Farmers in Pedro Cross, St Elizabeth, say they have to watch their produce go to waste because they have nowhere to sell it. According to citizens in the predominantly farming community, there is an urgent need for an organisation which will ensure that farming is done in a structured way. The absence of such an agency, they said to the Jamaica Observer, is to be blamed for the frequent glut on the market.
“The local farmers need some organisation that will create some form of network that will govern the crop they plant, so that we don’t have abundance and scarcity at the same time,” said Antonio Rodgers, who grows crops which include cabbage, cantaloupe, tomatoes and cucumber on his 35-acre farm.
Rodgers was one of two farmers who told the Sunday Observer that their tomatoes were going to waste because of a lack of buyers and also because of the low price for which some vendors want to purchase the produce.
According to Rodgers, from time to time farmers have the same problem with different crops because they have no market and because there is no guidance.
“We need a structure that tell us how much we need at any time so that all of us don’t go and plant one thing and end up with beetroot and tomatoes, and end up with too much because the market can only take so much,” Rodgers said.
Another farmer, Crosby Bromfield, said that there should be more factories to purchase the farmers’ goods, such as watermelons and tomatoes, and to ensure that they have stable markets.
President of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), Norman Grant said that the organisation has a new programme in place to address the issues.
According to him, the JAS will be setting up a centralised marketing system which, along with addressing the marketing issues, will also serve to guide the farmers on the amount of crops that they need to farm to supply the country’s needs.
The JAS president said that the organisation, through a $10-million grant from the Universal Access Fund, will be setting up a 20-station call centre at its head office in downtown Kingston to match farmers with buyers. Additionally, he said the JAS will also be partnering with the tourism linkages hub to establish markets for the farmers.
“We are expecting that within a year, when this project is fully rolled out all these constraints will be corrected,” Grant said.
Source: jamaicaobserver.com
