DRIVING down a shattered, rocky, narrow road, I enter a small community known as Ragsville, in Guy’s Hill, St Catherine. I see a woman in the street beaming from ear to ear as she sees our vehicle approaching. “Miss Hilda, how you doing?” she asked. “I have a root a cassava I waan show you.”

On first look, this fair-skinned woman, clad in a pink blouse, jeans and some rugged sneakers, looks nothing like the typical farmer. Her hands tell the story of a woman who has been through a lot of pain and hardship, with a scar on her right hand stretching from inside her elbow all the way to her wrist. Her eyes however tell a different story — one of satisfaction, happiness and joy.

Marlene ‘Debbie’ Jackson is one of 80 farmers in St Catherine set to benefit from the European Union-funded Diversify to Compete Project. In addition to Ragsville, other communities in St Catherine to benefit under the programme include Middlesex, Golden Grove, Pear Tree Grove, Seafield, Springfield and Top Mountain.

The project is part of the assistance offered to banana dependent parishes under the European Union Banana Support Programme. It aims to help farmers who were once dependent on banana cultivation to find new crops which are both competitive and profitable on the local and international markets.

Under the project, Jackson and the other farmers are asked to commit a minimum of one acre of land for specially selected crops for which the project provides start-up planting material, and includes turmeric, ginger, yellow yam, sweet potato, red cocoa, dasheen, carrot and pumpkin seeds.

The project, which is set to be officially launched in the next few weeks, will run until May 2011 with a maximum grant of ¤270,400 or $28,541,697. Diversify to Compete also collaborates with the Import Substitution Programme of the Ministry of Agriculture, which informs farmers of the standards expected by supermarkets, hotels, direct consumers and provides linkages with exporters, with the hope that linkages will be maintained even after the project ends.

Farmers are encouraged to grow crops which are in demand and that are compatible with the soil and resources available to farmers. They are guided on not just the quality of their crops but also the increased profitability in planting large quantities of their crop.

Project officer of the Diversify to Compete Project Hilda Vaughan said the project is ready to help, “as many of [the farmers] that are willing to work hard, learn to make a farm plan, make the best use of their land and to meet consumers’ demand”.

A nurse, before turning to farming, Jackson said that she wanted to be her own boss. “Sometimes I looked at my paycheque when I was a nurse, I hardly brought home anything,” she said. But her push to enter farming full-time came after she was involved in a motor vehicle accident in November 2008 which severely damaged her right hand.

Jackson was told by doctors that she should not work, but looking back at all she had to undergo, she was determined to move forward. “I couldn’t listen to them [the doctors], ’cause when mi see mi finances a get low, mi say wah mi a go do… I looked around my yard and see everything a go down, mi chicken coop down, …I said I was going back to farming ’cause I can’t mek mi father land go to waste.” From farming, Jackson has been able to finish her two-storey block house and educate her only daughter, who is presently at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

Jackson and the other farmers who will be given demand-led crops to plant stand to recoup eight times their investment. This comes as a ray of hope to the farmers, many of whom have been hit hard by the drought which affected the island from November 2009 to March this year.

Jackson is very grateful for the opportunity to take part in the project and has persuaded other farmers in and around her community to get involved. When I told her about my mission to get their stories heard, Jackson replied, “I want you to meet Rupert; trust me, he has an unbelievable story to tell.”

Rupert Keys is a 25-year-old with a shy smirk on his face. After the contractor with whom he worked was shot dead, Keys said he just gave up. “Mi deh pan di streets and nutting naa gwaan, from mi yard to road,” he said. “Mi deh home jus a bun bere ganja, bere smoking, but mi see say dat naa go work.”

However, Keys said that he got his wake-up call when his girlfriend said that she was pregnant. “A girl kinda tell me say she pregnant and a my own… and mi realise say all mi when a do, caa work, so me started farming and then Miss Debbie introduce me to this project,” he said.

From farming, Keys said, “Mi get a lot of things, mi comfortable, buy clothes, food fi mi baby.”

Jackson strongly believes in being self-sufficient. “When we can do things fi wi self, it cut wi cost, man,” she said. Having faced a little setback with selling some of her produce to buyers in Kingston due to the uprising in Tivoli Gardens late May, Jackson hopes that this new project will help to fill some gaps in her business.

She is clearly very excited by these opportunities, for as she said, “at least now we the farmers have a market ready to look forward to. This will enhance the lives of all of us here, many of us have kids in school, even university, and it will help us to put them through”.