Do agritourism in a structured way – Grizzle

THE RECENT announcement by Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, suggesting backyard farmers as suppliers to hotels, has been met with ambivalence by Negril-based hotelier and farmer Daniel Grizzle.

Two Saturdays ago, Bartlett announced in Montego Bay, that the Tourism Linkages Network of the Ministry of Tourism had commenced an initiative involving subsistence farmers to boost agritourism.

At the time, the minister said backyard farmers within the Lilliput community in St James, which is the site of the Iberostar and the soon-tobe-constructed Hard Rock Hotel, are the first targets and that the initiative will also extend to other resort towns such as Negril and Ocho Rios.

But Grizzle, who is the immediate past president of the Negril Chamber of Commerce, said unless this was done in a structured way, it will only amount to what he described as temporary appeasement and not truly help to uplift and provide sustainable sources of income for those farmers, or encourage young people to become primary food producers.

“There is nothing better than to have our farming community supplying the food that our guests eat. But you don’t want to do it as appeasement. I think most of the time when we do things for the poor, it is an appeasement of the poor,” Grizzle stated.

“Young people want to earn good money. They want to have their little motor cars; they want to have their nice houses. With a little backyard farming, you are making people feel good but you are not really moving them out of poverty. Agriculture is key for tourism; tourism is good for agriculture, but it must be done in a proper, professional way,” he added.

Over the past year, Agriculture Minister Audley Shaw has complained bitterly that the majority of the island’s food imports are directed to the hotel sector and that most of the food served by hotels “comes into the island on the same planes that fly in the tourists”. Shaw has also declared that the problem will have to be ‘addressed frontally’.

Grizzle has recommended that branches of the Agricultural Marketing Corporation’s (AMC) be resurrected across the island to market farmers’ produce to buyers across the island, including hotels.

“We need structure to sell these goods. A farmer is not a salesman, a farmer does not have time to go to a hotel to sell, and when a hotel manager has a thousand people to tend to, do you think he has time to go deal with a guy with 200 pounds? You have to have a system. So the minister is right in terms of agriculture, (but) the issue is how you do it,” Grizzle said.

He argued that Jamaica is renowned for throwing away things before even realising its value. The AMC Market was badly managed, he noted.

“As a farmer you would take your goods there and they distribute it. It was a brilliant idea; we need to go back to it. You knew the price you were getting; the price was low but you sell large volumes, so you didn’t have to worry about sale; you worry about production,” he explained.