1 month ago
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The Jamaican Government will be investing $6 billion over the next six years in research to improve the varieties and yields of a number of agricultural crops, Agriculture Minister Floyd Green has said.
The minister also said modern technology is being used to address a number of issues, including praedial larceny and the labour shortage, as he urged the private sector to partner with the Government to grow the sector.
Speaking last Thursday at the Jamaica Stock Exchange Regional Investments & Capital Markets Conference in New Kingston, Green called for more private investments in agriculture to fertilise the economy.
“We have to put agriculture as a priority of our capital markets as the capital that we have in the country often shies away from agriculture,” said Green, who also has portfolio responsibility for fisheries and mining.
Centre of excellence
Noting that Jamaica was once world-renowned for research in tropical agriculture through the likes of Dr T.P. Lecky, Green said the Government is putting $6 billion into agricultural research over the medium term. That is an average of $1 billion per year.
“We want to build back Bodles as a centre of excellence for the Caribbean and for the world in tropical research,” he said, in reference to the ministry’s agricultural research station in Bodles, St Catherine.
Green reiterated that the challenges in getting farm labour were being addressed with the use of technology, even for small farmers through the Rural Agriculture Development Authority.
“We are now training drone pilots at CASE (College of Agriculture Science and Education) … because the reality is that for things like land clearance and fertilisation, we are going to have to move from this one man walking around for two days to a drone coming in and doing it in 15 minutes,” Green said.
He added that ideally, training of this nature should be done in partnership with the private sector.
Noting that the financial sector has traditionally been reluctant to invest in agriculture, Minister Green called on the financial institutions to partner with the agriculture ministry to lower the interest rates on loans to farmers.
“Our financial sector has significantly high interest rates for people in agriculture. One, they would say because of the risk. Two, I would say because they haven’t worked with us to ensure that we can properly assess the risk,” he said.
He advised that Agro-Investment Corporation, an agency of the ministry, is training farmers to produce better business plans and issuing contracts to farmers that can aid them in their quest for funding from banks.
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