After spending months diligently searching for a job in the agricultural sector and on the brink of giving up, Dahlia Cole found her dream job in the most unlikely of places.

Six months ago, Cole, who has a diploma in agriculture, was working at a wholesale in May Pen having been unable to find a job in her field of study, when she met the director of FarmUp Jamaica, Neil Curtis.

“People were saying it doesn’t make any sense, better you go try something else, to the point where I decided I was going to give up because I spent so much money and I don’t see where I was going to go,” Cole recalled.

“But then the good Lord sent Mr Curtis, and from the day I saw him, a smile was on my face. I went home and daddy was like, ‘What’s your problem?’, and I’m like, ‘I got a new job’ and I didn’t even get the job yet,” she continued.

She had initiated a conversation with the director after enquiring about his profession when she saw that he had red dirt all over his clothes and shoes.

Surprised by her obvious interest in farming during their conversation, Curtis decided to try and get her on board for the FarmUp JA project, which is aimed at revitalising the agriculture industry through organic farming practices and crops.

Cole now works as one of the project’s Farm Supervisors after impressing Curtis with her knowledge and passion for farming. She now does supervisory work for FarmUp Jamaica’s farms as well as outside farms who wish to join the project.

She is also in charge of the students who come on board for the project’s work/study programme, where she keeps a strict handle of how things are run on the farms. Cole explained that she ensures all participants have a log where they must write down everything that happens, even if it may seem simple and insignificant in their eyes. She added that consistency is key and this helps everyone, including herself, to stay on top of the game.

However, as she also has to work with farmers older than her, this can often prove to be a challenge.

“It’s been both a good and bad experience because sometimes you have the farmers who won’t listen to you, sometimes they think that because you are younger than them they don’t want to hear what you’re saying. So sometimes, I have to refer them to the boss because they’d be like, ‘Weh you know, you just lef school’”, she said.

Added Cole: “If I say to write a log they’ll be like, ‘Weh dat for, me grandfather neva do that, me neva do dat, weh dat for?’ So it’s hard to give the mature persons the information, but the young ones see it and where it’s going, so as the days go by, it’s getting little easier but not much.”

But this has not dampened her love for working in agriculture, which she explained has always been a part of her life. Cole explained that she grew up with a chicken coop in her yard and enjoyed parading around in the water boots and hat her dad bought her. This love for agriculture was what propelled her to pursue a diploma at HEART/NTA.

“Mommy always says, ‘Me farm gyal come here’ or my neighbours who raise chickens will be like, ‘Go down a Maas Shorty go ask him weh fi do’ and my dad will call me at school and ask: ‘Dahlia, weh me fi do, me neighbour chicken have bloody faeces,’ and I’ll say, ‘It’s coccidiosis, tell her to go buy this or that, so I was like a little farm supervisor in my community, never knowing that I would become a farm supervisor in the job world,” Cole said.

The 22-year-old said she is thoroughly enjoying her job after enduring five years of working in stores and teaching, while adding that she has found her source of inspiration in agriculture again.

“What I’ve learned is that organic is the healthy way and knowing that most of my friends are dying because of cancer, I want to become one of the persons who can save people from cancer or reduce cancer rates. So agriculture is one way of doing this because everybody has to eat food, so why not farm it?” Cole explained.

“For me, young persons should pursue agriculture because you need to know what you’re eating because some places you go, you don’t know what dem do wid the callaloo before yu get it, because I’ve eaten callaloo where I’ve found splinters of the chopping board,” she added.

The farming enthusiast stressed the necessity of being careful with your food, saying it’s better “yu go roun’ a back and dig it”. She proudly stated that she no longer buys onions, scallion, tomatoes or thyme as she farms all of these crops at her home in Clarendon, with flour and rice being the only items her mother has to buy.

When asked what plans she has for the future, she replied: “Continue working with FarmUp Jamaica, having my own farm and employing a few persons and pulling more family members into agriculture because they have the land but they are not using it. I encourage everybody nowadays to do agriculture because there is an opportunity for you.”