Government is marginalising bananas.

"I will say bluntly upfront that we in the industry are dismayed that it is the Government's posture to diversify us out of bananas. Some of the advice and counsel given to the European Union about diversification, we feel that that has been a bit of a mistake from where we sit and I speak narrowly as a banana man.

"The European Banana Support Programme, as its name implies, is European Union Banana Support. The Government of Jamaica with the full support of the European Union has taken funds away from the Banana Support Programme and put it into diversification. To me that clearly indicates a decision by Government that it is marginalising bananas.

"It is very important to understand, however, that when we talk about world production of bananas, we are talking about having to compete with Equador (which) produces about 6 million tonnes of bananas per year, next door Dominican Republic is about 200,000 tonnes. So when we come to talk about these alternative uses of banana, it is important to realise that unless we have a patented product that nobody else can produce, anything that we can produce with the banana can be produced by everybody else, and, therefore, the same economies of scale impact."

DR. MARSHALL HALL Managing Director - Jamaica Producers Group

Farmers feel they do better with banana

"I heard about the diversification, which is good, but you still by choice going to have more people say, look, I want to be in the banana industry. They talk about plantain, many farmers feel they do better with bananas because of the ratoon situation and you can always be selling.

"Everything has to be market driven and if we are going into diversification you have to identify what we are going to grow and for what market. Of certainty we know where we can sell the banana (to Europe), and we can tell the tax man come next week for your tax, you can tell anybody you owe next week because the system of payment is reliable and that is why farmers have stuck to it despite a low return."

BOBBY POTTINGER - President, All-Island Banana Growers Association

There is enough flat land now

"I am absolutely shocked to hear, which I had not heard before, that funds which had been provided for the banana industry were diverted to diversification. The question I always ask, diversify to what, because there is no crop that you can tell me in Jamaica that right now does not have very grave questions about it. While it is true that we ought to have another dozen or so crops which we need to expand ... we don't really have the production technology at the moment to set targets and to get there given the current infrastructure in the country. So banana, which is something we have always done where we have the land, where we know how to do it, that is something which we must keep at.

"We ought to move out of the hill bananas because there is enough flat land now which is idle which can do bananas. We need to be telling farmers more about new varieties, about new technologies and getting some to do far more for the banana and plantain chip industry which we are now importing a significant number of the plantain and banana chips, even while we are still exporting because the brand Jamaica is so strong. So that is one area of diversification where I think the technology is known, the product is accepted but it isn't moving to the extent it should because of the lack of production."