Farmers now have an extra tool to help with farming efforts following power outages or natural disasters where they would otherwise be left in the dark for extended periods of time.

This tool comes in the form of an inflatable solar-powered light source, capable of providing up to 30 hours of light when fully charged.

“In the diaspora, we tried to find ways to plug in everybody, and so what we’ve done is we’ve come up with a light and a campaign called ‘Shed some light on Agriculture’. The product we are using to do that is a product called LuminAID,” said Neil Curtis, who is the Director for the diaspora-funded non-profit organisation called FarmUp Jamaica.

LuminAID was originally developed by two architecture graduate students to assist relief efforts in Haiti, but has since been widely adapted for numerous purposes.

“The other day when Jamaica was affected by a major blackout, our farmers had light. Now our farmers use this light for other things also. Because it’s waterproof, a farmer can take his light and float it in a pail or drum of water, and what it does is it causes all the moths that would lay all the eggs on your plant to come to the water and they drown,” Curtis explained.

He added that the LuminAID is climate-smart as it acts as a form of natural pest control without the need to use harmful chemical sprays.

“When you talk about a LuminAID light, we believe that if we can sell enough of these to some of our private sector and emergency services it would be great, because those people are probably gonna go and hand out lights when there is a hurricane and we found that people can and do use them for other reasons,” Curtis stated.

He added that 100 per cent of the proceeds received go into a special account used to help fund the organisation’s farmer assistance programme and pay workers.

LuminAID is being exclusively distributed in the island through FarmUp and should be commercially available soon.