Agriculture Minister to look into assistance for Portland farmers devastated by rains

Minister of Agriculture Floyd Green says efforts will be made to see what assistance can be offered to farmers in Portland whose lands were left devastated by days of heavy rains.

Green says he will be bringing the matter to Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Minister with responsibility for Works Everald Warmington to determine what kind of programme the government can put on the table for farmers.

Green along with a team from the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) and Member of Parliament for East Portland Ann-Marie Vaz visited several farm lands in Golden Grove, Seaman's Valley, and Belleview on Wednesday.

The touring party also visited several farm roads including one at Belleview which was rehabilitated some weeks ago under a special farm roads programme initiated by the agriculture ministry.

In late December, heavy rains and flooding ravaged farm lands in the Rio Grande Valley in Eastern Portland.

This saw downed banana trees and other crops as well as produce and livestock being washed away.

The devastating occurred after the Rio Grande overflowed its banks, dumping buckets of water unto nearby farm lands.

"Again our RADA team, [and] our Ministry team would have been on the ground, but I wanted to see firsthand the destruction, to speak to the farmers, and to see how quickly we can craft a programme of response. We've visited a number of areas and we would have seen significant damage to our banana farmers. A number of their fields were completely flooded. A number of them lost crops...they lost trees and that was largely because of the river,” said Green.

"The Rio Grande would have come over its banks in a number of areas and would have gone through the farms and even though the farmers would have taken the steps to do trenches and to do drains, it was just too much. So we have to take a comprehensive approach to treating the issues of the farmers. I am going to be speaking to the Prime Minister and Minister Warmington to see if we can jointly put some resources together to look at river training in the area and we have to do some desilting of the river," added Green.

He stated that the main objective is to see how quickly assistance can be given to affected farmers, noting that the provision of fertilisers will be treated as a priority.

- Gareth Davis Snr

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