Dear Editor,

St Andrew West Rural Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn was recently in the media when she appeared enamoured by the enterprise of her constituents in the hilly western St Andrew communities of Brandon Hill and adjoining New Garden.

Farmers there have shown great resilience in defying the odds of climate change, a lack of understanding by a subsector oblivious to the link between affordable credit and production, predial larceny, and impenetrable markets for even incomparable high-quality farm produce.

Kudos to Cuthbert-Flynn, who actually ventured into the hills and deep ravines of her constituency to meet with sorrel farmers. She appeared totally flabbergasted at their productivity, and even condesended to purchase two bags of sorrel from one of the farmers. Her display here was actually admirable, since symbolically her act of promising to purchase sorrel demonstrates that the fragile business concepts and cycle for these farmers cannot sustain extended credit. Before long Cuthbert-Flynn will be establishing accessible markets and the associated linkages for the farmers to realise sustainability in the trade of their goods.

She is scheduled to go further in breaking through the limitations of seasonality of production, not only given our favorability in terms of our climate, but given that the current sorrel herb cultivars are no longer seasonal and are capable of being produced year-round.

I suspect that with her astonishing transformational mindset, pretty soon she will inspire her constituents to transcend the production value chain, and I am sure has already pointed to the establishment of the first of its kind in a depressed, urban constituency — a processing plant fashioned from the concept of a real-time cottage industry located in Brandon Hill, with an ownership structure similar to the acclaimed success of the Employee Share Ownership Programme (ESOP).

Cuthbert-Flynn is effectively down the wicket in a never-before-seen breakthrough with all her business-oriented constituents into the most transformational concept of modern agriculture — that of wealth creation through transitioning from primary products to finished goods.

A concept like this will also more adequately meet the need of discriminating consumers, while positioning the farmers to aspire towards understanding that we must leverage primary products, rather than subject them to abuse when produce is released to the market prematurely for vulgar short-term gain.

She has not only inspired this groundbreaking change with respect to sorrel, but have rescued the ailing coffee industry, which has for the last 100 years been beleaguered by depressed export prices due to trading in its raw materials only.

Derrick D Simonderrickdsimon@yahoo.com

I expect to see Cuthbert-Flynn on the next occasion when the Government recognises outstanding achievements and confer national awards and accolades.