Revitalizing Jamaican agriculture
FAO is supporting a project financed through the CDB to diversify Jamaica’s agricultural production – a move aimed at revitalizing the country’s agriculture sector.
Like many other Caribbean nations, Jamaica’s agriculture sector is in need of structural transformation. Trade liberalization and the end of preferential trade agreements with the European Union have caused substantial declines in agricultural exports. Over the last decade, the production of bananas and sugar has decreased by more than 50 percent and 30 percent, respectively, while overall earnings from traditional crop exports plunged from USD 56.6 million in 2004 to USD 28.5 million in 2015. This decline has freed up large plots of land, which the Government is eager to reallocate to private farmers, including smallholders and larger, more commercially oriented producers.
The project is promoting a shift toward more non-traditional crops like fresh fruits, vegetables, spices and medicinal plants, which have seen a slight increase in exports and continue to have high domestic demand. Given Jamaica’s low rainfall and prolonged droughts, the project will also establish functioning irrigation systems. FAO conducted a scoping report to identify the most suitable geographic areas for such investments. It assessed the technical, socio-economic and policy issues of eight sites pre-selected by the Government, looking at everything from water quality and soil suitability to private sector interest and legal and ownership issues. Following extensive discussions with government officials, interviews with potential farmers and field visits, theFAO team recommended four sites be investigated further in the project’s feasibility and design study.
Luther St. Ville, Senior Operations Officer for Agriculture and Rural Development at the CDB, said: “FAO’s sound technical analysis and the preliminary costing of expected engineering services that the team produced for selected sites were critical assets for the favourable outcome of this mission.”
Up to 1,000 farmers on farms ranging from 2 to 10 hectares could benefit from the project, which marks an important step toward reviving FAO’s partnership with the CDB as well as FAO’s growing reputation with the Government of Jamaica.
Image: UNDP Jamaica /Laura Raccio (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)