Everglades, SCJ, farmers in cane land dispute

WESTERN BUREAU:

IT WOULD appear that the lease arrangement between the Government and the All-Island Cane Farmer’s Association (AICFA), which would see former cane workers getting some 3,600 acres of sugar lands at Long Pond in Trelawny is in trouble as Everglades Farm Limited, which operates the sugar factory, is challenging the action.

Everglades, which acquired the property in a deal with the Government in 2009, is claiming that they still have 49 years of a 50-year lease on the property, which they are intimating was breached when the Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ), on behalf of the company, offered the lands to the AICFA.

LEASING AGREEMENT

Last December, former Minister of Agriculture Audley Shaw, while breaking grounds for Organic Growth Holdings (OGH), a hemp farm, which was established on former sugar lands in Swanswick, also in Trelawny, announced that the SCJ would be offering the now-disputed sugar lands to the AICFA for leasing to the cane farmers.

“Three thousand acres of lands will be leased to small farmers for the production of a variety of crops, 2,000 acres to Cari Bamboo, which will grow bamboo, and 635 acres to OGH for the production of CBD oil,” Shaw said at the time.

TRESPASSING SIGNS

However, within recent times, Allan Melbourne, a representative of Everglades, has reportedly been placing ‘No Trespassers’ and ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted,’ signs on some of the lands under question, including lands at Vale Royal, Georgia, and Hyde Hall.

The action by Everglades has not gone down well with the farmers, who are contending that their lease arrangement is valid as they have already made the requisite payment to the AICFA and have got the blessing of the SCJ.

At a meeting held at the old

Long Pond Clinic on Tuesday, several farmers declared that they will continue to plant their crops since they have paid their lease money, which was what the Government had required of them.

A farmer, who requested anonymity, said, “I have seen the signs that Everglades has been putting up all over the place, but we have to stand together.”

Nigel Myrie, chairman of the AICFA, says the organisation considers the farmers’ occupancy of the land as being legitimate based on the deal that was made via the SCJ.

“The matter has now taken on a legal approach between landlord SCJ and lessee Everglades,” said Myrie. “Everglades has no authority to claim ownership of the land.”

Efforts to get an official statement from the Hussey family, the operators of Everglades Farm, proved futile as repeated calls to their Long Pond office went unanswered.