, but said that it was not his intention to solve everything.

No estimate of the damage sustained in the region was immediately available, but the ministry of agriculture reported that the total loss sustained by the sector islandwide is close to $1.6 billion. Of that amount, banana accounted for $500 million while sugar and a grouping of livestock, domestic crops and greenhouses lost $450 million and $500 million respectively. The damage to coffee was reported at $108 million.

In 2007 with Hurricane Dean, the sector suffered $3.7 billion worth of damage.

On Saturday, the farmers reported losing almost all their crops, including lettuce, thyme, tomatoes, escallion, banana, plantains, orange and pear trees, as well as coffee. Several of them also lost yams, peas and beans.

A number of areas, including Rock Hall, Jack’s Hill, Lawrence Tavern, Hall’s Delight, Mt Charles, and Content Gap also reported that their water supply has not been restored since Gustav’s passing.

Denise Green, a 35-year-old farmer said she lost 60 per cent of the crops on her three-acre property in Content Gap.

“We had plenty landslides on the farm. It’s not because of bad cultivation but because of the amount of water, it move away the land and cause plenty trees to come out and many of the crops to be out. People lost fowl coops, goats, some people lose house, some lose dem room and all.

“Landslides take away some of the coffee, some drop off the tree, and some of them blighted. Things bad up there and some of the farmers, especially the younger ones, planning to migrate from farming and try some other skill,” Green, herself a young farmer, said.

Henry Clarke of Halls Delight said he lost “almost all” of the crops on his one-acre farm due to the heavy water.

“I lose red peas, coffee, banana, some yam, string bean. We have some farmers lose up to 200 goats. They lose goats, sweet pepper and coffee.”

“Let me make it categorically clear,” said Grant. “It is not our intention to solve all the problems because we cannot. What we want to do is to ensure that the people you elected to serve you are doing their jobs. We are meeting at this critical and difficult period not necessarily to complain about what has been done or what has not been done,” he said.

Among the recommendations he put forward were to consider re-implementing the Length Man programme, instituting a centralised road authority, creating a fund for farm roads, and starting a development fund which will act as a pension and scholarship fund for farmers and their families.

The latter foundation has not yet been legally established, Grant said, but the $45 million procured from the sale of part of the JAS building has already been invested in Government paper.

“We are hoping that within five years we can grow the fund to $100 million,” he told the Observer.

“From where the JAS sits, we want to see a clear plan for our rural infrastructure, in particular for our farm road network and our water supply system. We want the Government to consider re-implementing the Length Man programme where rural citizens are put in charge of some aspects of the road, under a central road authority, because I believe that one of the reasons we have been backward is because our roads sometimes fall under nowhere. We have NWA roads, we have parish council roads, we have housing schemes roads, we have farm roads and we have roads that nobody is in charge of…

Grant also criticised regional governments for not having prioritised agricultural and rural development, to the detriment of the region.

“At the end of 2006, our production was some 267,000 [tonnes]. In 2007, as a result of the storm, there was a decline of 8.7 per cent in our production levels and it is projected that when you compare ’07 to ’08 there will be a decline of 11 per cent,” he said.