KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Floyd Green, says it has been challenging to balance increasing production, while having to deal with so many weather-related disruptions.

He was speaking at today’s (September 28) plenary session, dubbed Transforming Regional Food Systems, a case for accelerating Vision 25 by 2025 + 5, at Caricom’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA), being staged at the Ocean Coral Spring Resort in Trelawny, from September 27 to October 2.

“I speak for the entire region when I say that is our biggest challenge. After Hurricane Beryl [in 2024] it took us a long time to get our irrigation systems up and running, because all of them relied on [power] and that was down, so all of the things we did after Beryl was to purchase some backup power, some generators,” the minister said.

“Within one week of the passage of Hurricane Melissa [in October 2025], 75 per cent of our irrigation customers had irrigation again, because we had backup systems to run that irrigation network. It made a huge difference. So, we have to be practical and solutions oriented, we have to pre-plan, and that’s how we balance,” he explained.

Green also highlighted that with the lessons learnt after both Hurricanes Melissa and Beryl, the teams within the ministry have strengthened the approach to lending immediate support to farmers.

“After Beryl it took us a little while to get back up and running. We are doing better because we now have a disaster mitigation and planning team at the ministry that starts to meet every January to plan for the disaster.  We keep things like seeds and fertiliser, so we can respond quickly,  so for both Beryl and Melissa, within the week after the hurricane, we were out giving farmers seeds and fertilisers to go again,” he said.

Meanwhile, the minister also highlighted the Government’s focus on increasing production and satisfying not just local but regional goals.

“Clearly we have taken the 25 by 2025 plus 5 very seriously… because the only way we are going to hit our target is if all of us across the island build agricultural systems that can withstand these shocks,” he said.

Vision 25 by 2025 + 5 is the Region’s food security initiative focused on strengthening the region’s capacity to increase production and reduce dependence on food imports.

A critical component of this process is the ability of the region to further its climate resilience agenda and secure consistent inputs such as proper plant nutrition and irrigation.

Green said the Government has embarked on a massive push towards widespread irrigation in arable lands.

“When we started this journey as a Government about 10 years ago, about 15 per cent of our arable land had access to water. We’ve already increased that to 30 per cent so we’ve doubled that. And we expect that over the next five years we will be above 50 per cent of our arable lands having water. In real terms it means putting in significant investment, billions of dollars literally, into our irrigation network,” he said.

With 800 participants from 40 countries, the 20th staging of the CWA intends to drive discussions around strengthening regional agricultural food systems and foster greater collaboration between governments, technical groups and partnering groups.

—     JIS