Jamaican farmers need not be reminded that with the start of the hurricane season tomorrow, danger could be lurking around the corner. Farmers in the island's northeastern and southern parishes, in particular, would no doubt be approaching the 2009 season with trepidation. For memories of the severe damage they suffered as hurricanes Dean and Gustave struck in 2007 and 2008 must still be fresh.

The setbacks to the agricultural sector caused by active seasons in five of the last eight years have obviously weakened the rural economy. Indeed, weather-related disruptions resulted in a near 20 per cent fall in output in the 2002-2008 period. Yet the vagaries of weather - a unique vulnerability of the sector - have not been the only factor limiting the fortunes of our farmers.

Decline in production

The decline in agricultural production and in the sector's share of national output has, in fact, been under way much longer and reflects the low level of investment flowing to most domestic and export crops over the past half century. While investment in transport equipment amounted to 6.4 cents of each dollar of total investment in 1967, the sum devoted to agricultural machinery and equipment was a measly 3.4 cents. By the mid-1990s, the share of transport equipment had leapt to over 20 cents while the amount for agriculture dropped to 1.5 cents.

The starving of the agricultural sector of investment capital has seriously affected our socio-economic development, fuelling the massive urban-rural drift, one consequence of which is the large number of slum dwellers. Most stark is the contraction of the sugar industry over the past 40 years which has brought it to a shadow of its former towering stature in the socio-economic landscape of Jamaica.

Truth be told, King Sugar had long ceased to be the driving force of Jamaica's economy, having been overtaken in the 1950s by rapidly expanding import substitution-based manufacturing and the bauxite industry. But sugar output was still increasing up to the mid-1960s, though by 1967, it had fallen to 414,000 tonnes, from over half a million tonnes or by nearly 20 per cent just shortly before. By 1980, it was struggling to reach 200,000, tonnes or half the 1967 level, and sank to an unimaginable 120,000 tonnes by 2005 crop year.

Preferential prices

Despite the preferential prices for sugar secured through the British and European trading arrangements, there were limited efforts to make the kind of strategic interventions required to modernise the industry so as to reverse or halt the slide. Other export crops did not fare much better, although the banana industry had a brief resurgence in the 1990s. This has been the case for most areas of the agricultural sector as the sector is operating without a strategic framework and up-to-date approaches to crop zoning, marketing and technological applications.

Production of domestic food crops did, however, increase substantially in the 1960s and 1970s, before falling off in the early 1980s and then registering significant gains up to the mid-1990s. With the benefit of government interventions in the 1960s, output of most domestic food crops had shown increased growth rates by 1971. They stepped up food-production campaigns of the Manley administration of the 1970s involving cash subsidies, extension services and guaranteed prices pushed output to record levels by 1978 for items such as yam, potatoes and most vegetables and fruits.

For example, the output of yam went from 73,000 tonnes in 1967 to 117,500 tonnes in 1971, and to a high of 163,800 tonnes in 1978, or more than twice what was produced in 1961. Output subsequently fell to 117,000 tonnes in 1982 but recovered by 1987, to 176,000 tonnes. It reached the highest level ever of 253,400 tonnes by 1996. Hit by the severe drought of 1997, yam production fell to 212,600 tonnes and has never recovered; and had plunged to 123,005 tonnes in 2006, half the level attained in the record year of 1996.

Strong growth

Production of vegetables went up more rapidly, rising by 50 per cent between 1976 and 1978, slipped slightly in the early 1980s. It, too, recovered and resumed strong growth in the 1990s, reaching the peak by 1996 when we produced 192,400 tonnes. And it also has been on a continuous slide since the disastrous drought of 1997, when output declined by 25 per cent.

This is the predicament of the local agricultural sector which is in a deep rut, having lost out on lucrative export quotas over the past 30 years and floundering as preferences are disappearing. Meanwhile, increased demand from the tourist industry is being filled by imports, and Jamaica remains vulnerable to volatile food prices. Moreover, the outlook is that the world is likely to face growing food shortages in the next 10-15 years as China becomes less self-sufficient.

What this means is that our agricultural planners must focus not just on building linkages with the tourism industry, but should be developing strategies for food security. High on their agenda has got to be the creation of innovative mechanisms to steer capital into the sector as part of a revitalisation of the rural economy, bearing in mind that this is a requirement for uprooting the socio-economic underpinnings of the debilitating crime rate.

Dennis Morrison is an economist. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.