'Farmers meeting hell'

Jamaica's penchant for foreign produce is strangling the operations of small farmers, claims general manager of the Christiana Potato Growers Cooperative Association, Alvin Murray.

Murray, in lamenting the struggles of local farmers, claimed Jamaica has imported 70 per cent of ginger used domestically despite supplying 23 per cent of world demand.

"Right now, the farmers are meeting hell. They are in trouble," he told a recent Gleaner Editors' Forum in Christiana, Manchester.

Supporting Murray's claim, Finance Minister Audley Shaw, who is also member of parliament for North East Manchester, disclosed that, among other things, Jamaica imports a significant amount of tomato paste and pepper mash.

"We were importing pepper mash from the Dominican Republic and places like that although we produce the best scotch bonnet pepper and the finest-tasting in the world. But we end up importing most of it," Shaw said.

Waiver woes

The finance minister did not provide any figures, but argued that, with more greenhouses, we "could produce all the tomato that we could ever need and produce all the tomato paste that we could ever need to supply the local market.

"As minister of finance, one of the things I am tired to do is to sign waivers ... import waivers for tomato paste," he lamented.

Shaw said the shift towards foreign produce was taking place even though Jamaican farmers provide the marketplace with good-quality fruits and vegetables.

"When people go to Sovereign supermarket (in Liguanea, St Andrew) and see those sweet peppers, they want to know which state of the United States it was produced in ... where was it imported from.

"There is not even an assumption that it was produced in Jamaica, much less in Devon, in North East Manchester," he added.