It can be done!
MY COLUMN of September 9, 2022 was titled ‘Lack of vision in agriculture’, and I accused both the Government and the private sector of not having many new agricultural ideas since we went into sugar in the 17th century and bananas in the 19th.
I accused Jamaican interests of sticking closely to the limited vision of our colonisers, who saw this island as Britain’s overseas plantation. Our role in the empire was to produce what Britain couldn’t grow there, shipping it to protected markets across the Atlantic in its most primary form, to provide British jobs in agroprocessing and refining.
Once the European Union forced Britain to remove preferential duties on sugar and bananas, our industrial agriculture has largely collapsed, leaving small farmers producing mainly domestic food crops. It seemed to me that the best idea we have to make use of our tens of thousands of acres of good agricultural land is to turn it into housing. To paraphrase a line from our National Anthem, I stated that we were perishing from lack of vision.
I wrote, inter alia:
“Can’t we find some other crop to plant that will make best use of our natural patrimony in arable land? Is all we can think to do with good land is to build houses?
“Hawaii took 3,000 pineapple suckers from Hodges in St Elizabeth and has made a multi-billion dollar industry out of it. Some years ago I went to Hawaii, and was driven through fields of pineapples stretching for miles! Why couldn’t we do that? We would have processed the fruit into juice, and slices, and chunks, and puree; we could have combined it with other extracts to make fruit punch and flavoured rum, and so much else! Our private sector has also been short-sighted.
“What have we done with the ortanique?
“Looking for a new crop to plant, Hawaii went into Macadamia nuts and kiwi fruit. Why couldn’t we try that? …
“Have we maxxed out on mango exports? Citrus and its extracts? Ackees? Coffee and cocoa? How about peppers, nutmeg, mace and pimento to make savoury sauces? …
“This is not just a matter of making the best use of agricultural land; it is also a matter of saving scarce foreign exchange, and ensuring food security in an era of accelerating climate change and war. If war in the Ukraine and elsewhere deepens, what then? The bauxite won’t last forever, and war will slow tourism to a crawl.”
CONFIRMED MY OPINION
I have not resiled from this view. In fact, a recent experience I had has confirmed me in my opinion.
A few days after the 2022 column quoted above, I got a call from Peter McConnell of Tru-Juice (fruit products) and Tru-Moo (milk products) inviting me to come and see what he was doing in the Linstead basin, the old parish of St Thomas-ye-Vale. It took me a while to take him up on his invitation, but last Saturday I took along twenty-five of my friends to observe his operations.
What we saw was the exception that proves the rule!
It is an integrated operation. The factory (which we did not see) is set up to produce juice concentrate, and the fresh chilled product. And so on one farm he grows citrus as far as the eyes can see – hundreds of acres (Florida: eat your heart out!). And on another farm, pineapples as far as the eye can see (Hawaii: eat your heart out!)
Peter explained that he got his big break when Florida had a big freeze two years in a row, the fruit fell off the trees, driving up the price of orange concentrate. He ploughed under his canefields and planted oranges. He is now the largest citrus farmer in Jamaica. His citrus groves are fertigated – there is fertiliser in his irrigation water – by drip irrigation. Computers drive the fertigation, including rainfall and drought into the algorithm: the profile of each field (soil type, pH and nutrients) determines the fertiliser recipe each is fed, as well as the quantity of irrigation water applied. There is little waste. He can vary the fertigation regime for each field from his cell phone.
In addition, 100 per cent of his factory wastewater is put into the mix, so the several rivers which flow through his farms are clean.
His fields became infected with the tristeza virus, and so he had to destroy them and replant with disease-resistant rootstock.
Then his citrus groves were attacked by “citrus greening” bacteria, for which there is no cure. Through the use of technology he is able to husband his trees to live with the infestation, while keeping his yields up.
To feed his juice plant he went into pineapple cultivation in a big way, again with fertigation. A special variety of the bromeliads are planted close together, and after two ratoons the fields are ploughed up and replanted for optimum yield (using suckers from his fields). He picked and peeled pineapples for all of us on spot, and we had our fill: juicy and sweet!
ECONOMIES OF SCALE
He has achieved significant economies of scale; he competes well in the international marketplace. He is in the midst of expansion; we saw acres being planted; he cannot produce enough fruit juice concentrate to satisfy demand.
Because his pasteuriser can process milk as well as fruit juices, he has invested in a herd of dairy cattle, using a special hybrid of Holstein and Indian dairy cows. He grows sorghum to supplement imported animal feed, and is about to plant feed corn.
His milking operation is fully automated, and he has added a feedlot to his milking parlour. The animal waste is collected and used to fertilise his pastures.
What impressed me was Peter’s application of genetics and digital technology to his animal and plant husbandry business. The scale and success of Peter’s operation proves that with the right leadership, we can profitably utilise our agricultural land to feed ourselves, and to earn foreign exchange from the surplus.
While our short-sighted political leaders take fertile well-watered cultivable land and turn it into housing (use non-arable land for that!), some Jamaicans have vision.