JAMAICA’S push to modernise its agricultural sector is facing a familiar obstacle, with Agriculture Minister Floyd Green acknowledging that a shortage of extension officers continues to limit the support available to farmers.

However, he says the Government is moving to strengthen the system through new hires and digital tools aimed at getting support to farmers more efficiently.

Green made the disclosure on Monday as he responded to concerns about whether the State has the capacity to effectively reach large numbers of farmers under the newly announced ADAPT Jamaica programme, a climate resilience initiative backed by the Green Climate Fund. His comments pulled attention away from the scale of the funding itself and onto a much older problem inside Jamaican agriculture — whether enough front-line support exists to help farmers actually make use of new opportunities when they come.

Green did not dispute that the imbalance remains a challenge, instead describing the disproportionate ratio of extension officers to farmers as a long-standing weakness in the delivery of extension services.

“Our ratio of RADA (Rural Agricultural Development Authority) officers to farmers is always something that has been a challenge for them to provide effective extension services. So we are doing three things in that regard. One, we have been working on the structure of RADA, and we do have under the structure of RADA some assistant extension officers that had not been mobilised over the last few years,” Green said.

He said one part of this response has already begun, with assistant extension officers now being employed, particularly in areas where the imbalance is most severe. According to Green, some of those officers are already on the ground and helping to ease pressure in the system.

But Green also made clear that staffing alone will not solve the problem. He said the ministry is seeking additional support from the Ministry of Finance to expand the cadre of extension officers, though he acknowledged that the State is unlikely to ever close the gap entirely through manpower alone.

However, he suggested that the Government’s most practical response to the long-standing shortage lies in technology. Green said RADA has developed a mobile application aimed at bringing extension services closer to farmers by allowing them to report problems from the field, seek guidance and schedule visits, without always having to wait on an officer to physically come to the farm.

“Additionally, they can do things like schedule the visits of their extension officers. That makes it much easier for everybody in terms of the extension officer having a schedule and the farmer knowing the exact time that the extension officer will come and not hearing that the extension officer came and the farmer wasn’t there and vice versa. So you can now do that using the mobile application, plus the mobile application has a whole host of videos to tell you how to plant, what to look out for, it provides extension services without having the officer right there,” he explained.

Green said the ministry also intends to link the climate information system being developed under the ADAPT Jamaica programme directly to the app, allowing farmers to receive more timely weather and agricultural information on their phones. He argued that digital communication is increasingly practical because most farmers now own smartphones, even if many still use them primarily for
WhatsApp.

His comments came during a wider press conference announcing details of the ADAPT Jamaica initiative, which officials say is intended to strengthen climate resilience in six central parishes — Clarendon, Trelawny, Manchester, St Ann, St Catherine and St Elizabeth — that account for a large share of domestic food production and have suffered repeated weather-related losses. The project is designed to support farmers through climate-smart agriculture, improved information systems, financing solutions, and food loss reduction measures.

The wider initiative is valued at just under US$50 million, with about US$40.5 million coming from the Green Climate Fund and the remainder through co-financing from the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, the Development Bank of Jamaica and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. According to the project summary, it is expected to reach more than 736,000 beneficiaries, including more than 334,000 women, and will include farmer training, model farms, irrigation support, weather stations and financing mechanisms.