After months of crop wastage seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the accelerated use of post-harvesting technology in agriculture remains lacking, sector stakeholders have said.

Post-harvesting technology which is used to improve quality while extending the shelf life of food involves the application of scientific and engineering principles to handle, store and package, distribute and sell agricultural produce after it has been harvested.

According to CEO of Seprod Richard Pandohie, who served as the president of the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) at the height of the pandemic, championed the need for greater use of modern technology including flash freezers and better cold storage facilities, said that even in the pandemic’s aftermath, much is still left to be desired as it relates to real progress in this area.

“There are high levels of wastage still taking place, so as it stands now, nothing much has changed. By the look of things it would seem our agriculture sector did not reset, nor did we learn to capitalise on the opportunities brought by COVID or even the urgency to improve our food supply. We have gone back to our own wisdom,” he told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

“As a country we need to understand that agriculture and agro-processing have to play a critical role in our economic development,” he said, while stressing the need for a change in mindsets and for greater emphasis to be placed on this very important traditional sector, which for the most part has been left behind and underfunded.

With his company, Seprod Limited, being a major player in the dairy farming sector, he said that over the years large investments have been made to grow the business, with even larger ones left to come.

“To further grow the business we are definitely using technology to drive productivity in order to make products more affordable for our customers,” he stated.

For Lenworth Fulton, president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), he said that while farmers will not be able to escape all wastage, he agrees that current levels continue to be too high and can be reduced with the use of proper post-harvesting technology.

He said that while there has been stark improvement with more farmers utilising suitable crates for storage following numerous training around packaging, there remains a lot more which needs to be done.

“Today we are not much better off with post-harvest management because we still have not managed to develop the required infrastructure and proper storage management facilities which include proper transportation systems for moving goods, better application of chemical to combat pests along with better storage systems — all of which contribute to better post-harvest management,” he said.

“Looking at the various items we produce locally, we need a combination of cool, cold and dry storage if farmers are to have better preservation of their crops and to facilitate the slow release of these products to market, similar to what obtains in more developed countries,” he added

Lamenting that infrastructural development is greatly needed to drive growth for the sector, Fulton urged government to lead the charge and to become more aggressive in delivering on these objectives, if it is to assist farmers with getting the most out of their yields.

“Individual farmers or even a group by themselves will not be able to develop these facilities — so we need government to build them and lease them back to farmers. Some of this has been going on but it is just not enough and at the pace we would have expected. While some improvement has been made, we are still far from where we want to be,” Fulton said, as he also called on international funding bodies to further prioritise post-harvest management among the many projects they have earmarked for investment.

“As farmers continue to lose up to 40 per cent of their crops to post-harvest loss, something must be done, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority [RADA] is trying its best but it doesn’t have the budget to do all the things needed. The issue therefore calls for the development of a properly structured project from government — one which farmers will benefit from reasonable rental costs,” he said.

Recent reports estimate that some 30 per cent or $7 billion of agricultural output is lost each year because of a lack of post-harvest storage facilities and inadequate transportation to take products to market.

Just last year, the Government had indicated that it would be piloting the development of a cold storage facility to counter farm waste, but progress on that initiative to date is at this time unclear and efforts to get an update from returning Agriculture Minister Floyd Green yielded no fruit up to press time.

For fiscal year 2023/24, the agriculture sector has been allocated over $21 billion to undertake a range of initiatives for its development.

Former Agriculture Minister Pearnel Charles Jr, who spearheaded the portfolio prior to a Cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Andrew Holness late last month, had told a parliamentary meeting that budgetary allocations to the sector for this fiscal year represents a 19 per cent increase or about $3.4 billion more than the previous year.

The agricultural sector, which was one within the goods producing industry to have contracted during the first quarter of this year, lost ground by some 7.6 per cent after severe drought conditions trampled on its output. However, banking on the prospects of increased rainfall and harvesting, there is hope for the sector to rebound in subsequent quarters.

“We continue to hope that drought conditions will not prevail into the coming months and that farmers will resume planting, so that the sector can be able to bounce back and to regain growth,” Fulton said.