FREDA Fraser used to spend hours in the sun, ploughing the Manchester clay soil to plant cash crops, while anxiously hoping they would not be destroyed by heavy rain or drought.

Last Wednesday, as heavy rains pounded the parish forcing many farmers to wait nervously on the inside of their homes, she comfortably tended to a bountiful yield of tomatoes – thanks to the greenhouse technology.

Fraser is now able to work at a moderate pace throughout the day, protected from all elements. She is gratefully aware that another farmer in her Yonder Pond community would have to plant six times the amount to get the yield she is expecting in a few months.

“I really experience plenty and learn a lot about greenhouse,” she said beaming. “When I am under here, I am in the cool and can do any amount of work. If I was outside in the sun I couldn’t.”

Unfortunately, Fraser does not yet own her own greenhouse but works at the Christiana Potato Growers’ Co-operative Association’s mother farm greenhouse project in Devon, Manchester. She longs for the day when she can set up her own but for now the high cost makes it almost impossible. It costs upwards of $300,000 for the smallest greenhouse.

“Every farmer should be exposed to this technology because it is a wonderful thing and I can see the benefits,” Fraser said.

The technology has taken off in the farming constituency of Manchester North East, where many farmers have eagerly bought into its benefits. Now they say that while they welcome their member of parliament Audley Shaw’s support for agriculture so far, they want him to provide financial assistance to small farmers so they can acquire their own backyard greenhouse.

For those who can make the investment, the yields received, they say, will give greater returns if they can be guaranteed steady markets for their produce.

Frederick Mills had to scamper for shelter as the rain came down suddenly while he tended his cabbage farm during the Sunday Observer’s visit to his home in Ticky Ticky. He, too, wants a greenhouse so that he can work even when it rains, while providing him with higher yields.

“Things are so expensive (yet) when you get something out of the field the price is so cheap you can’t see your way,” he said.

Princess Ferguson has to reach the Christiana market by midnight ahead of other vendors, if she is to buy the finest produce from St Elizabeth farmers at the right price.

“Me come by 12:00 am fi buy the load then me go home and have a nap and come back by 7:00 am,” she said, adding that she sells six days a week.

Some days business is good but this rare. With the rainy months coming, Ferguson will be forced to sell carrot at “dirt cheap” prices since it cannot stay for long in the fields. The greenhouse technology will benefit her too, since it would enable farmers to reap all year round and to sell at more reasonable prices. At the same time, most constituency residents believe the unemployed and unskilled youth roaming the community can now go into farming since it no longer has to be a ‘dirty’ job.

Through the efforts of the Christiana Potato Growers’ Co-operative Association, more farmers say they will become involved in the technology sooner than later. The co-operative has also established its own tissue culture lab which will make life easier for the more than 17,000 registered members in Manchester, Trelawny, St Ann, St Elizabeth and Clarendon.

Tissue culture is a scientific method of multiplying clean plants which are not disease-resistant, but will not become contaminated with bacteria and fungus.

Dr Gordon Lightbourn, the plant molecular breeder at the lab, said the plant is placed in a fertiliser-type mixture in a test tube then sterilised with distilled water. The lab, which has been open three months, can accommodate up to 70,000 plants, with one test tube producing over 10,000. Current plants in the lab include cucumber, melon, various types of irish and sweet potatoes, ginger and even ornamental plants. The goal, Lightbourn said, is to produce 100,000 plants per month.

“From this three test tube of irish potatoes we got 36 test tubes in four weeks,” he said.

Alvin Murray, general manager of the co-operative which has been around since 1959, said farmers with greenhouses will be able to supply large hotels and restaurants, thus putting a permanent ban on the importation of ground produce.

He noted that most farmers are idle from November to February as they await the end of drought. But if rain water is harvested in catchments for greenhouse irrigation, Murray said they can produce all year. He wants to see the hillsides of the constituency become fruit orchards, with the lower slopes used for greenhouses and the huge craters left by

the bauxite companies utilised as water catchments to provide irrigation.

Murray added that with greenhouse generating greater yields, markets must be found to allow farmers to bypass middlemen and go straight to the buyer.

“If you look at the list of things the hotels want, their challenge to us is that we would never be able to supply that amount,” he said, adding that the farmer working outside stops reaping after four months while the greenhouse produces all year.

Those farmers who believe they will never afford a greenhouse said they want Shaw to assist with cheaper seeds and fertiliser. And greenhouses aside, many of the more than 50,000 residents say they long for piped water.

“Sometimes we haffi tek taxi go get water,” explained one resident who said this can cost as much as $400 both ways.

Devon residents are also clamouring for Shaw to return the health centre to the community as they can no longer afford transportation cost to Christiana for even the most minor medical services.