Jamaica: Growers must adapt to greening disease
Consultant Paul Mears, who visited Jamaica recently at the behest of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, agrees with this analysis.
"Growers have to make the decision to stay productive. It's really a two-fold approach we've taken in Florida, which is controlling the vector and, therefore, the movement of the disease and give the plants a fighting chance by supplementing their nutrition," Mears said.
"It cannot be business as usual. It cannot be farmers not taking care of their trees and not seeing it as important to come to training. Right now, we have to be begging farmers to come out to meetings. Those days are gone. If you are serious about citrus production, you can't sit on the fence,"
The disease is now widespread on the island and the infection rate in the main cultivation areas is between 50 and 70%, with one section in Trelawny, at 100%.
Initially there was a programme of removal of infected trees, but this proved to be impractical over time.
"In terms of the standards that are set, once you reach 28 per cent cumulative plants infected, Brazil recommends that you take out the entire grove. So it means that almost half of our groves would have to be taken out. We actually started. One farmer started the inspection and removal of three and they took out about 10,000 plants and after three months we decided that no, if we continue in this vein we are not going to have a grove," said Barrett.
Mears is convinced that the local industry can be saved, but it will require political will, hard work on the part of farmers and a lot of cash."The success of the programme is intricately tied to proper care of the trees themselves so that you give the trees a fighting chance and at the same time fight the vector to prevent reinfection of these trees. So the trees will survive and give increased yield, but it is going be dependent upon growers changing their farming practices," Mears advised.
Source: jamaica-gleaner.com
