ULSTER SPRING, Trelawny — Opposition Leader Mark Golding has called for an increase in the allocation of resources to the farming sector in Trelawny, especially in the southern section of the parish, where agriculture is the mainstay of that rural economy.

The members of the farming community in the southern parts of Trelawny, have long complained about the absence of irrigation water, lack of market for their crops, poor farm roads, among other things.

Golding, who noted that he has a “strong interest in agriculture and rural development”, blasted successive governments for their failure to invest sufficiently in the agriculture sector.

“So many years after independence, we ought to have a proper irrigation system that the farmers can benefit from… these things are very expensive and that is often the reason why they haven’t happened, but it’s a question of what you prioritise. If you don’t put a strong emphasis on helping farmers to be as productive as possible, you are not going to put the necessary inputs in place to make that happen. So, what really needs to happen is that necessary investments need to be made for that to happen,” the leader of the Opposition declared.

“We need a strong economy overall that generates surpluses that can be used to invest in people and the economy, which is why the past PNP (People’s National Party) Government made so much progress and effort to turn the economy around and put it on a stronger footing, and as a result of that, the revenue base of the country grew substantially.”

Golding, who is also PNP president, was addressing a group of farmers in Ulster Spring, Trelawny last week, during a tour to the parish.

He was accompanied by the party’s general secretary, Dr Dayton Campbell and Ian Hayles, the national organiser.

Hayles, who was a state minister in the water ministry during a previous PNP Administration, used the opportunity to call on the National Irrigation Commission (NIC) to set up irrigation schemes in southern Trelawny, in a bid to assist the farmers.

“Even though they (farmers) are here in the Cockpit Country, which produces 40 per cent of the water for the entire north coast and surrounding communities, they still don’t have access to water. A part of our policy was the expansion of NIC to benefit farming communities such as Ulster Spring. The National Irrigation Commission needs to be expanded to benefit these farmers up here,” Hayles argued.

Emmanuel Campbell of Alps district lamented the difficulties faced by farmers in transporting their produce out of their fields, due mainly to the absence of farm roads.

Golding, who empathised with the farmer’s plight, underscored the need for investment in farms roads in the parish.

“In answer to your question about farm roads, it is not dissimilar to the one I gave in relation to water. It is all about investing. So if you are trying to make the life of farmers easy for them to produce, for them to take their produce to market, farm roads have to get attention. Simply put, the budget needs to be allocated with sufficient resources so that overtime we can upgrade our farmers,” he argued.

Golding said while he is not averse to the construction of highways, he, however, believes that the time has come to spend on roads for the transportation of local farm produce.

“You know that a lot of our resources in recent years have been spent building highways, and I am not saying that was bad, it was good. It has improved transportation and the time you can move around the country, but I think we are getting to the point where rather than looking at future massive road developments, we start to look at the productivity of our road network in the areas which need most to get products out, such as farm roads,” Golding stated.

He pointed out that the coronavirus pandemic has brought to the fore the fickleness of the tourism sector—the country’s main foreign exchange earner.

“COVID has established a reality which is that the tourism industry is fickle, it is very subject to shocks because people have to travel to come here and anything that impacts that can affect the tourism dollar. So we need to really look at the food security issue and make sure that Jamaica is feeding itself as much as possible… feeding other countries around us who are not blessed with the soil, the rainfall and the talent that our people have,” he argued.

Before his stop in Ulster Spring, the PNP president visited the Falmouth Public General Hospital, the Falmouth and Clark’s Town police stations, and the fishing village in Falmouth.

He noted that similar to his recent trip to St Elizabeth, the fisherfolk in Falmouth complained of dwindling fish stock, which he attributed to poor environmental practices.

“They (fisherfolk) are telling me the fishing stock is depleting and it is a result, partly of poor environmental practices in protecting our fish stock,” he stated.

“Similarly, we are in this area (Ulster Spring), we are in an environmentally sensitive area (Cockpit Country), it is an area which is the source of not only water for much of the western part of the island, but it is also a source of generating oxygen because it is highly vegetated, it is a source of all sorts of plants…flora and fauna that are significant from a biological point of view.”