Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining Floyd Green announced at the 70th Denbigh Agricultural, Industrial and Food Show on Tuesday that farmers are to benefit from additional assistance worth $1.4 billion, as Government continues its efforts to rebuild the agriculture sector which was heavily impacted by Hurricane Beryl on July 3.

“Of that $1.4 billion we are going to help our fishing beaches [as] a number of our fishing beaches suffered significant damage; in fact, about 25 gear sheds were destroyed in Rocky Point. We are allocating $100 million to rehabilitate our fishing beaches, not to build back like they were, but to build back better so that it can withstand natural disasters of this nature,” he said.

He said allocation of the funds aligns with this year’s Denbigh show theme:’Building back through resilience’.

Green also announced that an additional $100 million will be allocated to assist greenhouse farmers in particular, noting the importance of improving the storage capacity for farmers going forward.

He acknowledged that a number of farmers lost livestock due to lack of storage, and he reiterated the importance for farmers to protect their goods after harvesting.

“One of the challenges we have in natural disasters is that we say to the farmers, Go out and harvest what you can so that the storm doesn’t destroy it,’ but unfortunately the farmers harvest but then they have nowhere to store it. We are going to be building out solar-powered storage capacity so that when you harvest for a storm you can put it up and you can have it after the storm,” Green said.

The agriculture ministry had already allocated $700 million as an immediate response to help farmers recover from the passage of Hurricane Beryl.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Andrew Holness urged farmers, Tuesday, to learn from the damage caused by Beryl and invest in improving their infrastructure to be better prepared for future disasters, while improving resilience.

“We must not look upon our challenges and adversity with fear. What we must do, as a resilient people and a people, who naturally believe in our ‘tallawahness’ is that we must prepare for challenge, prepare for crisis and prepare for adversity; rebuilding those infrastructure, we must build them knowing that a storm is going to come,” he said.

Meanwhile, several farmers expressed joy at being able to engage in another Denbigh show despite it being reduced to only one day.

Leon Golding, a representative for the Small Ruminants Association of Jamaica (SRAJ), said he was delighted to get the opportunity to engage with other farmers and provide valuable lessons related to animal rearing.

“I believe that if we didn’t have Denbigh this year a lot of farmers would have been heartbroken, because Denbigh is not just about showing the animals; it’s about coming together as a family and as farmers on a whole. We are a family regardless of what we do in farming. We rely on each other’s strengths. We use this opportunity to share best practices, and we use this time to just encourage another farmer as he goes through his challenges,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Golding, who did a demonstration to a small group of farmers during an animal showcase, said he was eager to get the chance to interact and engage with farmers, noting the importance of sharing information to the development of agriculture in the country.

“One of the things that we should understand is that farming in itself has evolved and an organisation like SRAJ would pull the new information that is out there and take that to farmers who are not so privy to it. What we are doing is building those people, and if we are talking about resilience as it relates to this Denbigh, we can only be resilient through the sharing of information and ensuring that the younger farmers do the best practice,” he said.

Another farmer, who was reluctant to give his name, said: “I learned so much today, especially in the seminars, and I do not know how I would manage if they cancelled the show, because this is something I look forward to every year and, honestly, one day is better than no day at all.”