Farmers face acid test

NEW FOREST/DUFF HOUSE, Manchester:

Farmers of New Forest/Duff House who experienced a crippling wipeout of their melon crop last year and remain puzzled about stunted production are being urged to adapt to changing conditions.

As climate change continues to affect farmers across the world, agricultural interests are calling for greater awareness around new agronomy practices that are resistant to new threats.

Farmer Orville Tyrell, who had 90 per cent of his farm designated for melon production, said that when they first discovered concerns with their crop, they thought the seeds were faulty.

However, following a series of tests conducted at the Bodles Research Station, the farmer said they soon realised that the seeds were not the culprit. The crimson king melon type predominately planted in the area was not the only type affected by spoilage prior to maturity.

The only new input, said Tyrell, has been the introduction of more soluble fertiliser instead of previous options. Soluble fertiliser is mixed in a drum and channelled into a drip system that is more efficient than the labour-intensive method of walking the entire field and dispersing at every hole.

But with the plague ongoing - and with seemingly no end in sight - Tyrell said that cultivators theorise that the tentacles of climate change are far more extensive than initially believed.

“Today you may have a pretty lush field; two days later, everything start turning brown, so you realise that something is in the environment that is more harsh than before,” he lamented.

Farmers, said Tyrell, have been forced to increase their use of fungicides to combat intensifying pestilential attacks.

He fervently believes that climate change is a factor in the emergence of growing unpredictability in cultivation that has made watermelon more vulnerable than ever before.

“Last month (September) when we had a lot of a rainfall, basically all the tomato farms in this area got damaged, and for a while tomato prices went sky high until other areas start producing. There is something in the air that is really affecting us as farmers,” Tyrell told The Gleaner.

With some Farmers having to seek support from an agronomist and agricultural bodies for field protection, Tyrell said that several farmers have opted out of farming certain crops and have scaled down operations for fear of bigger losses.

“Without the input of the Government, I think farming is going to collapse for the most part,” said Tyrell, noting the importation of tomato and sweet peppers, which he believes is untenable.

Agriculture has been the mainstay for tens of thousands of mainly rural Jamaicans, deriving its output and productivity largely from heart and passion - ploughing the land by the centuries-old practices dependent on muscle and stamina.

But even as farmers endure back-breaking work and plead for state assistance, there is growing advocacy for them to use brain, not brawn, in battling new menaces steeped in soil.

Agronomist and market development officer of H&L Agro, Odean Bradshaw, who conducted a field visit to the Manchester district with her team on Thursday, cited poor agricultural practices for some of their losses.

“They used excess amounts of water because it was available. We narrowed it down to most of the irrigated areas that had this challenge ... ,” said Bradshaw.

“Sometimes they overused and abused products ... . We found that farmers were irrigating right up to three or two days before harvesting, and that is a no-no. There is withdrawal period of two to three weeks before harvesting,” Bradshaw told The Gleaner.

The agricultural expert said that besides poor nutrient application and product overuse, the negative impact of increased rainfall has been flagged in field reviews.

Bradshaw urges farmers to diversify crop production and to be more strategic in cultivation patterns, tapping favourable seasons that would generate higher and better-quality yields, even as environmental conditions fluctuate.

Climate change has thrown up a raft of new challenges, she said.

“The weather pattern would have changed the time of planting. The pest and disease issues would have changed ... ,” the agronomist said.

“Some crops prefer certain climates, and you will find that they do not do well if you have that shift in temperature.”

tamara.bailey@gleanerjm.com