Fri | Mar 29, 2024

More than just ‘bush’

St Thomas farmers benefit from business training to boost income, production

Published:Monday | September 19, 2022 | 12:06 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
Dennis Reid, farmer from Needham Pen, St. Thomas.
Dennis Reid, farmer from Needham Pen, St. Thomas.
Lisa Lewis, a farmer from Needham Pen.
Lisa Lewis, a farmer from Needham Pen.
Caswell Glover, former parish agricultural manager, St. Thomas.
Caswell Glover, former parish agricultural manager, St. Thomas.
Paul Campbell, from RADA, who was one of the facilitators of the farming training programme.
Paul Campbell, from RADA, who was one of the facilitators of the farming training programme.
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Twenty farmers from Needham Pen, St Thomas, have benefited from an eight-week training programme on how to treat farming as a business to maximise their earning potential.

The programme was conducted in April and June by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning with 16 females and four males from the Needham Pen Farmers Association.

During his reflection last Thursday as he graduated from the programme, Dennis Reid said that he was initially hesitant to participate but his wife encouraged him to enrol and gain some experience through the training sessions.

He was further motivated to sign up after he lost his 9-to-5 job and is now glad that he participated.

“I have learnt much. Nuff, nuff, nuff, nuff more than I was expecting,” he admitted. “From learning [in] this class, I realise that big [money] can make out of this agriculture thing. I start to plant up more, I start to weed the farm more, and I say, ‘Marlene, come. Two hands join together, we must have to make it’,” he added, noting that his wife had also helped in the process.

“The profit that I have made since, I tell you, I don’t want to tell nobody,” he said with humour, noting that he has been making use of his newly developed skills.

GRAND ASPIRATIONS

Additionally, Reid stated that he has grand aspirations for his farm and that he has already started to market himself outside of the parish.

Lisa Lewis said that she, too, benefited significantly from the training and was grateful for the opportunity, noting the importance of such initiatives to rural areas like Needham Pen.

“We have been learning and we have been putting it into practice,” she said of herself and her peers.

Through exposure to topics such as effective marketing techniques, business proposal writing, record keeping, and other business skills for future growth, the farmers were taught how to turn their farmland into a lucrative business.

Caswell Glover, a former parish agricultural manager, emphasised the importance of turning agriculture into a profitable business in his keynote address, under the topic ‘Agriculture: A Business, Not A Pastime’.

He said that there was a need for a change in the mindset of farmers, saying they should no longer speak of their properties as “bush”, but rather as their farms or places of business.

Glover added that farmers could also name their farms as they would any other business place.

He further encouraged them to diversify production and to find innovative ways of generating profit.

Glover advised farmers, for example, to no longer sell a whole chicken as this was not profitable, but to take a little more time in their daily schedules to cut the chicken into parts and to distribute and sell the chicken parts at a higher price.

MAXIMISE LAND USE

In order to maximise the use of the land, he also recommended that farmers invest in planting herb patches, fruit trees, and other types of crops in order to have additional sources of income and alternate crop production during the off-season, when their primary crops are not being harvested.

Paul Campbell, one of the facilitators of the programme who serves as the agriculture extension officer at RADA’s Morant Bay office, informed The Gleaner that the farmers will have access to technical information and agricultural assistance from the agency.

“But the key thing that we want to give farmers and the key thing of this farming training is capacity building because we at RADA, we can give fertiliser, we can give a seed, but at the end of the day, when time we provide farmer training ... [and] the capacity of the farmer is built, then the farmer will be able to go forward and improve his or her livelihood,” Campbell said.

He noted that this should have a domino effect on their families and in the community as they share these skills with others.

Campbell said that the output of the farmers had improved significantly since the intervention and that RADA had also provided water tanks, seeds and fertilisers to the members, adding that “this is not the end” in the work to be done with the group of farmers.

asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com