CITING THE disparity between the cost of loan funds to exporters and farmers, president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society, A.A. Bobby Pottinger, has called for Government to narrow the gap.
Mr. Pottinger at a JAS board meeting this week said that while interest rates at the island's People's Cooperative Banks was at 13 per cent, exporters were accessing funds at 9.5 per cent.
He said the level of inequity could not be reasonable, "considering that farmers are taking much more risk and are exposed to so much occupational hazards" than the exporters.
It has also emerged from research, he told the JAS directors, that the local farming sector faced one of the highest interest rates across the Caribbean.
In calling on the Government to level the playing field by bringing down loan rates to single digits at the PC banks, the JAS president had strong support from his board members, some of whom declared that farm loans should be available at rates no higher than seven per cent because of the many production uncertainties.
The JAS top brass also took note of the Jamaica/Canada initiative to share the proceeds from the disposal of assets seized from drug dealers from one country who were convicted of operating in the other nation.
Declaring that ganja was a crop alternative among Jamaican farmers, Mr. Pottinger said for its cultivation to diminish significantly, there needed to be more efforts to foster the cultivation of legitimate crops locally.
The JAS Board endorsed his proposal to call on the Ministry of National Security and Justice to "channel some of the accrued funds through the JAS to help provide benefits like tillage service to young men now attracted to ganja cultivation, so they can see more potential from legitimate crops."
