A number of farmers from government-funded agro parks across the island were among participants at a financial forum aimed at exposing small and medium-sized producers within the agricultural sector to the opportunities at their disposal.

The forum, which was held by the agriculture ministry’s Agricultural Competitiveness Programme (ACP) at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston last week Wednesday, featured close to 10 financial institutions as well as grant funders, such as the Development Bank of Jamaica and the Jamaica Business Fund, advising farmers on how to access funds from their respective institutions.

At least one of the participants, Pamelitta Dann, said the forum was beneficial as a lot of the farmers were unaware of the available grant facilities, as well as the fact that funds can be more easily accessed as a group rather than as an individual.

Dann, who is from the Yallahs Agro-park, said that one of the highlights of the forum was that at least one institution had provisions or was willing to help with praedial larceny.

“I was happy to learn that the grant agencies will fund technology in terms of cameras or sensors to protect farmers’ produce, because it doesn’t make any sense that farmers produce and then at the end of your crop you are not able to benefit. The country will benefit from it because the thieves will sell it to the public, but in terms of the farmer, we won’t benefit,” Dann said.

The onion farmer explained that financial help is usually very hard to secure. She said, in her case, an international grant programme operating in the country helped her to get back on her feet when her production had lapsed due to lack of funding.

“I think the Government needs to reduce the interest rate; borrowing money at nine per cent per annum is just definitely a no, no… you also can’t make any arrangements with a financial institution to borrow money and pay back on a monthly basis.

“This is because you wouldn’t even have started production as yet, you would have to wait, depending on your crop, four or five months, before you get any money,” Dann said. “So you wouldn’t be able to make a monthly payment when you never have it in the beginning to finance your crop.”

According to the programme director for ACP, Petronia Colley, the Inter-American Development Bank-funded programme has three components which treat with competitiveness across the sector. She said that the first component looks at farm-to-market linkages, while components two and three examine food management systems and agri-business value chain development, as well as the implementation of the agro-parks, respectively.

The progranmme, which was officially launched in 2010, was initially expected to end in 2015, but received a two-year extension until May of this year.

Colley explained that the implementation of the agro parks, which are areas of land specially designated for all facets of agricultural production, falls under the component which addresses farm-to-market linkages. She noted that in helping to achieve farm-to-market linkages, there was a clustering or grouping of the farmers within the various agro-parks.

Through the cluster approach, four parks, namely the New Forrest/Duff House agro-park in Manchester, the Ebony Park agro park in Clarendon, the Yallahs agro park and the Plantain Garden River agro park, both located in St Thomas, have been legally registered and farmers have received training in time and money management, marketing, negotiation and contracts, among other areas.

“So what we are doing, having brought all the different groups to a point where they have prepared their proposals, is to have this financial forum with actual serious financial investors who are willing to on-lend to the agricultural sector in a way that is amenable to production at rates that are affordable,” Colley told the Jamaica Observer.

“So we have all the financial entities and the grant providers here to basically illustrate what they have to offer, what is the process to acquire it, and to answer questions from the farmers in a holistic way that they can benefit and better prepare their proposals to approach them for financing in a sustainable way,” she continued.

Colley also said that she hopes that the forum provided financiers with a better understanding of the challenges farmers are facing and how they can better tailor their products to meet farmers’ needs.

“The farmers came out from all the agro parks, even as far as St Thomas, and there were also representatives from the Egg Farmers’ Association, the Pig Farmers’ Association… all the persons who we had invited in terms of the financiers and grant funders, they turned up with their booths and so the turnout was better than expected,” Colley said.