Jamaica’s prime minister Bruce Golding increased the gloom enveloping the island’s banana industry with a doom-laden prognosis for it the future, during a sitting of the House of Representatives last week.
Since Jamaica Producers Group pulled out of the banana export picture, after Tropical Storm Gustav ripped the heart out of eastern Jamaica’s crop, the company has said it will concentrate on growing crops such as cassava and breadfruit.
Golding said the decision of JPG effectively means Jamaica’s horticulture will change shape for ever. "What we need to do is to move with the land resources we have, the infrastructure that is there to see how we can diversify," he told the House.
He said small farmers may still feel the need to remain in bananas but has advised against it. "While we don't prevent people from entering upon any kind of enterprise that they want, we have to tell them in clear, unemotional terms that the banana situation is moving against us. It is now like swimming against the tide," Golding said.
"What we want to do is to secure an orderly disengagement, but a new engagement into something possible and that can offer a better quality of life for the farmers that are involved.”
He said, however, that bananas should not be used for political purposes. "This is not a issue that needs to offer the political podium as if there is any choice and there is any option because there is none," the prime minister said.
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