Editorial | Why the JAS should disband

Lenworth Fulton, who initially opposed, but then embraced, Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ intention to build a city on what the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) called the island’s “most fertile … A1 soil” at the Bernard Lodge estate in St Catherine, says he will not seek re-election to the presidency of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) when the organisation next holds its annual general meeting. At the same time, the JAS seems to be floundering around for a way to survive when it is no longer being shored up by the Government, which it believes is imminent.

A number of observations are pertinent in the face of these developments. First, we are happy at Mr Fulton’s return to reasonably good health after his stroke in 2020. We wish him godspeed on his way out, which he should accelerate. And more importantly, as a final act as president, Mr Fulton should put to JAS members a resolution for disbanding the society – which is a suggestion this newspaper first made in 2010 and repeated in 2017.

Ironically, should the farmers, who comprise the bulk of the membership of the JAS, agree with, and vote for, the folding of the organisation, that would not be the end of the matter. They would then have to appeal to the Government to repeal the Jamaica Agricultural Society Incorporation Act of 1941, which perhaps explains much about the society. For while the JAS describes itself as a “private voluntary organisation”, it is fundamentally a creature of the Government, on whose largesse it depends for its existence.

ANNUAL MEETING POSTPONED

In an interview with this newspaper, published last week, Mr Fulton reported that he has twice recently postponed the JAS’s annual general meeting (AGM) – which we suppose he means the one for 2020-2021 – in order to present updated accounts that reflect rental income from a handful of properties it owns across the island. He suggested that this income has not been shown in the association’s statements for 40 years.

If that is indeed the case, previous presidents and their boards of management have been derelict. In this regard, Mr Fulton’s initiative to capture the revenue is welcomed – although that should not be the basis for an overlong delay in holding the AGM. The auditors can properly note the absence of the income and appropriately qualify the accounts.

In any event, we do not expect that the recognition of this revenue will make a significant material difference to the JAS’s bottom line, or the basis on which it continues to exist. Indeed, the society’s latest available annual financial statement – published on its website – is for 2018-19. It shows income in that financial year of $117.8 million, of which $103.4 million, approximately 88 per cent, was government subsidy. The next largest portion was rental income, which accounted for around five per cent of revenue. Four and half per cent of revenue came from its business activities and 2.6 per cent from members’ dues.

According to Mr Fulton, he does not expect that the government subsidies – at least not at the same level – will continue beyond the coming fiscal year. This threat has hung over the JAS for decades, without the organisation doing much to transform itself into a genuinely private institution funded by its members and their activities, rather than the QUANGO it has effectively been for generations.

NOT COMPETENTLY MANAGED

The larger point is that 126 years after it was formed, the JAS is no longer fit for purpose in the 21st century, which, in part, was the basis of our previous calls for the disbandment of the society, and why we repeat it today. Neither do we believe that the organisation has been competently managed, as we have noted in the past, with respect to the descent of the annual Denbigh Agricultural Show, and the JAS’s other expos, into general bazaars, rather than showcases of Jamaica’s agriculture.

Moreover, much of what the JAS attempts to do, including the sale and distribution of agricultural input and services, duplicates what is already better done by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, which itself wins no great plaudits for efficacy and direction.

Mr Fulton’s idea of reconstituting the JAS into a co-operative will achieve little if it has no concept of what Jamaica’s agriculture should look like, and can achieve, in the context of global warming and climate change; the framework that should emerge to the benefit of small island economies in any restructuring of the World Trade Organization; and how the farming sector should position itself in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and any shifts in the domestic economy. The JAS is too set in its way, too barnacled, too ossified to be reformed.

In other words, the circumstances require more than the booming voices and heavy strides of an earlier generation of JAS leaders, or acquiescence when the Government wants to pave “the most fertile …A1 soil” with concrete. A new and different kind of farmers/agricultural organisation is necessary. Maybe the Government should leave it up to the JAS and its leadership.