AIC creating network of agro parks
Published:Sunday | August 1, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Avia Collinder, Business Writer
Agro-Investment Corporation (AIC) has approved 34 projects for funding at a cost of J$126.22 million, sticking closely with its mandate of agriculture business facilitation.
Financing for the small-farming projects will be issued through the network of PC banks.
But private investors are also being courted by the less-than-year-old agency to back farming entrepreneurs in a series of so-called agro parks that the entity is attempting to build out on lands across Jamaica.
AIC Chief Executive Officer Hershell Brown said that already, about 20 potential investors are at advanced stages of developing their projects, with the assistance of the corporation.
Located at Spanish Town Road in Kingston, the state agency grew out of the merger of the Agricultural Development Corporation and Agricultural Support Services Productive Projects Fund Limited.
It now operates as a department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries as a business-facilitation unit, with responsibility for investment promotion and market development.
Its operations budget in the first year is J$63 million, according to the Estimate of Expenditure 2010-11. AIC is also expected to generate income of J$31 million from operations this fiscal year.
The agency, which started operations last October, is recruiting additional administrative staff as it moves to project implementation.
The projects include agro parks, which are being developed to facilitate production through a land-lease arrangement, the provision of infrastructure, including irrigation and land preparation, as well as technical and management support.
Land at Amity Hall in St Catherine and Spring Plains in Clarendon has already been earmarked for agro parks, with onions identified as one of the crops to be grown. Brown said 14 investors have been selected for this initiative.
Under the project, investors are being assisted with access to lands suitable for the production of various commodities.
For the farmers of rice, for example, 1,000 acres have been earmarked at New River in St Elizabeth for two investors, who will have access to 500 acres each; Amity Hall represents another 500 acres. Production of rice should begin there in September, after the land -preparation phase is complete, Brown’s office said.
The establishment of the agro park in Amity Hall has so far assisted 10 farmers with 10-acre blocks of land each for other various short-term crops such as pepper, cantaloupe, sweet potato and pumpkin.
A young-farmers project is also being pursued with the intention of increasing the attractiveness of the sector to younger, skilled and trained entrepreneurs. Two such ventures have been started at Amity Hall and at Ebony Park in St Catherine where 15 young farmers are producing condiments and domestic food crops on five acres of land each.
Major plans
The AIC is also spearheading plans for major hot pepper and rice farming, as well as sheep rearing.
Research centres, seed-multiplication facilities and commercial plots for rice production have already been set up in St Catherine, Clarendon, St Elizabeth and Westmoreland.
The objective is to produce two per cent of all the rice consumed in Jamaica, with a target set to have 4,000 hectares of land under rice this year.
The Jamaica Rice Producers’ Association has been formed to provide services as the industry develops.
Brown said several prospective investors in Jamaica and overseas have been showing strong interest in rice production, with the People’s Republic of China providing a gift of farm equipment and vehicles to the programme.
Financial support for Jamaica’s rice-production effort is also coming from the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s European Community Food Facility, under which €228 million of a €1 billion fund is being channelled through the Food and Agriculture Organisation for food-production operations in 28 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Rice farmers have been identified in Westmoreland and St Elizabeth for funding under this project.
The AIC is also developing an asset bank with the aim of facilitating the effective utilisation of government-owned assets to support the drive towards import substitution, export and national food security.
To date, 8,200 acres of land have been identified and assessed for suitability for crop and livestock production, of which some 600 acres have been brought into crop and livestock farming.