JOY and relief were palpable at GraceKennedy Insurance Limited’s headquarters on Monday as a number of female farmers celebrated the company’s parametric insurance scheme set to benefit 120 women, offering crucial disaster support and safeguarding their livelihoods.

The initiative, according to GraceKennedy, is the scale-up of the GK Weather Protect insurance policy which, unlike traditional insurance, uses weather data triggers to provide rapid payouts for hurricane winds, excess rainfall and drought, allowing farmers to recover and replant immediately after a disaster.

The new policy offers a significantly lowered barrier to receive support, with a Category 1 hurricane now triggering a 30 per cent payout, up from just five per cent in the previous version. For more severe events, such as a Category 4 storm, payouts have increased from 25 per cent to 80 per cent, with payouts being processed within days.

The women, including 10 poultry and livestock farmers sponsored by Hi-Pro and 110 farmers sponsored by CARE International, will each receive $150,000 in coverage per peril. Ahead of the upcoming hurricane season this represents $54 million in insurance coverage to ensure that, if the weather turns, female farmers have financial resilience to bounce back quickly.

Keisha Wint, a visually impaired poultry farmer from Manchester, told the Jamaica Observer that she is happy for the policy because it givese her a sense of security, especially in present times when storms are becoming more intense and frequent.

“Financially it is very important, because after Hurricane Beryl [June 2024] and Hurricane Melissa [October 2025], I didn’t know where to turn, and it is very hard — especially as a single mother and someone with a disability. So, when you have an insurance like that at least you know there’s some support,” said Wint.

She added that as a disabled female farmer she experiences a lot of hardship with minimal support, and as such she is grateful for the opportunity to receive aid that can get her back on her feet after Hurricane Melissa.

“It’s very hard because other people look down on us as a female farmer — plus as someone with a disability — but we’re resilient people and we show that we are capable enough so we can do the things to earn for ourselves. We really don’t want to beg every day; we just need a helping hand so that we can go ahead and earn for ourselves and take care of our families,” said Wint.

For Julette Chambers, a visually impaired goat farmer from St Elizabeth who lost her entire herd of 58 goats to the floods of the Category 5 storm, the insurance policy is extremely important to help her back on her feet.

She told the Observer she now feels more secure in the case of a disaster, noting that she will be better prepared and able to deal with the aftermath.

“My pen was wiped out; we lost everything. When the top came off, the goats went under the bottom of it and they all drowned. However, this initiative that is now being presented to me is going to be of great help, because if something should happen to any of my goats I would be able to start back financially, so this initiative should help if anything should happen in the future,” said Chambers.

Ornamental and strawberry farmer Trishawna Brown from Munro, St Elizabeth, was also happy on the occasion as she shared that while Hurricane Melissa did not cause extensive damage to her property, she remembered the destruction Beryl dealt and knew exactly why insurance coverage is necessary for farmers.

“It’s a good initiative, because I’m a single mother of two children and I don’t get much help so with all of this consideration for us female farmers, it’s really appreciated and it’s a really good look for the country,” said Brown.

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Floyd Green acknowledged the resilience of all women farmers, and said he intends to continue encouraging and supporting their livelihoods.

“This is the new era of agriculture that we are embarking on where women farmers and young people are fully included in the opportunities that agriculture provides. The women that are gathered here today represent an essential part of this future. Your work has been sustaining rural communities and your enterprises continue to drive food security. And we depend on the next generation of women to choose agriculture because, no matter what happens in the world, we will all have to live — and the country that can feed itself will always be the country that is most secure,” he said.