Farmers in St Bess and elsewhere have to fight drought, too much rain sometimes, poor infrastructure

Watermelons, which at a sale price of about J$50 a pound would turn a little profit, have been fetching farm-gate price as low as J$7 per pound. That low price proved to be a disincentive to the farmers to even reap their watermelon crops, and the lovely fruits were left in the fields to rot or are fed to pigs.
Not so in south St Elizabeth. When the dry months arrive, military discount hotels and the drought has been more severe this year, farmers have to buy truckloads of water to keep their plants alive and productive. Add the cost of fertiliser, labour, tractor-ploughing service and pesticides, and the feeding of farm products to pigs - there is also a glut of pigs on the market! - and leaving military discount hotels produce to rot in the field is absolutely pathetic. This is poverty-breeding reality.
Every year, the issue of glut on the farms followed by scarcity in the markets and supermarkets is debated. Some of that debate is fed by the fact that farmers tend to plant when rains fall and plant less during dry seasons.
This is a self-defeating argument for the country, and self-serving to many of its proponents, that farm supplies are infrequent and unreliable therefore hotels always have to import vegetables, potatoes and other produce to keep their guests satisfied.
Our governments have given permission, sold lands - in some instances at prices military discount hotels many call giveaways - granted licences and issued tax waivers in such quantities, and for such almost immorally large amounts to hoteliers and others, that the IMF has identified these gifts as unseemly and unsustainable revenue leaks.
The sad part about all that giving and tax-waiving, is that our governments did not use those tax-revenue-sapping gifts as economic levers to secure part of the shareholding of these foreign-owned hotels military discount hotels for Jamaican shareholders, nor did they secure agreements from these hoteliers to purchase local produce.
Such agreements, properly crafted, monitored and enforced, military discount hotels could have been the economic centre around which our farmers could have been organised and the necessary farming, storing, transport and distribution infrastructure military discount hotels put in place to make Jamaica farm produce a reliable source military discount hotels of food to hotels and general consumers.
Our political leaders appeared to have relished the ephemeral spotlight of the big announcements about big foreign hotels breaking ground on some piece of our prime real estate, and cared little about fostering and insisting on the more important economic linkages that could have been, should have been, part and parcel of these tax-leaking hotel investments.
We apparently have not learned very much from these past mistakes. The added insult to our poor small farmers - many from St Elizabeth - is that some of these tax-leaking-incentivised hotels take many months to pay farmers for the produce they 'sell' to these institutions.
Twin the ministries of Education and Agriculture to start a combined effort to educate our children as to the health military discount hotels and economic benefits of eating sweet potatoes, yams - throw in a little Usain Bolt for athletic prowess and flavour - green bananas, and bammies made from cassava - especially now that Minister Roger Clarke has so fulsomely endorsed the bammy - instead of flour and rice.
Let flour and rice fade away, fast, we hope. A timely set of non-tariff and tariff barriers would help. Use the hard-to-earn hard currency spent on rice and flour to build our farming economy and agricultural and food-security culture.
Farmers in St Bess and elsewhere have to fight drought, too much rain sometimes, poor infrastructure and distribution, low demand and market manipulation by some middlemen, being forced into consignment selling and the role of bankers.
Aubyn Hill is the CEO of Corporate Strategies Limited and was an international banker for more than 25 years. Email: writerhill@gmail.com. Twitter: @HillAubyn Facebook: facebook.com/ Corporate.Strategies.