LIFE Member of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), Central Kingston Member of Parliament Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Thwaites, on Saturday lashed out at what he said was a “consistent effort” by some people to “downgrade” and “bypass” the 114-year-old organisation, which has a vital role in stabilising the floundering economy.

Thwaites, who was addressing the Farmer’s Leaders Forum at the JAS headquarters on Church Street in Kingston did not call names, but told the gathering, “we must have none of it”.

“We must stand up,” he continued, adding that “the members of the Jamaica Agricultural Society are needed now more than ever before (as) the only sure route for economic regeneration is through agriculture”.

At the same time, he said the entity – which is responsible for carrying out organising and marketing functions among farmers – must have a “renewed role”.

Noting also that the country’s food import bill for last year alone stood at US$800 million, Thwaites said the return by the Government to a borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) only provided a way of bandaging the problem in the long run.

“The story that has never been told is that the country cannot afford the US$800 million that they are spending to import 55 per cent of what we eat, this year, next year or the year after. We cannot afford it. The IMF will not help us in that regard.

“What it will do is shore up a system where there is foreign exchange that is available to pay for the food imports, but that will not help us to afford it when the payback time comes,” the MP said.

In the meantime, immediate past president of the JAS, Senator Norman Grant, said the parish of St Andrew had a critical role to play in food security.

“Without the agricultural sector Jamaica would be a failed state, even though we have been referred to as the Cinderella of the Jamaican economy. The recession we are going through now is not a green card to go on recess, and the farmers have demonstrated that when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” Grant said.

Addressing the fears of coffee farmers given the “problems” in the Japanese market – which is responsible for 90 per cent of the coffee sales from Jamaica yearly – Grant said efforts were being made to find alternative markets.

“From where I sit as chief executive officer of the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory, we have committed to buy from our 6,000 farmers, but the Japanese market is saying because of the recession and the oversupply of triage (the sorting of coffee beans into three levels of quality, the lowest being called triage coffee) they don’t want to buy as much coffee for the Japanese market as they bought in the past,” Grant told farmers, noting that the total sales from coffee stood in the region of $28 million per annum.

“Ninety per cent of that goes into the Japanese market so you will understand that if Japan is not buying it will certainly create a problem.

But Grant said there was no “need for panic”.

“The coffee sector met with the minister of agriculture last week and, certainly, there is an urgent need to see how we can diversify our market to increase sales into the United States of America, China, Singapore and Russia but those are going to take time,” the former JAS president said.

In the meantime, he said coffee farmers should harvest their coffee berries and deliver them to the depots when they are still fresh.