Claudia Gardner, Gleaner Writer

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) yesterday disbursed grants totalling US$81,000.00 (J$5.2 million) to five rural-based non-governmental organisations.

The beneficiaries included Friends of the Sea and the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association in St. Ann; the Dolphin Head Trust in Hanover; the Northern Rio Minho Local Forest Management Committee in Clarendon; and, the Westmoreland-based Jamaica Tree Growers Association.

According to FAO representative to Jamaica, Dr. Dunstan Campbell, the funds were given from the organisation's $18 million National Forest Programme Facility for Jamaica.

He said the funds are to be spent on workshops, in-service training, policy analysis and information sharing and management activities geared towards the conservation, management and sustainable development of Jamaica's forests.

"For the FAO, this is a very important initiative," Dr. Campbell told Farmers Weekly. "We think there is a lot of livelihoods in the forestry sector that are not exploited and because it is in the rural areas, it is an opportunity for rural people to have sustainable income," he explained. The "FAO has been mandated to lead in the millennium goal one which is to reduce hunger by half by 2015 and forestry intervention would obviously add its little bit to reducing hunger," Dr. Campbell said.