Gov’t supporting farmers during COVID-19

State Minister for Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, Floyd Green, says the Government is committed to supporting farmers during the coronavirus pandemic and safeguard the country’s food security.

Green stated that among the initiatives implemented was a $240 million stimulus package to purchase excess fruits and vegetables from those farmers who lost their markets. This was largely due to the closure of hotels as a result of the pandemic.

 “We bought from the farmers and redistributed through channels such as children’s homes, communities that were on lockdown and established mobile farmers' markets. There was significant demand and the access is what caused the breakdown in the supply chain, so   we had to help farmers to get through this period and also still be able to plant,” he noted.

 Green was addressing the Jamaica Climate Change Youth Council’s bi-weekly series ‘COVID Chat' on  the topic: ‘When Hunger Strikes – Food Security and Sustainability during COVID-19.’

 Since the start of the pandemic, the Ministry has distributed over five million pounds of produce, benefitting more than 1000 farmers across 12 parishes.

 Green cited the additional $1B that has been allocated to the Ministry’s Productivity Incentive Programme (PIP) to assist small farmers as further indication of the Government’s intent to strengthen the country’s food network.

  “As the excess becomes no more, we need to transition into security and sustainability. We recognise that we need resources to ensure that farmers continue to plant, to deal with logistics issues such as storage capacity, getting more refrigerated trucks and also engaging in private-public partnerships with cooperatives as a part of the long-term response,” he pointed out.

 In the meantime, he hopes more entrepreneurs will get involved in the delivery of fresh produce.

 “We saw how many new companies came about to deal with the logistics to get the fresh produce into the homes of Jamaicans and we want to see the emergence of more businesses to tackle the issues in logistics,” he said.

 He added that the emergence of the mobile markets has also provided another opportunity for farmers to sell their produce.

 “It gave us the opportunity to provide produce at an affordable price and it says to the farmers ‘if you can increase the production and keep the prices affordable then there is this new market’,” he said.

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