In the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, Fintrac set out on a one-year mission in Jamaica to help small farmers recover and exceed pre-hurricane sales and incomes.

In less than six months, the USAID-funded Jamaica Business Recovery Program has already produced results. With Fintrac’s Integrated Crop Management training program, cabbage, lettuce, melon and tomato production in Jamaica has dramatically increased. ICM includes proper land preparation, use of hybrid seeds, seedling production, low cost drip irrigation, fertilization and Integrated Pest Management.

In January, five representatives of Jamaica’s Rural Agricultural Development Authority and AgroGrace Ltd., a major input supplier in Jamaica, traveled to Honduras with the JBRP team to learn Fintrac’s proven techniques.

Back in Jamaica, JBRP field advisers provided technical assistance to clients on weekly farm visits and special field training days. AgroGrace repre-sentatives are also in the field training clients to select seeds and safely use farm chemicals while Jamaica Drip Irrigation technicians are training clients to install and maintain drip irrigation systems. RADA is also co-sponsoring numerous activities.

Targeted assistance has also struck a chord with farmers. To fight pests and disease, JBRP brought in Lorena Lastres, a Honduras-based crop protection specialist, who conducted workshops and field sampling demonstrations at client farms and Ministry of Agriculture facilities.

“I’m quite impressed with the pest and disease training,” said Jacqueline Bent, a farmer in Southfield, St. Elizabeth. “I really had a bad problem with aphids and whiteflies, and lost three crops to diseases … we were taught to clean the surrounding areas, use live barriers and the yellow traps, and now my farm is much, much improved.”

Fintrac’s low-cost greenhouses are additionally getting results. Since 2002, 30 have been constructed under Fintrac’s IDEA project in El Salvador. The greenhouses have increased yields up to four times and improved quality by 90 percent. To apply this success in Jamaica, JBRP brought in a greenhouse specialist from Fintrac IDEA to assist Jamaican clients with greenhouse production. For small and medium-sized producers, the structures, valued between $7,500 and $10,000, provide an affordable alternative to imported and other locally built greenhouses that can cost over $30,000.

The results of JBRP’s techniques are staggering:

• In Rio Magno, St. Catherine, JBRP’s techniques helped Luke Lee quadruple production of Scotch Bonnet peppers.
• In Bog Hole, Clarendon, Patrick Blair’s lettuce and cabbage crops were destroyed by Hurricane Ivan. With the help of JBRP, Blair replanted and his cabbage crop yielded 7.4 times more. Similarly, his lettuce yield quad-rupled. “The technology is very, very good, and the yields are much better than what I reaped previously,” Blair said.
• In Ebony Park, Clarendon, Claudius Dennis’ hot pepper, okra and tomato crops were wiped out. Dennis began harvesting his first JBRP-assisted crop of tomatoes and doubled pro- duction. “The program is giving sustained help, with lots of follow-up,” Dennis said. “That has been especially valuable to me.”

Fintrac’s Chief Agronomist Ricardo Lardizabal visited the project recently and was impressed with the quality of the training and the speed of technologies implementation.
“I have to say this is the Fintrac project that has most thoroughly implemented the technology component in the shortest period of time. I am especially impressed with the proficiency of the technical staff.”