Clarke
One of Jamaica's leading companies, the Jamaica Producers Group (JPG), celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The Managing director and chairman of the Gleaner Company, Oliver Clarke, was the special guest speaker at the anniversary luncheon, which took place at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston last Thursday. The theme chosen by Mr. Clarke was 'The development of rural Jamaica'. Following is his speech in full text.
DO YOU all know of George Busch? My guess is that all of you are fooled by the pronunciation of his name. Let me educate you.
One hundred and thirty-eight years ago, in 1866, Captain George Busch (this one commander-in-chief only of a sailing schooner) loaded 500 stems of banana onto his schooner at Oracabessa and Port Antonio and sailed in 14 days to Boston where he made a good profit selling those Jamaican bananas. Thus the banana export business started.
This good profit excited another captain Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker, who arrived in Port Morant on June 2, 1870, in his schooner 'Telegraph' bought some bananas and sailed off to New Jersey in 13 days and made another good profit.
Captain Baker then got very active with a two-way trade of bringing flour, pork, salted codfish, shoes and textiles down to Jamaica and this wonderful profitable fruit back. Soon the flour and pork and codfish were stacked below deck and wonderful charming wealthy tourists were placed above deck. One could say that the Jamaican cruise shipping business was born right there.
HOUSING OUR GUESTS
But all these welcome visitors did not want to spend their entire visit watching the next load of bananas being loaded (in spite of Harry Belafonte's banana song!) so someone had to come up with an idea to keep them occupied 'til the next sailing ship arrived. And so the Titchfield Hotel, in all its original splendour, was built. And soon Jamaica had a stack of internationally recognised luxury hotels the Myrtle Bank, the Constant Spring Hotel, the Moneague Hotel and the Titchfield Hotel and more.
The development of the banana industry makes for fascinating study. The sugar industry was not doing well in the mid-19th century. Farmers were attracted to change what they were producing to move to a crop which could be profitable. Bananas became a crop of choice.
The banana industry was developed at the start by American entrepreneurs with American capital. Big names were involved. The Boston Fruit Company, the Atlas Steamship Company, Standard Steamship Company, L D Baker and Company, United Brands, United Fruit Company, Elders and Fyffe's, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company.
Of course, these companies needed local agents to acquire or grow fruit and help the banana industry. Charles Edward Johnston was one of these, and Charles DeMercado got involved. The Jamaica Fruit and Shipping Company operated a profit-sharing arrangement with a pioneer banana man, Mr DiGiorgio, Sir Arthur Farquharson was there, Norman W Manley QC, Ansell Hart, and even some folk from Westmoreland like JWN Hudson and Hugh Clarke worked on the Island Committee established in 1935. Large banana growers got going like Sir John Pringle and Cecil V Lindo or F H deLisser.
A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
JPG was born out of a co-operative movement set up by a wide range of Jamaican producers to ensure that a greater portion of the profits made from growing bananas stayed in Jamaica and flowed to the producer of the product and to Jamaica. This co-operative fought to increase the price paid to local farmers for their produce. This co-operative took on the biggest companies of their time, kept going through efforts to drive them out of the market by price competition, expanded from being a buyers co-operative to vertically integrate into shipping and then into marketing and distribution overseas.
Right from the outset, the Government of the time stood behind the co-operative. For example, the Government created a special act of Parliament to facilitate the co-operative, and also guaranteed debentures to the value of £200,000 and assisted the conversion of the banana co-operative into the JBPA in 1935.
On the basis of this co-operation, combined with outstanding entrepreneurial skills kept burning across many generations grew one of Jamaica's finest companies, that celebrates its 75th anniversary today. This company, today, almost single-handedly keeps Jamaica's banana industry alive. It produces 75 per cent of all of Jamaica's banana exports.
But was has happened to Evan Jones's banana man the proud small rural landowning farmer? He has not enjoyed similar prosperity. This is not due to the growth of the JPG group.
It is due to a national abandonment of rural Jamaica. The people of rural Jamaica are voiceless their problems are not articulated with force and effectiveness in the Kingston corridors of Government.
We hear every day of the crises facing the inner city. We hear very little of the crawling poverty and frustration of rural Jamaica. Poverty and frustration exist from Westmoreland in the west to Portland in the east.
The poverty trap that faces every small farmer in Jamaica today is real. Produce more and lose more is the financial opportunity facing so many small and large rural farmers.
There is no stated public vision in Jamaica for rural development. Very few of the agricultural associations are strong and viable. They used to be strong advocates for improvement of rural life. One hardly hears a murmur today from the associations that represent agriculture, sugar, ground provisions, coffee, indeed bananas and all the other sectors that have rural farmer membership.
Undoubtedly, there is a chicken and egg situation. The farmers are poor and cannot adequately fund their associations. The associations are under-funded and cannot do their representational work adequately. Many associations have become no more than a collection of regional political chapters. One of the major functions of a Government is to build up regional life, and so, not only improve those persons' quality of life, but also halt the increasing urbanisation of Jamaica.
Government is failing to do this. Its partnership with rural Jamaica is failing. This is a missed opportunity. It is also bad government. The banana co-operative that grew so strongly to become the Jamaica Producer's Group had, at its beginning, that wonderful blend of private sector leadership backed by Government interest in rural Jamaica, witnessed by supportive legislation and financial guarantees. This was a partnership that worked. An opportunity taken. One has only to look at the magnificent pictures of a packed Ward Theatre on July 18, 1935, to see the mobilisation that took place when everyone worked to save the banana industry.
Regrettably today, the Government and private businesses seem unable to move together effectively to create more jobs and greater economic growth. It is sad that in 2004 there is not one senior member of the private sector in the Cabinet. The excellent idea of independent senators has been discontinued. This was a great device to allow Parliament to tap the talent of senior persons unable to run for representational politics.
NO COINCIDENCE
I do not believe that it is coincidence that there are no senior business people involved in Government and that there is no economic growth. Jamaica of tomorrow will not provide food for our people through bureaucracy, administrative incompetence, and ideological repetition tomorrow's Jamaica will provide hope if people in rural Jamaica can get work, can pay their property taxes from the agricultural crops they produce, other than ganja.
JPG has done well. It has lasted. That is no small achievement. It has adapted to changing circumstances from co-operative to stock company, from being a buyers co-operative to being a steamship company, a grower, a purchaser of fruit from other countries, a ripener in Jamaica, a ripener in the UK, a packager in the UK, a major supplier to UK supermarkets, a dealer in all manner of fresh produce in the UK, the maker of the best fresh orange juice and other fresh products in the UK, a partner with a major multinational, as well as, and most importantly, the maker of the best breadfruit chips in Jamaica. JPG has shown the world that Jamaican companies can be internationally competitive. Everyone of us must admire this performance. A performance maintained across three-quarters of a century.
JPG is a company that is a model for any Jamaican business to follow. Its shoulders bear a massive burden, today, of keeping many workers in rural Jamaica as wage earners and their communities alive.
If I was impertinent enough to suggest a mission for JPG, I would suggest that it works to demand a national policy to develop rural Jamaica. Your corporate navel string is buried in the rural parishes from Portland and St Mary to St James and the many parishes that today have faltering agricultural bases and whose farmers are suffering badly. All of these need a Champion to help them recreate a livelihood, stop flowing into the housing problems of Kingston, and be proud to be small farmers not necessarily in bananas, but through growing crops on their own plots.
I urge you to build back the small rural farmer who Evan Jones wrote so memorably about
Up in de hills, where the streams are cool
An mullet and janga swim in de pool
I have ten acres of mountain side
An a dainty-foot donkey dat I ride
Four Gross Michel, an four Lacatan
Some coconut trees and some hills of yam
An a pasture on dat very same lan
Five she-goats and a black ram
Dat, by God and dis big right han
Is de property of a banana man
An when u see dese ol clothes brown wid stain
And soaked right through wid de Portland rain
Don't cast your eye nor turn your nose
Don't judge a man by his patchy clothes
I'm a strong man. A proud man, an I'm free
Free as dese mountains, free as dis sea
I know myself, and I know my ways
And will sing wid pride to de end of my days
Praise God and m'big right han
I will live and die a banana man"
Try to see what you can do to be the big right hand small scale banana growing is not viable, but there must be something else.
