The Editor, Sir:

There is now raging debate about fertiliser prices to the end users and swirling accusations about price gouging. All this comes at a bad time when the inflationary effects of spiralling agricultural input costs are simply deleterious to the industry as a whole.

The Jamaican agricultural sector in the main caters to conventional farmers who over many years have become steeped in the culture of quick fixes; farmers who are too impatient to fallow soil; chickens whose ration is formulated to bring them to required market weight in six weeks; and crops affected by pesticide and other residue, nicely arranged on supermarket shelves.

The truth is, though, that as a country we somehow pay little attention to the global imperatives for health awareness, food safety, and environmental dictates. The signs are ominous that we are going to be punished if as a country we, like Belshazzar, fail to discern the writing on the wall.

Indigenous raw materials

It was in an effort to pre-empt the present Global Organic Food Consumption crusade that a local company without external investment capital started two decades ago to produce organic fertilisers. Today, it churns out a precise blend of organic fertiliser made from indigenous raw materials. This company effectively puts on trial its own capability to meet the demand of the organic speciality food market in 2008 and beyond.

Today, totally without pre-meditation, this company finds itself almost like the umpire in a fertiliser price regime debate, and all because innovation sets it clearly apart in what is now known as the fertiliser price war.

The 'stalk' reality is that farmers should have long ago been looking to greater creativity in order to maximise on their investment, while at the same time giving due consideration to the environment and taking the hard look as to whether synthetic fertilisers should be forever indispensable or simply limited to a complementary role.

Five per cent of the soil's composition is organic matter and this needs to be replenished to bring balance to the other three elements which comprise the soil system: chemical compounds - 45 per cent, air and water - approximately 25 per cent each. This now forms the basis of my hypothesis that organic matter is an indispensable precursor which even the most diehard conventional farmer must accede to.

For conventional agriculture to be sustainable, fertilisers need organic matter. Conversely, organic fertiliser does not need the assistance of any stimulus to enhance its properties. This is why policy direction at our local Ministry of Agriculture must be informed by a greater appreciation of how a complex soil system operates in nature.

These technocrats need to be deliberate in their deliberations as to how to avoid disequilibrium to the environment on the part of the farming sector which they serve.

It's time for solid information dissemination, as well as the need to grow our local industries while curbing our appetite for imported items or we will all be involuntarily shoved into the price hike cul-de-sac.

I am, etc.,

DERRICK SIMON