AFTER Hurricane Melissa caused significant damage to the agriculture sector, portfolio minister Floyd Green says the ministry’s build-back-better strategy is focused on planting the seeds of a stronger and more resilient food system, anchored in climate-smart farming, expanded storage facilities, and faster replanting.

At the same time, Green said that under the ministry’s immediate recovery efforts, vegetable production could be largely restored within three months if the current pace of input distribution is maintained. However, he noted that yam production is expected to take between one year and 18 months to return to pre-Melissa levels, with eggs and bananas requiring even longer recovery periods.

Speaking at the latest Jamaica Observer Press Club on Tuesday, Green described the devastation from Hurricane Melissa as unprecedented, eclipsing the damage recorded in recent storms. Initial estimates placed losses at roughly $30 billion, but a rapid assessment by the World Bank later doubled that figure to about $60 billion, underscoring the scale of the blow to domestic food production.

Green said farmers have nonetheless shown strong determination to replant — despite back-to-back storms — supported by measures such as free tractor services for the next six months and the deployment of new equipment, to improve efficiency.

However, he stressed that bananas will not be imported because of the threat of the Tropical Race Four (TR4) disease, meaning recovery in that subsector will depend entirely on local rehabilitation efforts.

Against that backdrop, Green said the agriculture ministry’s recovery strategy is deliberately designed to move beyond emergency relief and towards long-term resilience, recognising that extreme weather events are now a regular feature of Jamaica’s agricultural landscape.

Central to that approach is the storage of seeds and fertiliser ahead of the hurricane season, allowing farmers to restart production without delay after any weather event.

“One thing that we’re doing better now — and it’s definitely one of the things I’ve worked on with the ministry — is to prepare for that rainy day. So, we know that some form of weather-related event is going to impact us every single season. It’s either going to be a long drought, or it’s going to be torrential rainfall, or something will happen. So what we do now is to keep things, store things, so we have seeds that we store for the entire hurricane season to see what happens,” Green said.

Within weeks of Hurricane Melissa’s rampage across a section of Jamaica on October 28, the ministry began distributing seeds and fertiliser to farmers who were able to resume planting quickly, prioritising short-cycle crops to stabilise supplies and prices. He noted that early results are already visible, particularly for lettuce and cucumber which have already begun returning to the market.

That replanting effort is also being supported by private sector donations, with Hi-Pro scheduled to hand over vegetable seeds, fertiliser, chemicals, baby chicks, and animal feed to the ministry today as part of its Hurricane Melissa relief support.

Green said the experience has also highlighted a long-standing weakness in the sector — the lack of adequate storage to protect crops once they are harvested.

As a result, storage is now being treated as a critical pillar of the ministry’s resilience strategy, particularly in reducing losses when storms approach and for improving the speed of recovery once they pass. He explained that farmers are often urged to harvest ahead of hurricanes, but without adequate storage facilities much of that produce can still be lost if it cannot move quickly to market.

“We have been spending significant resources on our storage facilities and, definitely, any other weather event of this nature would catch us in a much better condition. We just opened a solar-run, 20- to 20-foot containerised unit in Flagaman [St Elizabeth] — which is kind of one of our big vegetable and fruit area — because at the end of the day we don’t want when the energy goes, you don’t have anywhere to store. And all of our storage that we’re building now will be powered by solar energy,” Green explained.

Alongside this, Green said the Essex Valley facility in St Elizabeth, which came through Hurricane Melissa with minimal damage, is nearing full operational readiness and will provide significant capacity for cold storage and processing.

Additional projects at Kirkvine in Manchester and other agri parks are also approaching completion as the ministry moves to ensure that storage infrastructure is fully integrated into agricultural production rather than treated as an afterthought.

Beyond replanting and storage, Green said the ministry is also accelerating training in climate-smart agriculture through the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA).

“Everybody looks at RADA in terms of input and what can they get but one of the biggest things that RADA does is training, and we do that consistently through the year and it is now climate-smart training. So, we partner with a number of institutions — including the World University School of Canada — and we do a lot on nutrition regimes based on this new climate and elevated heat, utilisation of water, and new farming methodologies,” he explained.

He added that efforts are also under way to expand protected agriculture, while acknowledging that existing greenhouse designs suffered losses during the storm. As a result, the ministry is reviewing whether current structures are suitable for Jamaica’s wind conditions, exploring alternatives such as indoor and vertical farming systems.

At the same time, the ministry is accelerating the expansion of irrigation infrastructure, which Green described as critical to how quickly farmers can recover after storms. He noted that even where crops are lost, access to reliable water often determines whether farmers can resume planting within weeks rather than months.

Furthermore, Green noted that the sector had been on course for its strongest year on record before Hurricane Melissa struck, highlighting both the scale of the setback and the potential for recovery if resilience measures are maintained.

He noted that the ministry’s focus is now firmly on ensuring that when the next hurricane season arrives, Jamaica’s agriculture sector will be better prepared, better protected, and able to recover faster than before.

Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Mining Floyd Green speaking at the Jamaica Observer Press Club on Tuesday. (Photo: Karl Mclarty)