KINGSTON, Jamaica— One hundred and sixteen banana and plantain farmers registered under the Catastrophe Insurance Fund are to receive payouts from the Banana Board.

Banana Board General Manager, Janet Conie, speaking in a recent interview with JIS News, said $20 million will be disbursed to affected farmers following damage assessment by the team.

The team at the board is currently working to notify farmers for claims to be processed.

“We will disburse those claims and those farmers can access what we think is the most important thing for resuscitation – fertilisers – which they will have. The fund aims to disburse within a month,” Conie said.

“Now this is important, because for recovery from a disaster, recovery from windstorm, recovery from breakage and from uprooting, you need to replant, you need to resuscitate the fields and you need to do it very quickly,” she emphasised.

Conie said the board will work with farmers to provide the necessary technical assistance they need to ensure that they are in a strong position to recover quickly from the hurricane.

“You need to chop back, and before every hurricane season and through a year, we teach you how to resuscitate. That’s our role. And so, when the farmers had this blow, within two days, some farmers were already in their field chopping back. We had a meeting last week on the catastrophe fund… and farmers who were represented on the committee said they were 50 per cent chopped back,” she noted.

Meanwhile, Conie is reiterating the importance of farmers chopping back as a critical part of the recovery process.

“Chopping back is a commercial term that we use for actually going into your fields, clearing the mats, clearing the roots for the first and most important element, which is fertilisation, because you need to fertilise to make the next generation come up.

You select your sucker for the next generation, you fertilise, and if you do that and put on that fertiliser no later than six weeks after, then you can have a reaping in seven months,” she explained.

For technical support, banana and plantain farmers are being encouraged to reach out to the Banana Board at (876) 922-5490.

-JIS