‘One One Coco’ filling baskets in St Thomas
JOHNSTOWN, St Thomas: AS PART of its annual One One Coco Training Programme, the Source Farm Foundation in Johnstown, St Thomas has invited another set of volunteers to conduct various workshops which focus on organic farming and permaculture.
One of the volunteers, Benjamin Weiss from Philadelphia, United States, told Rural Xpress that the initiative is a great opportunity for smallscale local farmers to interact with organic and sustainable farmers from other areas to get information that is somewhat hard to access locally.
Weiss, who is on the island teaching permaculture with a focus on sustainable agriculture, explained that the programme would be helpful to Jamaicans since it has proven to be very successful in many developing countries, especially in the Tropics.
“I think it will help to rejuvenate local economy and create a lot of small-scale industry for people to participate in. It can also help areas generate resources that can be used within the community or for exporting purposes,” he said.
PUSHING TECHNOLOGIES
With regard to recommendations to small farmers, Weiss, who has been in the business of agriculture for a decade, shared that based on his observations, there are a lot of obstacles that local farmers will face because the land has been mismanaged for a long time.
This, according to him, is largely because of the influence of large agricultural companies from other countries who have been pushing technologies that have failed to work in Jamaica.
“Sustainable farming is really something that needs to take hold on the island because a lot of small farmers are struggling to make a living even though the variety of crops that can be grown here is almost endless. I think permaculture could really be used to help local farmers manage the lands better and also build community support in terms of organising labour and pooling resources to get funding for projects on their farm,” he recommended.
The Philadelphia farmer spoke of the experience of local planters in the traditional Jamaican style of agriculture and in more recent industrial technologies to which they have been introduced.
He explained that this type of farming would greatly be enhanced if it were to be blended with sustainable farming and knowledge from other places where the pratice has been pioneered which in turn would end what he described as the significant struggles of small farmers.