EDITORIAL - Bringing agriculture to the economic centre

IN RESPONDING to this newspaper's chiding for his attempt at political point-scoring over the former administration's management and divestment of the Government's sugar assets, Roger Clarke, the agriculture minister, made a worthy and important declaration. The minister's full response will be carried in the In Focus section of the next Sunday Gleaner

He was receptive, Mr Clarke said, to our suggestion for the development of the Government's school-feeding programme entirely, or as close to that as possible, on domestic agricultural production.

Indeed, according to the minister, when his party was previously in government, up to 2007, it attempted a programme of using domestically produced milk in school meals. It failed.

The administration, however, plans to resume that initiative as well as substitute domestically produced liquid eggs for imported butter fat, used in buns and cakes for children who get meals at schools. Natural fruit juices will also be incorporated into the feeding programme.

Job creation

This is a start. But there is far greater benefit for job creation, growth and rural development for a conceptually broader initiative, such as we have conceived, especially against the backdrop of Jamaica's fiscal crisis. Part of that context was this week's cut by the finance minister, Dr Peter Phillips, of J$21.6 billion, or four per cent, from the Budget for this fiscal year.

Contrary to the declarations of the textbook Keynesians, the cold fact is that the Government is in no position to expand deficit spending to generate demand without further burdening an unsustainable national debt that is already 131 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). In any event, given the high import content (over 70 per cent) of the Jamaican economy, additional government spending will largely go into consumption that creates jobs abroad.

We are, however, not without options. And here is where a joined-up government, working with a creative agricultural policy, can bring value.

At under six per cent, the agricultural portion of Jamaica's GDP has halved over the past three decades, even as our food import bill has risen, now hovering around US$900 million a year. Less than 40 per cent of this country's agricultural output goes to value-added processing, compared to 57 per cent in Costa Rica and 65 per cent in Mexico. In the United States it is 80 per cent. Yet, it is estimated that up to one-third, or nearly US$300 million, of Jamaica's food imports could be replaced or substituted with domestic products. At the same time, between 1996 and 2007 land under crops in Jamaica declined by 13 per cent to 154,524 hectares.

The point is that opportunities abound. The issue is translating that into actual production.

Policy-induced change

We believe that the possibility of using government policy, starting with the school-feeding programme, exists to do this. In the current fiscal year, the Government allocated J$2.5 billion to this programme, $300 million or 13.6 per cent up on the previous year.

If government policy declared that within, say, the next two years this spending would be on procuring domestically grown foods, or products with a benchmarked domestic value-added, that would very likely unleash output and help to create the critical mass that lowers cost. Indeed, agricultural productivity would be even further enhanced if such a policy could be tweaked for application to the tourism sector.

A critical spin-off, of course, would be the jobs that would be created in the farm sector.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.