A group of farmers in Watt Town, St Ann, are now having the last laugh on members of their community who were sceptical about a greenhouse cluster project introduced there last year.

According to the farmers, who are each responsible for one of the 20 greenhouses, they decided to make sure the initiative was a success by getting actively involved when the project started.

The Watt Town greenhouse project is a collaboration between the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), through its World Bank-funded Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI), the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI), and Noranda Jamaica Bauxite Partners. The project is a part of a larger initiative by JSIF and JBI to establish greenhouses and water-harvesting storage systems at eight sites in three parishes across the island.

“We went to all the meetings with the companies and we got involved, and we all came to agreements before production started,” farmer Randel Jackson told the Jamaica Observer. “You see some of the times when certain things organise in the community, people back away because they never know it suh serious. Things come in the community already and people back off because they say it not coming out to nothing, but we decided to be persistent wid dis one and it running ya now.”

For the 20 farmers, the project is more than just planting sweet peppers and tomatoes for the hotel industry. It has proven to be a learning process, as it has widened the scope of their own farming knowledge.

“We learn fi control some of the insects because sometimes outdoors, insect eat yu plants dem, and we not even realise they doing it so bad. So we learn to keep a close eye on the plants because when yu plant it outdoors, maybe you spray it one time fi all two months and yu nuh spray it again, but we learn say we need to pay more attention it,” 65-year-old Christopher Lawrence explained.

But even after having the greenhouses up and running, there were still complaints, this time from younger community members who claimed that it was only the older farmers who were given the opportunity to work in the greenhouses.

However, the greenhouse farmers stated that this was not true as the invitation was extended to young people in the community, but only one young man took up the offer.

“Nuff a di younger ones should be here, but dem back out and say nothing naah gwaan, so we had to step in and start. I feel say some of them parents have a lot to do with it to. Some of the parents could push them; children young, and some giddy, so you as the parent sometimes haffi stand up and say ‘gwaan, try it out’, but some of them say ‘bwoy, mi see it many years ago and nothing nuh come out of it’, but you holding them back like that,” Lawrence said.

“You have to stand by and push them. All sometimes they don’t want to go but you have to try and push them onto it, yu haffi encourage them, some won’t tek it, but others will, ’cause see a young man come in and him a gwaan well,” he continued.

The young man to whom the farmer referred was 24-year-old Emmanuel Downer. The quiet youth previously manned a small farm and raised livestock before becoming a part of the greenhouse project.

“They (youths) not interested because they claimed nothing never come out of it, but I just came around here and told them I wanted to join it and I got a greenhouse and I just continued working, and it has been good for me so far,” Downer said.