Make CASE a catalyst for tangible agriculture overhaul

DR DERRICK Deslandes has an opportunity to make his institution a transformative voice in what should be a critical pillar for the sustainable recovery of Jamaica’s COVID-19ravished economy. The opening should not be wasted if the College of Agriculture, Science and Education (CASE) is intending to have long-term relevance.

Dr Deslandes is president of the college at Passley Gardens, Portland. Its primary function is the training of agricultural professionals and teachers. It should, we think, also be engaged in research, which would afford it a significant voice in the formulation and debate of agricultural policy. CASE appears, though, to have no, or little, policy influence. Worse, CASE, the institution that bears a proud lineage as successor to the Jamaica School of Agriculture, has demonstrated to the public no serious desire for, or a wish for, or that it deserves a seat at the policy table. It offers no discernible leadership in the discourse of agricultural policy – to the extent that any of that takes place.

Current events, though, provide an opening for institutions like CASE, if it accepts the challenge, to help lead an overhaul of the farm sector to one worthy of a 21st-century economy that is attractive to young people and stabilises rural communities.

Jamaica’s agricultural sector, and its policy drivers, abound with contradictions. The sector accounts for around seven per cent of gross domestic product but is deemed to underperform. Several analyses, including one three years ago by the International Monetary Fund’s then resident representative in Jamaica, demonstrated a strong correlation between overall economic growth and growth in agriculture. Further, farming is a big employer of labour, accounting for upwards of 200,000 workers, or nearly 20 per cent of Jamaica’s workforce.

TECHNOLOGICALLY BACKWARD

However, the sector is among the island’s most inefficient and technologically backward. Jamaican farmers, on average, are in their mid-50s. Mostly, they cultivate small plots over which their tenure is uncertain, and they, generally, use hand tools. It is labour-intensive work.

At the same time, large swathes of farmlands are idle, and much of these farmlands have fallen prey to real estate development. And until this year’s collapse of tourism because of a coronavirus-induced halt in tourism travel, Jamaica’s food-import bill was in the region of US$1 billion.

Therein lie the opportunities, both for farming and the sector’s support institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption of global supply chains, for instance, has caused renewed focus on the issue of food security. Indeed, that question, and the likely role of agriculture in Jamaica’s post-coronavirus economy, are part of the platforms of the governing Jamaica Labour Party and the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) for this week’s general election.

Even before the crisis, some analysts suggested that Jamaica could substitute perhaps a fifth of its food imports with domestic production. Spectacularly, six years ago, when he taught at The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Mona School of Business, Dr Deslandes estimated that there was up to US$1 billion of unfulfilled opportunity in Jamaica’s agriculture sector although that figure included what was available in the sugar industry, from which even big players continue to disinvest.

ANALYSES NOT SHARED

Unfortunately, we have heard neither CASE’s voice nor that of the agricultural unit at The UWI, Mona campus, on these issues. Their researchers may have shared analyses with fellow academics and government policymakers but not, insofar as we are aware, with the public.

The parties, on the hustings, and in their manifestos, have promised to pay significant new attention to agriculture. Their programmes include accelerated land titling, financial support to small farmers, and the satellite-farming concept in which larger farms provide technology support to surrounding smaller ones. In the case of the PNP, it would also award scholarships to rural young people, presumably including to CASE.

These pledges should cause a perking up at the agricultural training and research institutions although, in the case of The UWI, less than one per cent of its Jamaican students study agriculture. CASE, though, with nearly 1,000 students, which Dr Deslandes hopes can gain full university status by 2022, should be, or should want to be, in the thick of these things.

Its faculty should be releasing research and policy papers for reviving agriculture as an economically viable enterprise that is also attractive to young people. As part of this project, CASE should probably seek to bring itself back to being a specialist institution. It should review its offerings in education training, limiting them only to what has direct bearing on agriculture.