Welcoming Victor Wright’s Bernard Lodge pledge
WE TAKE it that the People’s National Party (PNP) is beyond equivocation, and that Victor Wright’s pledge that a future PNP government will leave Bernard Lodge for farming is solemn and bankable. If that is, indeed, the case, what Mr Wright must now do is to extract from the shadow Cabinet a similar undertaking for other agricultural lands, and that future residential and commercial developments will be on marginal lands not suited for farming.
Peter Phillips, the PNP’s president, has, in recent months, supported the cause of farmers who are being relocated to elsewhere, and some claim less fertile areas, on the 29,000-acre Bernard Lodge property, to make way for a new township that will include thousands of homes, commercial and recreational facilities, as well as agro-industrial complexes. Dr Phillips, we assume, has gained political mileage from his interventions.
It is not unreasonable to question whether Dr Phillips’ position on Bernard Lodge rested on principle or the perceived gains to be obtained therefrom, and those concerns, we believe, would have been exacerbated by Morais Guy’s, the shadow health minister, interjection in the debate.
Bernard Lodge, a former sugar plantation on the St Catherine plains on Jamaica’s south coast, sits on, according to the Government’s National Environment and Planning Agency, the island’s “most fertile … Class 1 soils”. But over the decades, as Jamaica’s sugar industry waned to near collapse, the property has been encroached upon and vandalised for real estate, including the 2012-2016 administration, in which Mr Guy had responsibility for housing.
That administration agreed to the use of 263 acres of Bernard Lodge for the construction of 1,650 homes in a partnership between the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) and a private partner, who went bust before the project started. It was recently reprised, with China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) as HAJ’s new partner.
Even in retrospect, without qualification, Mr Guy, last week, gave his personal and the Opposition’s blessing for the project on the Bernard Lodge lands. No red line about future developments.
SEEK CONSENSUS WITH PRIME MINISTER
That is why the statement in the name of Mr Wright, the shadow agriculture minister, pledging that Bernard Lodges Class A soil “will never be used for housing or any other purpose outside of agriculture” by a PNP administration is significant.
If there is no turning back on the HAJ/CHEC project, Mr Wright should now seek consensus on the matter with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who had proposed building an additional 17,000 homes on the property.
Mr Holness’ plan, as originally announced, would involve at least 4,600 acres of land, of which 1,700 would be allocated to agriculture/agroindustry. Recently, in the face of pushback, the Government announced that the land earmarked for agriculture would be increased by more than 70 per cent to 3,000 acres.
It is not clear, however, if this means fewer homes will be built, or that more land is being allotted to the project. Either way, it doesn’t matter. For, putting real estate on the land, Jamaica’s best, forecloses on its use for agriculture. This is in a context where Jamaica has a food import bill headed towards US$1 billion, or nearly a fifth of the value of all imports, and the Government has declared itself committed to food security.
Moreover, experts warn that with global warming, agricultural yields could drop by a third, meaning that more land will be required to get the same output. Already, of the 37 per cent of Jamaica that is deemed suitable for agriculture, only 19.5 per cent is available, most of the rest having been planted in concrete during the past half-century.
What the Government should be doing at Bernard Lodge, and similar places, is encourage more investments like Gassan Azan’s J$11-billion agro-industrial venture, and find ways to link these technologically advanced schemes with the efforts of Jamaica’s 200,000 farmers, most of whom operate on the margins.