Students encourage Jamaicans to ‘Plant It Fi Save It’

The Plant It Fi Save It campaign was started by 11 students from the Caribbean School of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, in response to rising food costs during the COVID-19 outbreak. This campaign promotes backyard farming as a viable option for lowering food costs.

“Our campaign is so important because food prices are increasing and Jamaican families are being financially affected. We believe that backyard farming offers a practical and low-cost solution for multiple challenges that people are facing today. It can lead to monetary savings and strengthen local food production. The materials needed for it are relatively cheap and easily accessible,” said Keryce Dookie, a member of the campaign team.

The Plant It Fi Save It team has partnered with well-known agricultural organisations to make their campaign effective and successful. They collaborated with the Jamaica 4-H Clubs, which is the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries youth arm, and Farm Up Jamaica, a charity organisation that helps Jamaican farmers grow organic foods to reduce the importation of food and entrepreneurship. These institutional partners are the campaign’s source for agricultural materials, professional assistance, and farming-related information. “We were fortunately partnered with agricultural organisations, the Jamaica 4-H Clubs and Farm Up Jamaica, to grant our target audience the knowledge and resources such as organic seeds, to get started. These methods have made it cheaper for our target audience, especially since they are minimum wage earners and family breadwinners, to go into backyard farming. Our primary target audience includes residents 18-45 years old living in Stadium Gardens, Kingston, and our secondary target audience is the wider Jamaican population,” Dookie said.

The Plant It Fi Save It team, along with Farm Up Jamaica, recently visited the residents of the Stadium Gardens community to distribute organic seeds and share backyard farming advice with residents.

“It was a relief to know that outside of our team, there were others who believed in our initiative to combat food security and were willing to lend a helping hand. We even had a webinar hosted by a trained agriculturist from the Jamaica 4-H Clubs who shared tips on how to start a backyard garden, care and management of crops, composting, and much more,” Andrew Morgan, another member of the campaign team told The Gleaner.

AGRICULTURE

The students were overjoyed to have the Honourable Pearnel Charles Jr, minister of agriculture and fisheries, endorse and reinforce their campaign’s message, which urged Jamaicans to grow their own food in support of the Plant It Fi Save It campaign’s initiative.“ The video we posted on our social media with Minister Charles caused a lot of traction on our social media pages. We had an increase in followers and more people started interacting with the campaign,” said Morgan.

The Plant It Fi Save It team wants to raise the number of Jamaicans who understand and believe that backyard farming can help them save money on food and urge all Jamaicans to practise backyard farming to save money.