IN pre-Independence colonial Jamaica, the sugar cane industry benefited from the British company Tate and Lyle using local labour and trained managers derived mostly from Jamaica School of Agriculture (JSA), Knockalva Agricultural School, and technical schools.

During this period Jamaica produced over 500,000 tonnes of sugar. The sugar cane industry declined rapidly from the 1970s because very little was done to mechanise it and make it more energy efficient in the operations after the colonial owners departed, and currently sugar production has fallen to 35,000 tons and now the lands remain idle in government agencies. The once-dominant sugar areas (Clarendon, St Catherine, Trelawny, Westmoreland and Hanover) have lost employment which could be attributed to the high crime rate in these parishes, and with this failure to modernise, Jamaica flipped from a net exporter of sugar to an importer of the product.

The banana industry went through many changes and similarly dwindled to nothingness and was modernised by a local company, Jamaica Producers Group, operating through a local market company, Banana Export Company (BECO). It needs urgent modernisation again. The banana lands are in bush all over Jamaica, while we are importing banana chips from our neighbours.

Such is the penalty of antiquity which unfortunately is the decaying foundation on which agriculture sits.

The need arose to find alternative use for thousands of acres left idle from the fallout of sugar cane and to some extent banana as well. This led, in 2005, to the development of the agro park concept under the direction of then agriculture minister the late Roger Clark and former Permanent secretary Dr Donavan Stanberry. Amity Hall in St Catherine was chosen as a good property to start and the Agro Invest Corporation (AIC) was vested with a mandate to provide the administration and financial support and to coordinate public and private sector involvement. Other properties were added in quick succession like Ebony Park in Clarendon and Plantain Garden in St Thomas and now there are 11 Agro Park locations, encompassing some 1,950 hectares (as at July 2023), with 400 farmers.

With all of this, growth in agriculture remains sluggish, the parks are mostly unused, with farmers hardly applying adoptable technologies in their farming practices. The expectation that agro parks would transform the agricultural landscape has not yet happened and the fallout from sugar, cocoa, banana, etc has exacerbated the problem.

It’s not too late, however, to put agro parks to more targeted objectives viz:

1) The creation of a progressive land policy to propel farmers to use arable lands for agriculture only and build houses on marginal lands;

2) The amalgamation of the Agro Invest Corporation (AIC) and Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings (SCJH) into a new entity with new leadership, qualified staff, etc. This merger would eliminate unnecessary duplication in government agriculture land management and give direction to modernisation of farms under agro parks;

3) The facilitation of a financial scheme through intermediaries targeting farmers to produce for our hotels and domestic markets, with emphasis on agro park farmers.

The modernisation of agricultural practice is the most important factor to move productivity to competitive and profitable levels in Jamaica considering all other things are equal. If agro parks were to be used as transformative, yam production should be experimental on at least one of the parks to demonstrate some level of mechanisation in planting, reaping, and erecting trellises to escape the primitive methods currently used in yam production, because this crop heads the list of government priority crops and is leading in export as well as local consumption.

Several other subsectors have employed appropriate modernisation and technologies to remain viable, such as the poultry and pig industries, but it seems that modernisation is exclusively a function of the private sector while the government-owned agro parks have not improved sufficiently over two decades.

It is obvious that to approach the problem from a purely labour-intensive standpoint might be a misplaced priority and it’s a better plan to modernise our farms to gain greater efficiency, which will result in higher wages, making agriculture ultimately a more attractive option for skilled personnel.

Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin) claims that unemployment is presently the lowest in our history, below 5 per cent, but farm labour is hard to find at affordable rates — in some instances as high as $25,000 per week per labourer so labour has a place on the agenda along with technological advancement. Other sectors, including construction and manufacturing and distribution, are experiencing similar labour problems, and the ministries of labour and foreign affairs need to discuss imported labour as an important national issue.

It’s time the powers that be begin to envision and employ the agro parks network as agents of change to enhance growth in agriculture for the new year and beyond instead of hinting at the exploitation of our Caribbean neighbours in an unstructured labour market. Besides, with the rapid onset of climate change, there needs to be a national programme for regenerative agriculture that can tackle our food security issues and contribute more to the local dietary needs plus boost the appetite of our tourists.