KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC—Prime Minister Andrew Holness has instructed developing a national plan by April 2025 to build resilience within the agriculture sector.
The directive relayed to Floyd Green, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, was issued as the Prime Minister challenges the sector’s stakeholders to adopt a culture of resilience.
This is against the backdrop of Hurricane Beryl’s recent onslaught and the nuisances of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other adversities that have been plaguing the industry.
Speaking during the Denbigh Agricultural, Industrial, and Food Show in the southern parish of Clarendon earlier this week, Holness said the instruction to Green forms part of Jamaica’s food security and resilience.
Consequently, the Prime Minister said the national plan would include “increasing the local production of goods, here in Jamaica, using Jamaican input and resources.”
Additionally, he informed that the plan is intended “to increase our processing capabilities for food, to increase our storage capabilities for food [and] to increase the financing available to small, medium-sized, and large farmers, because we must start to treat agriculture as a business and not only as a passion.”
The Prime Minister advised that Green has commenced work on the plan and has secured funding to recruit a consultant.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister maintains that, though small, Jamaica is brave in facing challenges and overcoming them.
“We are a resilient people. Resilience is the nature of an entity to quickly recover from a shock, adversity, a disaster, [or] a crisis, not just to recover from it but to recover stronger,” he explained.
Consequently, Holness urged farmers to take advantage of crises and “change the way we were doing things before, to introduce new ways of doing things that [are] better than the old ways.”
“So, we must not look upon challenges and adversity with fear. What we must do, as resilient people who naturally believe in our ‘tallawahness,’ is that we must prepare for adversity,” he added.
The Prime Minister said that farmers should store and save food for periods when food supplies may decrease and build sound infrastructure to safeguard against disasters in their preparations to be resilient.
The Denbigh show marked the 70th anniversary of the historic event, which is the largest of its kind in the English-speaking Caribbean.
It coincided with the 62nd Anniversary of Jamaica’s attaining political independence from Great Britain on August 6, 1962.
Several dignitaries and officials, locally and regionally, were in attendance, including the Premier of the Cayman Islands, Juliana O’Connor Connolly.
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