There is an incredible story in Friday's issue of The Gleaner that the prime minister has said that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not the answer to Jamaica's future - domestic agriculture is.

It is incredible because the opposite seems to be the point of view of his minister of finance who recently said that the IMF had grown up from its past. I will not deal with the view of the minister, because he has 'talked with water in his mouth' on previous occasions.

In this connection, I invite those who think that the IMF is in Jamaica's corner to view the documentary Life and Debt (2001), a film reviewed by Roger Ebert of Siskell and Ebert fame. This explains how Jamaican agriculture was destroyed by IMF requirements of a policy imposing on Jamaica, surplus US agricultural products subsidised by US price support schemes for less than the US or Jamaican farmers could produce them for.

Anyone interested in how India, for example, used her domestic agriculture for take off into self-sustained growth should read India's Green Revolution in the face of USPL480 grain distribution.

I am, etc.,

MIDDLETON WILSON

wilsonmiddleton@aol.com

Florida