Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

[SmoothOperator]

Well in Jamaica, land of wood and water, I have always thought it was scandalous that we import every striking thing under the sun so I support this initiative.

http://www.radiojamaica.com/content/view/7423/26/

Sunday, 20 April 2008

In a move reminiscent of the People's National Party government of the 1970's, the current Jamaica Labour Party administration has announced a drive to encourage Jamaicans to establish backyard gardens.

In his recent budget presentation, Agriculture Minister Dr. Chris Tufton said government will urge Jamaicans to go back to basics by implementing an Urban Backyard Garden Programme.

The project is aimed at assisting residents of urban centres to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs in their backyards or community spaces.

Pilot projects will be launched in Portmore and Spanish Town, where

local councils will distribute 10,000 free backyard garden kits developed by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority.

The kits contain seeds, soil nutrients, planting instructions as well as basic gardening tools.

Residents will be required to dedicate 30 square feet of yard space to plant two to four crops per year and they will be monitored over a three month period.

The Minister explained that the initiative was prompted by the rising cost of food on the local market.

The kits will also be made available to the general public at farm and hardware stores islandwide and will be sold for $1,500 each.

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

Socialism again?? how is the flights to Miami going?? are they full??

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

I can't believe this is the solution the government has for the country's food woes!!

[Blackstar*]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Socialism again?? how is the flights to Miami going?? are they full?? </div></div>
Where is the socialism? [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/confused.gif[/img]
ETA: Must be this: "In a move reminiscent of the People's National Party government of the 1970's..."

[CeaBee]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

Jamaica rapped for food import appetite
published: Monday | April 21, 2008

Tendai Franklyn-Brown, Staff Reporter

Amid skyrocketing commodities prices and a global food crisis, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) is warning Jamaica to cut its dependence on imported goods.

"We believe that Jamaica has to correct its heavy dependence on food imports and start consuming and producing more local food if the country is to maintain an acceptable level of food security over time," said a spokesman of IICA's Jamaica chapter.

A shortage of rice, grain, flour and other cereals on the world market has sent prices spiralling, causing widescale social consequences - from starvation in Indonesia to a burgeoning food black market in Egypt. Price hikes also triggered violent clashes on the streets of Haiti - which holds the ignominious reputation as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere - leading to the Senate booting Prime Minister Jacques Alexis nine days ago.

Many Jamaicans rely heavily on rice and flour to supply their diet. But rice prices have boiled over and the cost of bread has risen by more than 30 per cent in two months. Inflation running at 20 per cent hasn't helped either.

According to IICA, the materiali-sation of a food crisis would depend on the measures put in place to address domestic food production and supply.

Root crops

One day after former Finance Minister Omar Davies warned of possible unrest here resulting from price hikes, Agriculture Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, in his Budget presentation last week, suggested ramping up tuber production as critical to ensuring food security.

The minister trumpeted the value of root crops such as yam, sweet potato and especially cassava - a stance the IICA fully supports.

Tufton also mooted improving Jamaica's capability - considering its location risk in the Atlantic hurricane belt - to recover from adverse weather conditions.

Meanwhile, Lenworth Blake, president of the Jamaica Greenhouse Growers Association, said if greenhouse technology continues to expand, Jamaica would be able to significantly reduce food imports.

"We started last year with 11 members and at present we have 77, and it is growing," he said.

A greenhouse is an effective method of farming as cultivators have the comfort of improved crop security and greater yield potential.

"You are able to manage your plants better. There are fewer attacks from insects and fungus, and your output is a lot more," said Blake. "The same greenhouse will last for five to seven years and the crops we grow are indeterminate varieties - that means they bear for longer periods."

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080421/lead/lead5.html

[Wahalla]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

Does this not have a part to play in a more comprhensive strategy ?????

[Blackstar*]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

Governments should go back to imposing tariffs on imported foodstuffs - the IMF be damned!

Look what has happened to dairy in JA (article from 2004 BTW):

<span style='font-family: Arial Black'><span style="color: #000066">GLOBALISATION: Dairy Farmers Pit 'Jamaica Hope' Against Subsidies</span></span>
By Zadie Neufville

ST. CATHERINE, Jamaica, Mar 17 (IPS) - Aubrey Taylor's dairy farm has made him all-island Champion Farmer many years running, but these days he struggles to stay in business.

"I just lodged my milk cheque and it's not enough to cover the cost of my operations," he tells IPS.

But unlike many of his friends, Taylor vows to remain in dairy farming despite a significant drop in production levels, the price he gets for his milk and the declining condition of his pastures.

<span style='font-size: 11pt'>Across the island the picture is repeated several times over as falling milk prices and demand force dairy farmers out of business. They say they are unable to compete with subsidised milk imports from the European Union (EU).</span>

An immediate past president of the Jamaican Dairy Farmers Federation (JDFF), Taylor says the subsidies allow European farmers to produce milk at half the cost of their Jamaican counterparts.

At 1,420 U.S. dollars a tonne, manufacturers here find it cheaper to import milk powder than to buy fresh milk from local farmers, says the federation, dismissing claims that Jamaican producers cannot competitively meet demand.

What local farmers need, they say, is a level playing field, and the advantage of this country's world famous tropical cattle breed, the Jamaica Hope.

More than 50 years ago, Jamaican Scientist Thomas Lecky developed the Jamaica Hope, the last breed of tropical dairy cattle. A combination of the British Jersey cow (small and light feeding), the Holstein (heavy milk producers) and the Indian Sahiwal breed (disease resistant and adapted to the tropics) the Hope produces an average 12 litres of milk a day, 3 times that produced by other cattle on the island.

According to Taylor, the milk imports have also led to economic and social decline in rural communities.

Some farmers, like Donny Bunting, have simply packed up, driven out of business by the difficult conditions.

In 1993, at age 36, Bunting was one of the largest dairy farmers on the island, with more than 400 heads of cattle. These days his pastures are overgrown and the once pristine diary equipment rusts in the sunshine, choked by weeds. Bunting is now a fish farmer.

"We actually got very good production levels but after many years of stressful efforts to increase our production and doing so successfully we were still not able to compete with the milk powder," he said in an interview.

The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) reported in 2002, that the EU, which provided 67 per cent of Jamaica's milk powder imports in 2000, is "the most heavily supported agricultural regime in the world".

The EU spends more than 4.9 million U.S. dollars each year subsidising milk powder to Jamaica alone, added CAID. This is more than 166 times the island's entire 2003-4 agriculture budget.

According to a documentary by the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE), titled 'When the Cows Come', the EU spends 16 billion dollars a year subsidising its dairy industry.

In the film, World Bank President James Wolfensohn says his organisation will have to address issues of economic liberalisation of the kind that permitted the export of subsidised EU dairy products, if development is to take occur in places like Jamaica.

In the last 10 years, Jamaican farmers have seen their market share for local milk slip from 24 percent to 4.2 per cent.

Between 2000 and 2002 alone, production of liquid milk fell 35 per cent, from 27.5 million litres in 1999 to 20.5 million litres in 2002.

Nestle Jamaica, a subsidiary of the multinational and a traditional, major purchaser of fresh milk, has steadily reduced its local buying, while increasing its imports of milk solids.

"The price of locally produced fresh milk is excessively high and does not allow" the company to be competitive in the marketplace, Nestle told a local newspaper.

In January 2002 the farm-gate price for milk fell from 0.30 U.S. dollars a litre, to 0.24 dollars. At the same time, Nestle disbanded its milk collection routes, forcing farmers to deliver milk to collection centres at their own expense. A package of milk powder that makes one litre of milk sells for 0.25 dollars.

But rather than giving up faced with such facts and figures, many farmers like Taylor are looking to the Jamaica Hope as an advantage that will permit them to compete with imported milk powder.

Unlike Holsteins, the smaller Hope is able to withstand the difficult foraging conditions on the island. The animals can feed on marginal pasturelands in hot, humid conditions while producing "a fair quantity of milk", said Dr. Byron Lawrence, head of the Jamaica Hope Breeding Programme.

It is this fact, Taylor notes, that gives the dairy industry reason to hope.

According to the 56-year old, the industry is also plagued by high feed costs and poor pastures. While many farmers have culled or dried-out their herds, the neglect of pastureland will affect future production.

Taylor is also leading the JDFF's quest to seek new ways to protect the local markets, while keeping manufacturers in business. For example, farmers want government to cap milk imports by the manufacturing sector, and apply a 100-per-cent duty on amounts that exceed the limit.

When Jamaica liberalised its trading markets, it was forced to remove support for vulnerable industries like dairy, which had been subsidised from the sale of Lada motorcars, sugar and other products acquired by government under various multilateral agreements.

The government has taken many initiatives since then but has failed to rescue the dairy industry. In 1996, it levied import tariffs of 30-40 per cent on milk imports, which allowed a brief period of recovery and a hike in production to 28 million litres by 1999. But in 2002, production fell to 20.4 million litres.

The tariffs failed to work, Taylor explains, because of a loophole that allowed importers to take advantage of the five-per-cent duty on milk imports given manufacturers.

According to Taylor, the country's poorest farmers are hardest hit by the decline. In the past five years, production from the smallest farmers, most of whom own fewer than 10 milking cows, dwindled from 2.5 million litres to just over 300,000 litres.

In the last 20 years, farming officials say, the number of dairy farmers has dropped from more than 4,000 to just over 100.

Farmers like Orel Rayson, who started his operation with one cow and increased his milking herd to 17, hardly feels the satisfaction of his achievement these days.

"I used to milk with my hand. I got to milk 17 with my hands, twice a day... it was so nice. And while (milking) I was praying that I could sell a hundred litres of milk," he says in the TVE documentary.

Today Rayson sells more than 2,000 litres a fortnight, but barely makes enough to pay his farmhand.

"Now I cannot buy gas for the vehicle," he says. Rayson now kills calves because he cannot afford to feed them and no one will take them, even for free.

Local farmers case against dumped whole milk powder was upheld by a government-appointed anti-dumping committee, which in 1995 recommended the imposition of a countervailing duty of 137.5 per cent.

A study carried out by international accounting firm KPMG for the Jamaican Anti-Dumping Advisory Board concluded that the EU and United States were dumping milk products on the Jamaican market.

Government refused to implement the recommendations because it feared retaliation by the two world giants, says Taylor.

"The rejection of this proposal has been directly responsible for the continuing precipitous decline in the fortunes of local dairy farmers", he adds.

Taylor believes government lacks the political will to confront international lending agencies, and to implement the World Trade Organisation's special safeguard provision of the Agreement on Agriculture, which is designed as an easy way for developing countries to protect themselves from dumping.

Many here believe government's hands are tied by the conditions imposed by loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, and by the country's dependence on banana and sugar export quotas provided by the EU.

In the documentary, Wolfensohn admits the World Bank must accept some blame for the demise of local industries, after it encouraged developing countries to open up their markets to unfair competition.

In February the bank reported a "crucial need for poverty reduction programmes" in Jamaica, and in response to the failed global trade talks in Cancun, Mexico last September, the EU has begun overhauling its subsidies policy.

Those developments have given new optimism to the JDFF and Jamaican Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke. In a review of 2003, Clarke was confident that efforts to rehabilitate the dairy industry would bear fruit.

Last year, a multi-million-dollar milk processing plant, a joint project of the JDFF and the government, began operation. Government is also now buying large quantities milk for its school feeding programme.

The federation is also hoping authorities will provide grants to upgrade pastures and help many farmers to build back their business.

"I won't give up. Like the beef industry, milk will make a comeback and I will be here", Taylor says optimistically.

Source

[RichD]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Governments should go back to imposing tariffs on imported foodstuffs - the IMF be damned!

</div></div> is not the IMF now is the WTO


couple years ago the JA gov annouce dat they were going to require labeling on imported meat(at that tiem it was abotu US $1M worth of meat...the amounts of threats they got about trade sanctions etc was amazing

[mangoskin]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SmoothOperator</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Well in Jamaica, land of wood and water, I have always thought it was scandalous that we import every striking thing under the sun so I support this initiative.

</div></div>

smoothie,
this is for the poor and the uncool.
No one with a french manicure can be expected to weed, sow and til soil

[barosa]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

An immediate past president of the Jamaican Dairy Farmers Federation (JDFF), Taylor says the subsidies allow European farmers to produce milk at half the cost of their Jamaican counterparts.

Taylor's comments are on the money. It's just that the EU, like the US who preceeded them, are together the main players in the Globalisation Game. Eventually, China will make it a trio leadership. The whole scheme was invented to give themselves control over less developed societies. Under GATT there were several trading blocks. Jamaica, like some others were members of the "British Commonwealth Preferential Agreements" under GATT, which served us well during the period.

Once the UK joined Europe and the GATT replaced by the WTO, the two major economies have been doing their level best to further their control over the economies of the "third world"... The imposition of the WTO with its rules and conditions, is the main cause of the "economic ruination" of many former largely "self-providing" nations like Jamaica. Today, we are at their mercy while we all seem to be going no where. Why are we now on the verge of "World Hunger"? Backyard gardening may help a few who are so inclined, but it wont check our appetites for foreign foods.
_________________________

Hope is much more than a four letter word.

[Sinco01]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I can't believe this is the solution the government has for the country's food woes!! </div></div>


So ..
What would u propose.. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

We cannot afford to spend hard earned currency on paying for imported food we could grow at home..

that is lunacy ...

not to mention a road to more IMF loans ...
or some such economic trap ..

if we can cut food imports by half ..
we (JA) would not be in a pickle to find funds for infrastructure improvements .. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif[/img]

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Sinco01</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I can't believe this is the solution the government has for the country's food woes!! </div></div>


So ..
What would u propose.. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

We cannot afford to spend hard earned currency on paying for imported food we could grow at home..

that is lunacy ...

not to mention a road to more IMF loans ...
or some such economic trap ..

if we can cut food imports by half ..
we (JA) would not be in a pickle to find funds for infrastructure improvements .. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif[/img] </div></div> You mean those are the only options you could think of??
What about using some of th elands that are used to produce sygar hgnat have to be subsudized bu Jamaica ro sell yo Europe,into domestic production?
What about creatung irrigation system for the areas tha domesyic food is being produced?
I am sure irrigation water is much less expensive than potable water,and the retuen will be greater. Since it is a productive input and will inrease incomes,unlike domestic water, which is a social good primaruly.
When will the country get a government that us willing to tteat average Jamaicans like citizens, and not casual labourors?

Are they going to wait until we have another riot again, like the 1938 riots?
So that they can find some other maniquin posing as leader to fool themn again, as was done that time??

[LINSTEAD]

Re: Government Pushes Backyard Gardening...

?

Are they going to wait until we have another riot again, like the 1938 riots?
So that they can find some other maniquin posing as leader to fool themn again, as was done that time??
[/quote]
__________________________________________________ _________________
I do not think that it is fair nor accurate to hint that
Bustamante, Norman Manley and St. William Grant were "maniquins" , (whatever that is) in the 1938 riots. It is advisable to examine the riots and the role of these distinguished men in 1938, in "The Story of the Jamaican People" by Sherlock and Bennett, two imminent Jamaican historians.

As for a threatening food crisis in Jamaica. What is the fuss about? We survived in the bad days of the seventies by "turning our hands and make fashion." We can do it again, if "push come to shove."

What is a "maniquin" by the way??
Do you mean a "manikin" ?

As for backyard gardening, Jamaicans, as most of you know, traditionally plant backyard gardens. The idea is nothing new. Even sophisticated "Townees" do it.