Peter Espeut | Lack of vision in agriculture

Aside from our strategic location in the middle of the Spanish Caribbean, the reason for colonising Jamaica was to raise crops which could not grow in Europe. In those early days, Jamaica was overseen by the England’s Board of Trade and Plantations, created on 15 May 1696, replacing the Lords of Trade and Plantations. Incentives were offered, and Jamaica was organised as England’s largest overseas plantation.

Jamaica was valuable because it possessed tens of thousands of acres of arable land on wide coastal plains and on hillsides. Over the years, England’s (and later Britain’s) largest overseas plantation supplied cotton, sugar, indigo, logwood, coffee, cocoa, pimento and many other crops to Europe, and horses and mules to the American colonies.

Part of the incentives to encourage investment were protected guaranteed markets, and low or no tariffs, which allowed hundreds of small inefficient plantations to prosper. This prosperity collapsed when duties were imposed on the imports of sugar to Britain, and Europe began to produce sugar from beets, eroding the protected markets. Unproductive estates closed, and much farmland was converted into housing.

In 1901, new life was breathed into sugar. Lt Colonel Charles James Ward (the nephew in J. Wray & Nephew) aggregated many of the sugar properties on the Vere Plain into one large sugar estate to achieve economies of scale, and he built Jamaica’s first central sugar factory on the old Monymusk Estate, retaining the name for the merged entity. In 1904, Lavan Griñan bought Parnassus and Sandy Gully across the Rio Minho, and built Jamaica’s second central sugar factory at Parnassus. In 1911, two more sugar centrals are built: at Rose Hall in St James (Northern Estates Ltd), and at Serge Island in St Thomas. The Bernard Lodge Central Sugar Factory (Jamaica’s fifth) began operations in St Catherine in September 1920. The Frome central sugar factory in Westmoreland (Jamaica’s ninth) was completed in 1938.

Meanwhile, Mona plantation, the last St Andrew sugar estate in operation, stopped sugar production in 1914, and its 2,692 acres of prime agricultural land were bought by the crown. That estate is now mostly in housing.

SUGAR INDUSTRY COLLAPSED

With the abandonment of preferential markets and prices, Jamaica’s sugar industry has collapsed, resulting in tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land being idle, and growing in bush.

Speaking with technocrats at the Sugar Industry Research Institute (SIRI) in the 1970s, I discovered that Jamaica had an opportunity to make our sugar industry more internationally competitive by mechanising the reaping of cane, but the politicians of the day nixed that because it would throw too many people (voters) out of work. Now we have nothing! We have long suffered from short-sighted leadership.

Can we find some other crop to plant that will make best use of our natural patrimony in arable land? Is all we can think to do with good land is to build houses?

Hawaii took 3,000 pineapple suckers from Hodges in St Elizabeth and has made a multibillion-dollar industry out of it. Some years ago I went to Hawaii, and was driven through fields of pineapples stretching for miles! Why couldn’t we do that? We would have processed the fruit into juice, and slices, and chunks, and purée; we could have combined it with other extracts to make fruit punch and flavoured rum, and so much else! Our private sector has also been short-sighted.

What have we done with the ortanique?

Looking for a new crop to plant, Hawaii went into Macadamia nuts and kiwi fruit. Why couldn’t we try that?

In the 1980s, Prime Minister Seaga tried winter vegetables, hearts of palm, and a few other things. A good idea! We need to diversify our agriculture, and expand our acreages in the crops which already do well. We have been characterised by some as a nation of samples, able only to produce small amounts of high-quality products.

MAXED OUT?

Have we maxed out on mango exports? Citrus and its extracts? Ackees? Coffee and cocoa? How about peppers, nutmeg, mace and pimento to make savoury sauces?

We import hundreds of tons of animal feed annually to support our poultry, beef, pork and pond fish industries. I agree that we probably cannot achieve economies of scale with corn and soya beans, especially with the unfair agricultural subsidies applied by our source markets; but we could begin to grow sorghum or Indian corn (like Haiti), and the legumes that Bodles has been studying for decades. Our researchers must be able to find some mix of crops that will be nutritious to support our animal protein industries.

This is not just a matter of making the best use of agricultural land; it is also a matter of saving scarce foreign exchange, and ensuring food security in an era of accelerating climate change and war. If war in the Ukraine and elsewhere deepens, what then? The bauxite won’t last forever, and war will slow tourism to a crawl.

Jamaica was first established as a huge tropical farm. We have become much more than that, but we still need to feed ourselves, and to maximise our development potential. “Give us vision lest we perish” we sing with nationalist fervour. We have long suffered from a lack of visionary leadership, and the incumbents are opportunists, seeking short-term political gains at the expense of the long-term prosperity of the country.

Not one more acre of prime agricultural land should be converted into housing. Our future is at stake. No to more housing at Innswood and Bernard Lodge!

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com