PORT MARIA, St Mary:

The European Union Banana Support Programme on Thursday signed off on grants to Jamaica, totalling $196 million.

The grants are to support the implementation of programmes in traditional banana-farming communities. Those programmes are to offset the fallout from the downturn of banana production.

Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni, the European Commis-sion to Jamaica's head of delegation, and Jamaica's Minister of Agriculture, Dr Christopher Tufton, signed the agreements during a ceremony at the Port Maria Civic Centre in St Mary.

Grant beneficiary

Beneficiaries of the grants are the Jamaica Egg Farmers Association, the St Thomas Cooperative Credit Union, Christian Aid, Heart Trust/NTA, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) and Coventry University of Britain. The university is collaborating on a project with the Jamaica Organic Agriculture Movement.

The projects will be implemented in St Mary, Portland, St Thomas, St Catherine, Clarendon and St James and the Ministry of Agriculture will oversee them through the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA).

Billions into banana

Alemanni said over the last nine years the EU had pumped over $4 billion into Jamaica's banana sector in order to improve its competitiveness and promote diversification in light of increased incidence of natural disasters, which have brought the industry to a crossroad.

The banana industry, Mazzocchi-Alemanni said, was trying to reposition itself, but it was highly probable that downsizing would continue.

Can't let down yam

He, however, urged Jamaica not to abandon the industry, jokingly stating: "You can't let down yam and banana if you want to win more Olympic gold."

Over the last three years the emphasis of the EU programme had shifted to rural economic diversification.

Tufton said diversification was something the Government, his ministry and the people of St Mary supported and endorsed wholeheartedly and the decision had to be taken which options to pursue.

He, however, reassured the industry that the Government was not abandoning its support of the sector, especially with recent figures indicating that local consumption of the fruit was three times more than the amount exported.

One of the projects to be implemented by the IICA will be in the Buff Bay Valley area of Portland and, according to IICA country representative, Cynthia Currie, "will directly employ several hundreds and indirectly thousands," of persons.

The IICA was granted €325,000 (US$412,322.59 or J$30.4 million).

- Carl Gilchrist