'Pear-ing' into the future

WHILE MELZADER Robinson has been tilling the soil for 35 years, recent developments have injected renewed energy into her activities. In addition to supplying higglers in the Spanish Town market with large quantities of her crops, the fervent agriculturalist has gained new sales outlets.

"The Lord has opened a new door for me, where I can sell my produce to my own brethren in the Apostolic Fast Fellowship. The second Wednesday in each month, we go to different Pentecostal Assemblies; we go as far as Montego Bay and Savanna-la-Mar. I take my produce with me and the brethren really support me," she told the AgroGleaner team, when we toured her farm recently.

The 52-year-old cultivates a variety of crops, including coffee, sorrel, yellow yam, sweet potato, cassava, tomatoes, pumpkin, gungo peas and pears, on three different plots of land, totalling 10 acres, in Cool Shade/Mexico, a district adjoining Wakefield, approximately four miles from Linstead in St Catherine. But, while the crops generate good returns, she is particularly excited about her earnings from her pears.

"I am excited about the pears, because God has opened a door that I sell not only the pears, but all the pear seeds," an enthused Robinson said, while she and Melonie Lee, her 23-year-old neighbour, who she has been guiding into the sector, sorted out some of the fruits.

"So I collect the seeds. When the pears drop off the tree and burst, I collect up to more than 100 dozen pear seeds," said Robinson, secretary, Cool Shade/Mexico branch of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) and the Cool Shade/Mexico Producers Marketing Organisation.

In her earlier years, she cultivated Scotch bonnet peppers for the export market, and supplied fast-food outlet, Tastee, as well.

Besides, the avid coffee farmer, who in the past supplied up to 40 boxes of the crop to the Coffee Industry Board, laments the dwindling of her produce, but remains optimistic as she prepares to plant 100 seedlings.

The Central St Catherine Coffee Growers Co-operative board member cites getting people to work and buying chemical as challenging. Additionally, she told the AgroGleaner team that poor roads have made it difficult for her to transport her produce. She noted, too, that lack of piped water has also impacted cultivation.

"When the time is dry, it is a great challenge. So we have to buy water, but it's not easy to buy for the household and then to do the farming. It's like $300 and $400 per drum, so when the time dry is like farming gone on pause," complained Robinson.

She chuckled as she reminisced on how the words of her late father have served as a source of inspiration for her to provide food for the hungry.

"He used to encourage us saying, 'the King's house is supplied by the field, whatever position you are in, you must have to eat', and I really take courage from those words, if you are prime minister, if you're a prisoner you have to eat," she laughed.

With that, and the support she gets from her husband, Alexander, once a cane farmer, she said she will never be daunted by any challenge.

"Farming is next to salvation," she noted. "No matter what the challenges there are, I would never give up," she stated firmly.

Ultimately, she desires to see a more active farmers' cooperative.

"I would love to see farmers get together and we grow our things, package them and earn money that we can say, yes, Government didn't help us, just the knowledge that God blessed us with, and achieve," stated Robinson.

In 2009, the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) St Catherine awarded Robinson for outstanding support to the community and the JAS St Catherine. She was so recognised again, in 2010, for outstanding performance and exceptional commitment to agriculture. Also, earlier this year, the Central St Catherine Coffee Growers Co-operative Society Limited awarded her for dedicated service to the sector.