Editorial | Stop housing on agri lands

There is no inherent tension between preserving Jamaica’s best arable lands for agriculture and the country having sufficient lands for homes and other real estate developments.

Yet, that is the binary choice the Government implicitly wants Jamaicans to believe is at stake, with its opening of the door for the construction of more homes at the Innswood Estate in St Catherine, continuing a trend that has accelerated over the past 50 years. Instead, the administration, as The Gleaner suggested previously, should call a halt to non-agricultural developments on the country’s better farmlands, especially large contiguous acreages that are owned by the Government.

This matter has renewed attention because of the controversy that has erupted over the Government’s intention for the land at Innswood Estate in St Catherine, where the billionaire entrepreneur Michael Lee-Chin is developing a large commercial farm, but would like to use up to 1,000 acres for real estate, which would be permissible under zoning regulations.

Innswood, on the St Catherine plain, used to be one of Jamaica’s major sugar estates which fell to ruin with the industry’s decline after its loss of preferential markets in Europe. But it remains good farmland, with residual infrastructure, including irrigation channels, to support agriculture. But, as with many such properties across the island, Innswood, over several decades, has been encroached upon for housing schemes.

In 2019, the Government’s Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings leased to one of Mr Lee-Chin’s outfits, Model Agricultural Production Ltd (MAPL), 372 acres of the Innswood lands to launch a modern, high-tech farm. MAPL had an option, after three years, to lease another 2,284.8 acres, which it recently exercised. It apparently can also convert the lease to a permanent sale after five years. Also in 2019, the Government confirmed an interim development order for the parish of St Catherine of two years earlier that would make housing development legal on approximately 46 per cent of the land (1,218 acres) on which MAPL subsequently exercised its lease option.

FALSE NARRATIVE

It has emerged that other companies associated with Mr Lee-Chin had separately offered to buy 1,000 acres of the property for a low- and middle-income housing development. The Government has not ruled out the sale for that purpose, although it declared in a statement this week that the development of “affordable housing for the Jamaican people ... will not be at the expense of agriculture”.

The Cabinet added: “The Government is extremely sensitive to competing demands for scarce land resources for housing and agriculture.”

Which, of course, is a false narrative.

The issue is not a shortage of land for real estate. Rather, it is easier to build on what is the country’s most arable lands,much of which went fallow with the retreat of agriculture, especially sugar cane production. Indeed, even the Government is embracing this trend, such as with a planned city of 17,000 homes at Bernard Lodge, another estate on the St Catherine plain, which the National Environment and Planning Agency said possessed Jamaica’s “most fertile ... A1 soil”.

Around the time of the announcement of the Bernard Lodge city, before he caved in and backed the project, Lenworth Fulton, the president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society, pointed out that of the 37 per cent of Jamaica that was deemed suitable for agriculture in the mid-2000s, only 19.5 per cent (and diminishing) was available. Much of the arable land was being consumed by real estate development. Once these acreages are lost to large-scale developments, it is almost impossible to recover them.

There are two significant contexts against which to view this issue.

FOOD SECURITY AND GOOD SENSE

One is global warming and climate change, and the threat this poses to food security. The science suggests that a warmer planet could lead to a decline, by up to a third, in global agricultural yields. If all things remain equal, it would require 33 per cent more land to produce the same amount of food. Against that backdrop, we need only note the impact on global food prices when the war between Russia and Ukraine stalled the export of commodities from those countries. Before that, food inflation was already being driven by supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Second, while Jamaica cannot be totally self-sufficient in food, experts have pointed to the economic good sense of agriculture. Jamaica has an annual food import bill of US$1 billion. It is estimated that between a fifth and a quarter of those imports could be displaced by domestically grown alternatives. Which is to say that up to US$250 million ($37.8 billion) could be saved on food imports annually, much of which would go into the domestic economy, helping to create jobs and growth.

However, achieving this potential will require modern, large-scale agricultural production along the lines of the scheme initially envisioned by Mr Lee-Chin’s MAPL. That is why the Government should draw a red line under all existing housing developments on agricultural lands, rather than engaging in the contortions of its statement on Innswood Estate. It could start by rescinding the development order that would allow new housing on the Innswood lands.

Further, it should help identify alternative lands that are more suitable for housing development, such as the Hellshire Hills, where, John Allgrove, the dean of Jamaican urban planning, reminded us three years ago, the Urban Development Corporation in 1970 marked 10,000 acres for such a development. Further, rather than encroaching on new lands, private developers can make money by engaging in creative projects with the Government, the domestic private sector and international partners for the renewal, and in some cases gentrification, of Jamaica’s many run-down urban areas.

This may be harder to do. But the crisis of urban decay is one that we cannot continue to try to run away from.