THE EDITOR, Sir:
AGRICULTURE ANYWHERE is a high-risk endeavour, what with the vagaries of weather, high input costs, international competition, and additionally in Jamaica, praedial larceny and terrible farm roads. Increasingly, substantial capital investments and technical know how are required to succeed today.
If our farmers are to feed the nation and generate surpluses for export, then we must urgently address a number of issues which conspire to almost guarantee sub-optimal yields.
With our limited land area, we cannot
afford sub-optimal yields. Some of the big hindrances to successful farming are overdependence on rainfall, poor farm roads, low-yielding varieties, and praedial larceny.
We have dropped the ball in a number of these, but all is not gloom. In the midst of the verbiage and half-hearted action, there is encouraging news on some fronts. Researchers have developed the Bodles Globe pumpkin and Tropical Glory tomato; there are renewed efforts at praedial larceny control, and some irrigation programmes are being implemented.
We need now to re-examine some old agricultural dogma, one of which is that agriculture's real problems are with production and not with marketing. Actually, it is the other way around. With some of our products, production is indeed the big problem, but with most, the real problems lie with marketing. The view that if we produce it people will buy it belongs on the scrapheap. If you cannot produce high quality goods at competitive prices, you are out of the game. Sugar and bananas tell us this everyday.
CONSUMERS HAVE CHOICES
In today's globalised marketplace consumers have choices in practically everything and your fiercest competitors are often from distant lands. We will now have to determine what we can produce and present in such a compelling manner that consumers will choose them. That is marketing, and that is our real problem.
Local produce is not intrinsically inferior to imported, although, truth be told, simple observation might give that impression. This has to change. To focus on quantity without a greater focus on quality and value is a mistake we cannot afford to keep making. The end of this road will be ruin, with local produce being available but unsaleable because it doesn't compare well to the imported.
I am, etc
MICHAEL NICHOLSON
P.O Box 5171
Kingston 6
