DEVON Williams and his three farmhands toiled on his threeacre farm in the Munro district, St Elizabeth as the Wednesday afternoon sun beat down on their heads. The men wore grim expressions, reaping bag after bag of carrots.

Two of the men sat slumped, shoulders sagging, on two bags of carrots. On the ground, around them, lay more of the horn-like shaped root vegetable. Looking on from a distance, one would expect that the men would be happy with their bountiful harvest.

But on closer inspection of the crop, one could see why they had fallen expressions. “If we did only get the rain, even last week,” Williams lamented to the Jamaica Observer, sounding like a broken man.

“We don’t have any irrigation system, so we depend on the rain.

We won’t be able to sell half of what we reaped. We not making back what we spent,” he said.

Williams’ plight is similar to that of countless other farmers who have suffered substantial financial losses due to a sweeping drought that has wiped out fields of crops, causing a shortage of ground provisions in the breadbasket parish.

So severe is the two-month drought that a restaurant in the Southfield area of the parish had to send to Coronation Market in Kingston to purchase cabbage.

A tour of the farming areas of Malvern, Munro, Southfield, and Nain revealed parched fields, dried-up crops and frustrated farmers.

What’s more, the areas do not have piped water, so farmers have to depend on the rain or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase water, which is a drain on their financial resources. But the purchased water — costing $10,000 per truck load — can only go so far, because as soon as the fields are watered, the scorching sun quickly renders the farmers’ efforts useless.

“Sometimes we get real excited when we see the rain clouds, but then there is no rain,” Lincoln Gayle of Fairview Farms in Southfield said in a beaten tone. But farmers can expect more dry conditions. The Met Service has reportedly forecast continued drought for the remainder of the year.

However, help is on its way. Coming this week, the Government says it will be implementing a $30-million drought mitigation project for farmers across the island.

According to Donovan Stanberry, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, in collaboration with the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), farmers and political representatives, is currently listing the needs of the parishes.

Stanberry announced the assistance to farmers last Wednesday at the 119th annual general meeting of the JAS, at the Denbigh Showground in Clarendon, while pointing out that the $4- billion irrigation schemes implemented by the Government across the island have lessened the effects of the drought. For farmers buckling under the drought, help can’t come soon enough.

Southfield farmer Goulbourne Millington planted five acres of melon and tomatoes and an additional two acres of carrots. He also owns two water trucks that he fills at $10,000 per day at a well in the Cheapside district. His tomatoes are mostly sunburned and his melon field is in shambles. “I definitely won’t be making back my expense.

I don’t see myself getting back half of it. There is nothing there. I definitely have to start over,” Millington, whose ground provisions have been sold in Coronation Market for 40 years, said in despair. Two years ago, Everett Rogers’ farm in Malvern produced a 200-pound yam.

Now, for the most part, the three-acre property, on which tomatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potato, red peas, and corn are usually planted, sits idle. Rogers, who had sold to higglers in the Santa Cruz market and supermarkets, said he had plans of expanding his ground provisions by planting watermelon and cucumber but can’t, because of the drought.

“In my 10 years farming, this is the worst drought I’ve ever seen,” Rogers said.

At Fairview Farms — which produced bulls crowned Supreme Champion at the Denbigh farm show in 1996, 2006 and 2007 — the race is on to preserve more than 100 head of cattle. The biggest issue facing the proprietors of the farm is sourcing sufficient water and grass, Gayle said. A bull or cow can drink up to 10 gallons of water a day.

A 900- pound bull consumes three per cent of its bodyweight daily, he said. With a shortage of grass, caused by the drought and a recent bush fire in Malvern that decimated some 600 acres of grasslands, the aim now is to ensure the animals sustain their weight, instead of trying to fatten them.

Still, it’s an expensive venture, with $100,000 being spent in a month to purchase grass, water and labour — costs proprietors never had to contend with before the drought.

Gayle said it wouldn’t be profitable to put the animals on the market under the current condition. “It’s back to square one,” Gayle said. “It’s really a huge setback.” Sixty-two-year-old farmer Linzie Ritchie is faring no better. He spent thousands of dollars, he said, on water, labour, fertiliser, and pesticide but his melon, pumpkin and potatoes came to nothing.

He admitted that he’s in need of assistance but at the same time was accepting of the situation. “Mi spend all this money and nuh get back nothing. But wah me a go do? A God work enuh,” he said with resignation. The story was no different in Nain: dried up fields litter the landscape. Even thyme, which flourishes in heat, looked a ghostly grey and stick-like.

There, a group of about six farmers sought shade under a tree on a section of the old Alumina Partners lands that has been set aside for farming.

The sprawling field would usually be teaming with farmers, but not today. Cauliflower, cabbage, sweet pepper, melon lay ruined. The men bemoaned the situation.

They want their political representative to assist them in getting at least four hours of water from the old alumina plant, instead of one. They also want assistance with fertiliser and pesticide in light of their financial strain. Still, they seem almost certain that help will not come. “Farming,” said one of the men who gave his name as Biggie, “is not an easy thing enuh, massa.”