Marjorie Stair(First of a series)
AT THE eve of the Year 2001, it is agreed that, up to now, human production on the farm has done a superb job of keeping up with human consumption at the table. Despite Malthusian theory to the contrary, food supply has not only increased faster than food demand, despite the big jump in world population during the second half of the century, but the prices of staple foods have also fallen dramatically. The price of wheat and corn, in constant dollars, have decreased by 61 per cent and 58 per cent respectively since the 1950s. In 1958 global food supply represented 2,360 calories per person per day. By the mid-1990s total food supply had increased to 2,740 calories per person per day.
Hunger in the world is therefore not caused by inefficient or inadequate food production, but by the lack of access to food by the world's neediest -- those who go to bed hungry in a world of surplus food. They are denied access either because of lack of income, oppression and war or bad governance with leaders that lack the political will to ensure that all of a country's citizens are adequately fed.
I sincerely believe that the Jamaican agricultural sector could have made as dramatic gains in performance as those experienced in other parts of the world. My reasons are that, first of all, we had the basic research and development structure. If we had simply maintained this structure and not allowed it to deteriorate, we would have been in a good position to exploit the available technologies.
Secondly, as a people, we have demonstrated over and over again, oftentimes in other places, that there is none of life's games in which we cannot participate and, once we are allowed in, we will excel.
The paradigms, starting somewhere in the late 1960s, early 1970s when the reversal of our fortunes started, became flawed and we are yet to realise that we need to change them. Here lies the root of not only the decline of our agricultural sector but also that of our economy and our social behaviour.
The result
The result of our flawed paradigms is that our economy continues to contract and our debt-servicing costs progressively increase to approximately 60 per cent of our budget. This even as our government continues to pursue policies and strategies that favour the rich while attempting to appease the urban poor through politically motivated crash programme type projects, none of which are aimed at addressing, once and for all, the root causes of our economic and social problems. It is as if nothing changes.
One of the things that strikes you when you live outside of Jamaica and return is that the political leaders as well as the opinion leaders in the society never seem to change. You hear the same voices on the talk shows, even some of the more regular callers. You hear the same voices in the political arena. You hear the same voices making the same old speeches or giving sermons at prayer breakfasts.
There is nothing much new and the rabid struggle for power jars ones nerves and one just wishes that it could be over and done with as one watches Jah Kingdom go to waste. One waits for the fresh new voice, and it is there, but one must listen very carefully to hear it in the cacophony that surrounds us. So let us put the issue of the decline of the agricultural sector in context.
The 1996 agricultural census reports a 25 per cent reduction in farmlands since the 1968 census. Approximately 60 per cent of this reduced area is categorised as active farmlands, the remaining 40 per cent being ruinate, woodland or in other uses. This fact by itself would not be of concern if our agricultural productivity levels were increasing and/or our economy was booming hence the assurance that we had the ability to support our increasing dependence on imported foods. Instead, programmes such as the PL 480 programme are meeting some of our basic food requirements.
The 1999 Survey of Living Conditions in Jamaica revealed that the decline in per capita consumption of Jamaica's poor has been matched by an increase in the number of people living below the poverty line. The annual consumption spending of Jamaica's wealthiest 10 per cent of the population has increased to 12.5 times that of the poorest 10 per cent, widening the gap in the distribution of income between the country's rich and poor.
Rural poverty is much worse than urban poverty; rural unemployment levels have risen and, as a July 27 2000 Gleaner editorial tells us, -- "we are currently witnessing a slow and painful erosion of many rural communities and of the quality of rural life ... with little prospect of a turn around any time soon."
T. R. Reid in an article, 'Feeding The Planet', published in the October 1998 issue of National Geographic magazine, tells us that the ability to produce more and more food each year stems from one of history's most important inventions: the farm.
Approximately 3 per cent of the population of Canada, and an even smaller percentage in the USA, grow more food than their countries can consume. What is the state of the Jamaican farm? Are we still taking some strange pride in the sad fact that the declining agricultural sector still employs some 25 per cent of our population even as we enter the Year 2001, the new millennium? Why is our agricultural output for the first half of the Year 2000 at its lowest level for more than ten years? Is there a future for Jamaican agriculture? Should there be a future for Jamaican Agriculture? For possible answers to these questions I will start in the next instalment with some personal experiences and then go back to the beginning -- the land/earth/soil.
Marjorie Stair is an agronomist and horticultural specialist who now lives and works in St. Vincent.
