Seprod boss calls for urgent expansion of agricultural sector
Following Hurricane Beryl’s devastating impact on the country’s ‘bread basket’ parish, St. Elizabeth, prominent businessman Richard Pandohie says urgent and serious efforts must be invested in identifying lands across the country to plant food crops for national consumption.
Pandohie, who is chief executive officer of Seprod and a past president of the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA), said images of the devastation caused by the hurricane are disheartening. Clarendon, Manchester, and St. Elizabeth were hardest hit by Beryl as she unleashed tumultuous winds and rainfall while travelling westward just off Jamaica’s south coast last week en route to the Cayman Islands, Mexico, and Texas.
“We need to be planting throughout the country so that we can kind of diversify our supply risks, because in this case, St. Elizabeth got the brunt of the attack, but there are so many areas in Jamaica, Bernard Lodge, and a lot of other places where we should be doing a lot more agricultural production to diversify the risks,” Pandohie told the Freedom Come Rain newspaper.
St. Elizabeth produces at least 20 percent of the country’s agricultural output. It supplies major markets, supermarkets, and hotel chains in the island, as well as most households with spices, fruits, vegetables, and a host of ground provisions. Jamaicans have been warned to brace for food shortages as, according to the government, Beryl has caused upwards of $1 billion worth of damage to the island’s agricultural sector.
Pandohie also shares the view that householders should try as much as possible to do their own backyard farming, even if it cannot be done on a scale where they will be able to provide everything needed.
“I grew up in Portmore; we didn’t have much space in Portmore like a lot of people, [but] everybody had a little thing planting, a little banana. Everybody had a one or two banana tree in them yard at the time, and you know, you planted a little escallion and stuff,” he noted.
Floyd Green, the country’s agriculture minister, said preliminary assessments indicate Beryl caused significant damage to crops including vegetables, tubers such as yam and cassava, and fruits like breadfruit, ackee, mangoes, and bananas, which are popular food sources. The record-breaking storm has also affected the livestock and fishing sectors.
Pandohie warned that the shortage of agricultural produce will affect other sectors.
“Now, when the food inflation goes up, it has a ‘knock on’ effect on people’s disposable income; it affects everything, your ability to spend everywhere,” the businessman noted.
He hopes policymakers will learn the lessons taught by Beryl and implement strategies to minimise the impact of natural disasters on the country’s agricultural sector. Beryl has made history as the fastest-growing hurricane to form this early in the hurricane season, which is to end in November.
“I think in terms of food supply from natural products, there will be some scarcity there, at least for this agricultural season, [and] the breadfruit industry is also affected, but I certainly believe that with the right approach and support to the farming community, we can probably get that back in short order, but in [the] medium term, you are going to see a scarcity of food supply for those things. Obviously, scarcity is going to lead to price increase [and] to higher food inflation, which is a concern,” Pandohie explained.
The businessman hoped a lot of farmers had taken advantage of the insurance that was announced as being available for those in the agricultural sector. He also wants more focus to be placed on the processing of food.
“What is going to be happening now is that a lot of food is on the ground, but they are just going to go to waste because we are not doing further processing of them, which would allow for preservation.
Photo by Steve Clarke
“Forget about the hurricane for a second; more than 30 to 40 percent of our agricultural products get lost in the field because we go from excess to nothing, and when we have excess, it rottens off in the field, so we need to do further processing of key items,” the businessman urged.
He said COVID had taught everyone that countries generally look out for themselves first in times of crisis. Given the increasing global food and water challenges, he feels the region should be collaborating more to reduce food imports and improve our ability to trade food amongst ourselves.
“We should be producing more, and one of the key pillars for driving our economy forward is going to be to produce, and more than that, to produce food. Produce the agricultural products, process them further, create value-added [and] export them,” he said.