Small farmers suffering
Published:Saturday | July 17, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Livern Barrett, Staff Reporter
FINANCE MINISTER Audley Shaw says small farmers have not benefited significantly from the over $2.6 million disbursed by the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) to the agricultural sector in the last five years.
"In other words, you will find when you disaggregate the numbers that the great disproportionate majority of that money has gone to large farmers," Minister Shaw told a Gleaner Editors' Forum in Christiana, Manchester, yesterday.
"Large farmers, I would say, are like the chicken farmers ... . People of substance and means have captured the giant share of that $2.5 billion," added Shaw.
However, DBJ unit manager Paul Miller disagreed, pointing out that most of the funds disbursed by the bank were to small farmers through the People's Cooperative (PC) Bank.
"Although sometimes the money is not a lot, it's a lot of individual small farmers," Miller told The Gleaner.
"So if you interpret small farmers to mean people borrowing less than $500,000, then you get a couple thousand," Miller explained.
Of the $2.6 billion disbursed by the DBJ since 2005, $790 million and $765 million were to the agro-industry and poultry sectors, respectively.
Despite this, Shaw said channelling of funds through the DBJ to the PC banks was not as buoyant as he would like.
"Some of that is not your (DBJ's) fault. Maybe it's a matter of policies ... a risk-averse position where they want all kind of collateral requirements that the farmers just don't have," he said.
More to small farmers
The minister said he wants to see more of the DBJ funds going to "genuine" small farmers and towards financing greenhouse-technology ventures.
"These are the areas I am going to have to work on at a policy level," said Shaw, who is also member of parliament for North East Manchester.
The forum, which was co-hosted by the Christiana Potato Growers Cooperative, focused on the role of agriculture in transforming rural economies.