DENBIGH, Clarendon — Prime Minister Andrew Holness has announced that the Agro-Investment Corporation (AIC) will be putting in place a matching grant scheme for small farmers under the Southern Plain Agricultural Development Project. This groundbreaking initiative, he said, will empower and uplift small farmers by providing them with up to 80 per cent of the resources they need.

The AIC, which falls under the agriculture ministry, boosts agri-business by stimulating, facilitating and developing agriculture.

The major objective of the grant scheme is to upgrade the irrigation and drainage networks, roads, and post-harvest handling facilities on 795 hectares of Government-owned lands in Amity Hall and Bridge Pen, St Catherine, and Parnassus in Clarendon.

“I want to encourage our small farmers who are going to seek to participate in the agricultural opportunities that the AIC will provide, to go there now and find out how you can benefit from this matching grant scheme,” Holness urged.

The initiative is being funded through a grant of approximately £16.7 million from the United Kingdom Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF) and is being administered by the Caribbean Development Bank.

The prime minister’s announcement came during his keynote address on the final day of the 69th staging of the annual Denbigh Agricultural Industrial and Food Show in Clarendon on Monday.

It came on the heels of a tour of some of the booths and viewing of displays where the prime minister saw first-hand youngsters’ innovations in agriculture. He later encouraged participants to form corporations to maximise the benefits available through funding agencies such as the Development bank of Jamaica (DBJ). The prime minister also spoke of the opportunities at the various levels of agriculture.

“An important element to truly realising independence in agriculture is to bring to bear not just the farmer, but another personality into agriculture. The person who is able to coordinate the planting, marketing, investing and incorporation of technology into agriculture is the entrepreneur,” he said.

“We can train farmers to become entrepreneurs, and train entrepreneurs to be farmers. In the Jamaican culture when it comes to business, everybody wants to own the business, instead we need to work together to build businesses in agriculture where people with different skills, attitudes and talents come together to create a business and what we are doing now through the AIC is to provide these business opportunities through the efforts of the DBJ,” Holness added.

The prime minster noted that a fundamental feature of freedom and independence is being able to feed ourselves whether there is drought, hurricane, or price increases.

“We have so many alternatives that can be grown here and people won’t know the difference between wheat and cassava flour. But how do we get our production up to the level where we are not reliant on imports from overseas so that when we have external shocks, we are not impacted?” he asked rhetorically.

Holness pointed out that Jamaica has more than 200,000 hectares of arable land and only needs to farm 100,000 in order to sufficiently produce the staples and proteins, vegetables and fruits that the country needs.

“If we farm 50 per cent of that we will be in a good place and can also export. Jamaica could supply all the food needs for the tourism industry in The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. We could supply all the food needs for the Caribbean,” he said.

However, he noted there are several factors that need to be addressed.

“One is that of the 200,000 arable lands that we have, currently we are farming only 31,000 that is irrigated so the provision of reliable irrigation to those acreages is a big challenge. So, we have about 15 per cent of total arable land irrigated — this is after 61 years of Independence. If we are serious about expanding agricultural outputs then investments will have to be made in agricultural infrastructure, particularly irrigation,” the prime minister stressed.

He added that the Essex Valley and Southern Plains irrigation projects are ongoing and both are expected to bring about 5,200 hectares of land under irrigation. That will push up to 18 per cent the amount of arable land being irrigated in Jamaica.

“That is just a baby step to where we need to be but this Government is committed. We are now going to do the Pedro Plains project which will be done soon. [It] will move us steadily towards our goal of irrigating arable lands,” Holness concluded.