IN the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Melissa in late October last year there was fear and foreboding regarding food shortages and high prices triggered by the Category 5 storm’s multi-billion-dollar damage to agriculture.

But rain kept coming and farmers kept planting. By January there was a glut in short-term crops such as vegetables, with prices falling through the floor.

Then, by mid-year, much had changed, yet again. Drought took hold over most of the country and intense heat dried up surface water with alarming speed.

So now, water-use restrictions and prohibition are back with us. Also, prices of local farm produce are soaring, yet again. And while some farmers, more especially those with access to irrigation, are benefiting from those higher prices, even for them costs have increased and yields have fallen for reasons largely related to stifling heat.

As the latest Sunday Observer edition reports a St Catherine farmer as saying: “There is just something special about the rain. We need the rain…”

Yet, regardless of its immediate source, water is life. Widespread and comprehensive irrigation schemes would make a huge difference to this country’s food security.

However, such schemes are horrendously expensive and, because of ruggedly mountainous terrain, very challenging to execute everywhere. Hence, the good sense in the suggestion from Ms Suzanne Uter of the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers (JNRWP) in St Catherine for farmers to help themselves through rainwater harvesting and storage.

Says she in part: “The storage facility does not have to be a big tank, meaning concrete tank. It can be some barrels…” appropriately arranged.

And, Agriculture Minister Floyd Green says farmers in groups and as individuals can partner with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) in creating pond-lined rainwater catchment and storage. Obviously, such projects should be actively promoted and encouraged.

Beyond farming, rainwater harvesting remains essential for domestic use, especially for mountainous communities in which wells are well-nigh impossible because of high altitudes; and supply/distribution by the National Water Commission (NWC) becomes very expensive and challenging.

Mandeville and other towns located at in excess of 2,000 feet above sea level in mountainous Manchester come readily to mind.

In 2007, then head of Jamaica’s Water Resources Authority Mr Basil Fernandez laid out the situation in stark terms to an audience in Mandeville — served by water pumped from the plains of neighbouring St Elizabeth and the Manchester/Clarendon border.

“You don’t have any surface water,” he told his listeners. “[Manchester] is a limestone plateau and, as rain falls, it sinks into the ground and disappears. There is some amount of groundwater located at great depth…

“It’s a tremendous depth to drill to that water and a high energy cost to lift that water. You are located at a very high elevation, you have very scattered settlements, none of which are located around water resources…” Mr Fernandez explained.

According to him, in order to avoid annoying water lock-offs and related hardships when public water service fails, the viable option was for people to do as they had done for generations, long before the NWC came calling: They should harvest water when there is rains and store it.

Nineteen years later it seems clear that, not just in Manchester, but everywhere Jamaicans who can afford it, should follow that advice.