Housing Developments on Arable Land

[Blackstar*]

Does anyone else find this disturbing or am I the only one? [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/confused.gif[/img]
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">130 acres of fertile land in the District of Lacovia, St Elizabeth.

The land is level. It is ideal for housing development. The property is located less than 1 miles from the bustling Santa Cruz town centre.

D. C. Tavares and Finson Realty Limited

St Elizabeth
130,000,000 JMD
Property for Sale

Link </div></div>

[remo]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

Disturbing yes,you,wanna bet that it's owned by jamaicans of european extraction who have since moved away to Australia
this would be an easier way to make a lot of money than say farming...

[Blackstar*]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

So authorities allow housing developments on fertile land? Not just one house for the owner? If is so, I don't get this short-term thinking at all.

Once all that land is built up with houses and hotels, and the rest dug up for bauxite, where are Jcans supposed to grow food?

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So authorities allow housing developments on fertile land? Not just one house for the owner? If is so, I don't get this short-term thinking at all.

Once all that land is built up with houses and hotels, and the rest dug up for bauxite, where are Jcans supposed to grow food? </div></div>
We would all have to live on th esea otherwise. the majoroty of jamaican land is fertile. All it need is irrigation and machinery to realize it's potential.

[Wahalla]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: remo</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Disturbing yes,you,wanna bet that it's owned by jamaicans of european extraction who have since moved away to Australia
this would be an easier way to make a lot of money than say farming... </div></div>


Wanna bet that it was owned by a black Jamaican who could nto make an effective living and is frustrated so sold ????

[remo]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: remo</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Disturbing yes,you,wanna bet that it's owned by jamaicans of european extraction who have since moved away to Australia
this would be an easier way to make a lot of money than say farming... </div></div>


Wanna bet that it was owned by a black Jamaican who could nto make an effective living and is frustrated so sold ???? </div></div>


if you find out let me know I could be wrong(believe it or not I was wrong once this year)

[Blackstar*]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
We would all have to live on th esea otherwise. the majoroty of jamaican land is fertile. All it need is irrigation and machinery to realize it's potential. </div></div>
Much of JA is forest too, and it would be a shame to cut down the trees to make way for farms...and so end up like Haiti.

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: BlackStar</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dr.Dudd</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
We would all have to live on th esea otherwise. the majoroty of jamaican land is fertile. All it need is irrigation and machinery to realize it's potential. </div></div>
Much of JA is forest too, and it would be a shame to cut down the trees to make way for farms...and so end up like Haiti. </div></div>
Haiti's denuded forest is the result of American multinational baseball manufacturer.
They destroyed it to plant sisal to be used to make baseballs.
They now rewrite history to create a story blaming it on charcoal butners. yes there are those too,but the majority of the forest was already gone to make way for sisal farms.
This will never happen in Jamaica. Jamaica will not need that much farm lands to result in denuding of fprest. remember that there is already thousands of already denuded forests the result of mining. those would be used long before new forests.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

BlackStar,
While it is always disturbing to see farmland sold off to housing developers, the demands of population growth make these things inevitable.
The best that can be done is to ensure that some parkland or some arable land be retained for the future.

Limiting population does not seem to be a viable option.

Corporate globalisation is also a factor in many cases. A large corporation may find that labor is cheaper in a given area and so build a manufacturing facility on land sold cheaply to them to exploit the local labor market.

A great deal of these unpleasantries can be laid at capitalism's door.
If there is a dollar to be made, some corporation or wealthy individual will make use of whatever is available to make money regardless of the effects on the local or national or world population.

Money doesn't just talk, it often curses.

[Wardob]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: remo</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Disturbing yes,you,wanna bet that it's owned by jamaicans of european extraction who have since moved away to Australia
this would be an easier way to make a lot of money than say farming... </div></div>


Wanna bet that it was owned by a black Jamaican who could nto make an effective living and is frustrated so sold ???? </div></div>


Wrong again remo, Whalla is correct, Pass by that property yesterday and that exactly what I was made to understan. I observed many farm lands in the area with for sale posted, reason been " Man cant make it in farming, without water supply, childre have to eat, so sell the land"

[Blackstar*]

Re: Housing Developments on Arable Land

Too much emphasis on tourism and earning foreign currency, and not enough on self-sufficiency at least as far as food goes. The country would need less currency if it imported less food to my way of thinking.

[evanovitch]

PM to look at building restrictions if re-elected

PM to look at building restrictions if re-elected

Garfield Myers
Saturday, August 25, 2007



MANDEVILLE, Manchester - Land usage and appropriate restrictions "on where people can build" will be high on her agenda should the ruling People's National Party (PNP) be returned to political power following the upcoming parliamentary elections, says Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

"This is one of the things that I am going to be dealing with early in my new term [in] office," Simpson Miller said on Thursday following post-hurricane visits to informal housing settlements known as Top Bay and Bottom Bay in Alligator Pond.

"We have to take a decision... I think we have to put a restriction on where people can build as we protect the natural and built environment, we (also) need to protect the areas not yet occupied," she told journalists.

Simpson Miller was particularly perturbed by conditions at Top Bay - a community of several hundred, located on a sand bank above Alligator Pond that is without an access road, running water and electricity.

The prime minister was told by residents that the passage of Hurricane Dean had significantly worsened their plight with the destruction of several homes. She met Hylton Brown, an elderly Top Bay resident, whose face still showed the bruises from injuries he received when an ackee tree fell on his house trapping him beneath.

Up slope from the shambles of Brown's house, a set of concrete steps stood in the sand as a lonely monument to a three-bedroom house, which was destroyed by powerful winds as Hurricane Dean passed just south of Alligator Pond on Sunday.

Simpson Miller said that quite apart from hurricane relief she would be instructing the National Water Commission (NWC) to immediately begin the trucking of water to the residents of the informal communities.

She pointed out that informal settlements were not the only ones to which the Government would have to pay attention as it moves to address appropriate construction and land usage.

"When we look at Caribbean Terrace, what happened there during Ivan and now Dean we have to take a decision and also Portland Cottage and a number of other areas,... we need to take some serious decisions on it and I am ready to deal with this. We have to take some action and see if we can find some land appropriate that we can have people relocated...," she said.

She said a major problem was that people often found it "difficult" and painful to leave their homes where they "had lived for a long time", but she was encouraged by an increasing awareness of the inherent dangers of unplanned development.

"I think that if we work with the people we will get them to co-operate... it is going to take a partnership between the people and the state to get them relocated," she said.