Maroon ganja farmers struggling to reap from ADP

WESTERN BUREAU:

SEVEN YEARS after the Government decriminalised ganja, traditional farmers are still struggling to benefit formally as its Alternative Development Programmes (ADP) have either crashed or failed to start.

The Gleaner has learnt that the ADP in Accompong, St Elizabeth, crashed five years after it was originally launched, producing one crop under the designated operation agreement.

In April 2017, the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) commenced work on two pilot projects under an ADP, which provided more avenues for the inclusion of Jamaican small-scale traditional farmers to establish a foothold in the country’s emerging legal ganja industry.

The mandate of the ADP is aimed at preventing and eliminating the illicit cultivation of ganja and, instead, put growers’ efforts into legal streams to fulfil the 1998 action plan, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

In Orange Hill, Westmoreland, where an ADP was earmarked, failed to get off the ground, largely due to the failure of both Government and the local traditional ganja farmers to find adequate and appropriate land.

PILOT PROJECT

Last week The Gleaner reported that a new type of licence is now being drafted, which will be tabled by Minister Dr Norman Dunn, who has portfolio responsibility for the cannabis industry.

“As far as we are concerned, that pilot project was then to be followed by the engagement of investors to help to push and promote the product through the pipeline and channel that would have been established and developed. That has not happened to date because the first programme, which was under the previous administration of Ferron Williams, ran into many challenges from implementation to execution,” said Richard Currie, chief of the Accompong Maroons.

Currie, who was elected as chief in February 2021, argued that the project, which was designed to bring marginalised communities and farmers into the wider state industry, has not worked.

“We have not been made privy to any agreements, deals, or engagement that they have taken on after the project was launched because no information was made public to the growers, the farmers, or to the people,” said Currie of the ADP. “I don’t even think a final report was compiled on that project itself.”

JC Hutchinson, the former minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, said nothing is going on up there.

“As far as I know it has crashed, nothing’s going on up there. The person who was the downstream buyer, I know he has pulled out,” Hutchinson said.

“There are many problems with the CLA, but I know there was one transaction that took place and since that one, nothing else has taken place,” he was quoted in a Gleaner article on Tuesday.

He said they would not be legally allowed to continue to grow the plant if they don’t have an official downstream buyer to take the crop when it comes in.

“Up there (Accompong) is what I call the ganja mecca, therefore, I presume now that they are looking to sell the ganja as they usually do,” Hutchinson said.

Meanwhile, Currie noted that traditionally the Maroons had never asked for a permit to grow ganja, because that is within their inalienable right, as indigenous people.

“Maroon ganja will go on. We are doing what we need to do to ensure that we are a player in this nutraceutical game,” the leader of the Maroon community in St Elizabeth declared.

“We are working internally on our system to support the nutraceutical, looking at oils, soap, bath wash, lotion, capsules and all different avenues of secondary and tertiary markets in participating in this wellness field,” he explained.

An Accompong Cannabis Trust was launched in April 2021 as part of bringing a halt to their economic starvation, the declining nature of their historic town and what they called the continuous brain drain of their community.

“We launched a Maroon Ganja Trust and that will be the vehicle which we will use to develop our medicinal market here in Accompong,” said Currie.

However, he remains concerned as to how Maroons will be facilitated in the market that is being controlled and restrained by the different legislations that are not inclusive in addressing the Maroon issue.

When contacted for a response, the CLA’s Chairman Levaughn Flynn directed us to Dunn, but calls to his mobile phone went unanswered. It was the same result when we tried to reach Williams, the immediate former chief of the Accompong Maroons.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com