Dear Editor,

The myth that agriculture can save Jamaica re-emerges every time food prices rise. We’re going to farm our way out of poverty, on rooftops, in backyards and on garbage heaps, if necessary. The poor just need to farm. Of course, agriculture requires no skill; any idiot with a will can do it. After all, drop a pea on the ground on a wet day and it will probably grow. I got seduced into agriculture by Michael Manley and have a BSc. to prove it.

It was while I was at the Ministry of Agriculture that I heard Audrey Wright lamenting about the lack of respect for agronomy as a profession. Anyone who can’t do anything is advised to farm. It is the job of last resort. And that, then and now, is the bedrock of Jamaica’s agricultural policy. No one suggests that the poor should try a hand at dentistry. Yet I remember a fellow in Mavis Bank that was a deft hand at extraction without any relevant education. Grab the teeth, shake and pull. Buy a pair of pliers and you’re in business. I hear that the street corners of Mumbai are filled with such practitioners.

Now to grow peas, you need land, a hoe to plough the land; fertiliser, seeds; you have to ward off insects and thieves and then pray that the weather is good and that there is not a glut that year. I am still a dedicated backyard gardener. This summer’s crop of potatoes and cherry tomatoes has sprouted. Snap dragon, nasturtiums and geraniums have been started indoors to be transferred outdoors when the temperature is right. Leaves are appearing on my blueberries, plums and rhubarbs. My lilies are in their second year, have multiplied and are in bloom. Next year I will split the bulbs. They replaced the tulips that had been eaten by deer. The tulips had replaced the roses which had also become deer fodder.

After many years of such losses, my friend who does the flowers for the Nobel Prize banquet tipped me that deer did not eat yellow flowers. My lilies are therefore yellow. Snails, however, have no aversion to yellow. This year I must buy soil, seeds, prettily packaged cow dung, fertiliser and a spout for my watering can. Yes, soil for potting and topsoil for the outdoors.

Housing developers are cunning. They sell the topsoil before they build so what you have can’t even grow grass. Last year was a dry year. I got hardly any berries and no rhubarb. The potato crop was poor, too many snails and too poor soil. I was recently tipped by a friend that coffee, when ground, repels snails. I have tested Blue Mountain Coffee and it does seem to do a good job, so if we’re having problem selling it as beverage, we can market it as snail repellent.

After years of suffering from insect infestation, the plums are back. I could not afford to spray the big tree that required big spraying equipment. The cost of rental and spray could have bought me plums for a century, and I won’t live that long. I eventually found a solution on the web. Pick up all the fruit that falls and turn the soil in the winter to interrupt the insect’s life cycle. Of course, turning frozen soil is hard work. Picking up the tiny fruit that falls is also not fun since there is shrubbery under the tree. I do it twice per day. For the second time last year I tried Brussels sprouts. The first year they germinated and then died. Last year I grew them in pots and it went well. But as soon as the sprouts appeared the insects attacked. I lost the crop.

Normally, deer do not venture very close to the house, but with the drought last year, they tried to eat the doormat. The law forbids me even cutting my eyes at the poor deer. I’m not even allowed to have my dog off the leash, in my own yard, in case it scares the fawns. We are notified when there are young ones in the area.

Only my perennials are profitable. I could buy all the potatoes I eat for a year for the cost of a kilo of seed potato and a sack of cow poop. This is an expensive hobby. Inputs for hobbyists are packaged in pretty, pretty little bags at very high prices. My grandfather made a profit, but he had a donkey that provided manure and had never heard of hybrid seeds so he could save seeds for one planting to the next. He never sold his topsoil. If a backyard gardener can grow potatoes cheaper than they can buy, then it is a poor reflection on the productivity of the commercial farmers, or they know something I don’t. Do tell!

Doreen McGann

Stockholm, Sweden

doreenmcgann@aim.com