EDITORIAL - Protect agriculture

Jamaica spends around US$900 million a year importing food. Government researchers suggest perhaps a third of our imports could be replaced or substituted.

Put another way, the country could 'save', or keep here, approximately US$300 million, or J$27 billion, which it now transfers to foreign farmers and/or agro-producers. If that money was invested locally, it would create jobs, help to rejuvenate rural economies, drive industry and add energy to the domestic economy.

There would be another important spin-off - the enhancement of Jamaica's food security.

But actualising this potential for Jamaican agriculture won't happen on its own accord.

It will require deliberate action on the part of the administration and a robust challenge to some of the assumptions we have held for more than a quarter century, including the foods we consume and the price we pay for them.

Cheap imports

One of the legacies of the economic problems of the 1970s, and the shortages that accompanied them, was Edward Seaga's 1980s prescription of cheap imports to combat social instability and high inflation. American food aid was part of the package.

An unintended consequence of the policy was that domestic agriculture, already under stress, could not compete. Many of Jamaica's small-scale, low-technology farmers were driven to the wall.

Not only has Jamaican agriculture not recovered, but its problems have been exacerbated by the erosion of protected European markets for traditional crops and the country's wholesale and uncritical embrace, since the 1990s, of the provisions of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Jamaica has thrown its markets wide open to agricultural and other imports.

It need not be this way. For, contrary to the widely held perception, Jamaica, and other developing countries, can offer protection to its agriculture to protect critical sectors and as a cushion against dumping.

Indeed, Jamaica can make the case for utilising its higher-bound tariffs, rather than applied rates, as has been done for poultry and, occasionally, with other produce. Additionally, the country can, among other things, opt for a range of safeguard measures including sanitary and phytosanitary mechanisms, or investment and input subsidies.

Critical issues

Two things are, however, critical. First, the Government and policymakers must have the will to pursue such strategies and, second, they have to think creatively about what is possible and/or practical.

The potential rewards should make this option attractive to the Jamaican Government, especially at this time, with the economy weak, the jobless rate high and rural communities stressed by the soft market for tourism and the near collapse of the bauxite/alumina industry. It is hardly surprising that the anecdotal evidence suggests that the agriculture workforce has risen by perhaps five per cent since the onset of the global recession.

These, however, remain meagre, low-level jobs. For, as an agriculture ministry analysis notes, only 39 per cent of Jamaica's agricultural output goes to further processing, limiting value-added from the sector. In nearby Costa Rica, that conversion is 57 per cent, in Mexico, 65 per cent, and the United States, 80 per cent.

By normal estimates, agriculture accounts for around six per cent of Jamaica's gross domestic product but, with primary production and agri-food combined, that is closer to 12 per cent. In Costa Rica, it is close to 35 per cent.

The possibilities are clear.

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