Minister of Agriculture Floyd Green has argued that Hurricane Beryl came at the worst possible time for Jamaica’s farming sector.

According to Green, while there are efforts being made to help farmers recover quickly from the impact of Beryl, the weather system came just as strides were being made by farmers to recover from droughts affecting the sector since 2022.

Green, who was speaking during the handing over ceremony of 3,000 bags of fertilisers by Newport-Fersan Jamaica Limited on Tuesday, said the devastating loss suffered by farmers would have put a dent in the progress made as they were recovering from record-breaking heat that impacted them last year.

“Last year was a tough year for agriculture because we had our driest and hottest year ever recorded in the history. In fact, we entered drought in October 2022 and went through all of those months in 2022 and went over into 2023 into drought…We grew in the final quarter of 2023, we grew in the first two quarters of 2024 and our farmers were really expanding their hectares of the production and also were being more productive, so when Beryl came it really came at a bad time,” Green explained.

He declared that despite the setback of Beryl, his ministry [and] other stakeholders are working towards a speedy recovery for farmers.

Green said Newport-Fersan’s more than $15-million investment towards providing fertilisers for farmers will play a major role in improving the speed of their recovery efforts.

“Two thousand bags of fertilisers will be made directly available to the ministry and an additional 1,000 bags will be distributed through your regular channels, so in total 3,000 bags of fertilisers to support the recovery efforts and I can say to our farmers that this week we will start our fertiliser distribution and we are not waiting. We are getting some fertilisers today [Tuesday] and by tomorrow [Wednesday] we will be out in the field saying to the farmers, ‘here is some support to help you drive that process’,” said Green.

The agriculture minister said this will coincide with other recovery efforts including the distribution of seeds to farmers which started from last week.

Green stressed the importance of a speedy recovery process as he highlighted the need for a more advanced approach to providing farmers with reliable and sustainable facilities that will help them to grow their plants at a faster rate.

“We want to recover stronger and clearly we want to shorten the length of the recovery process, so what that means is that we have to take a different approach to recover, we have to take a scientific approach to recover. So having gone through a Category 4 storm with winds and rains, the question is what nutrition regime our plants need to ensure that we can shorten that growth time so we can have the best fresh produce on the market again,” added Green.

In the meantime, managing director of Newport-Fersan Dennis Valdez, who was in agreement with Green, said the fertilisers that will be provided to farmers will not only boost recovery efforts but will improve the sustainability of crop life for farmers across Jamaica.

“The fertiliser we present today featuring our premium booster fertiliser line are designed as essential tools in the recovery process. They are manufactured with advanced technologies, specialised additives and essential macro and micro nutrients [and] these premium products are poised to significantly boost crop years across Jamaica,” said Valdez.

The Ministry of Agriculture have so far allocated $700 million towards recovery of the agriculture and fishing sector which suffered up to $6.5 billion worth of loss due to damages caused by the hurricane.