Chris Tufton.
Don Robotham, Contributor
If Dr Chris Tufton is to believed, the solution to the 30 per cent increase in the price of imported food is for Jamaicans to switch to cassava flour. Some will have to plant 'banchi' and eat 'gari', as they call it in Ghana. Others will just have to make do with steak! Once upon a time the People's National Party (PNP) used to sing a sankey which asked of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) "ole clothes government, a wa mi do you?" Now, thanks to Chris, the PNP will be singing about cassava.
Will the JLP 'topanaris', inspired by Chris, abandon their love for la dolce vita and suddenly become 'banchi' growers? What about that delightful brasserie with WiFi facilities in one of our favourite uptown malls? Will gari (with Perrier water) now find its way on to the menu?
Increase in food imports
Between 2002 and November 2007, the food import bill increased by 38 per cent, from US$479 million to US$662 million. Sixty-one per cent of the goods in the basic food basket are imported. As a solution to this severe global crisis, our Chris has laboured long and hard and come up with four major proposals: a massive school-garden programme for 966 schools; a home tree-planting programme of Stakhanovite proportions - two million free fruit trees; the now notorious urban backyard 'banchi' planting programme; and an expansion of credit from PC banks. Good for him!
As the PNP discovered at Goshen in the 1970s and the JLP at Spring Plain, cost-wise, Jamaican agriculture simply cannot compete with its foreign competitors. It remains much cheaper to import rice and corn than to attempt to grow them locally. The question of flour does not even arise. Don't even mention salt fish, mackerel, sardines, corned beef and cooking oil. How can backyard and school gardens solve such a problem? It is because of such realities that most have concluded that the 'eat what you grow strategy' is a non-starter. The real solution is to increase our productivity in other areas and use the funds so generated to finance our unavoidable food import bill.
Small farming crisis
The crisis in the food import bill is not just about prices, it is also about the collapse of the small farming sector and of rural life in general. One major expression of this is the surge in the rural crime rate.
In Jamaica as a whole, over 350 persons have been murdered for 2008 - 120 in the month of March alone. Last year, the increase in the murder rate was 15 per cent and we seem to be heading to breaking that record this year. What is striking in the past month, however, is the spate of murders in Clarendon. This parish alone has had 51 murders since the start of this year, which is 15 per cent of the national total. Last Sunday a particularly horrific case occurred. Kemar Brown, 12 years old, was murdered just outside of May Pen. A heart-rending photograph of his young schoolmates from Moores Primary and Junior High School placing commemorative flowers on his desk appeared in The Observer.
The population of Clarendon is about 240,000 people. Of these, probably about 60,000 are between the age of 15-29. The unemployment rate among these young people could be as high as 50 per cent, if you exclude informal sector activities and take account of underemployment. Those who are lucky enough to be employed work long hours for very low incomes and no benefits - forget about Housing Trust and NIS.
The sugar industry has vanished from northern Clarendon and is in a state of stagnation in the south. Small farming pays little and nothing. The bauxite-alumina plant at Halse Hall generates significant revenues for the national economy but not much income and employment for Clarendon. Moreover, the workers needed in their expansion programme are highly skilled technicians - well above the level of education attained by young persons in Clarendon.
The result of this intense poverty is substantial migration away from the rural districts to all parts of Jamaica and beyond. As the articles in The Gleaner showed, this migration has led to a plethora of squatter communities in and around the May Pen area. Canaan Heights is one such community. Bucknor Common, Junior Crescent, Sevens Road, Farm, Backroad, Web Lane, Sandy Bay and the area around Palmer's Cross are others.
As a result of the collapse of the rural economy, the Clarendon coastline has become a major area for the guns-for-drugs trade in Jamaica. It is also an area in which there has been a particularly rapid increase in the formation of youth gangs. An informative series has been running in The Gleaner this week trying to give readers a sense of the situation. It listed the names of a series of gangs such as 'Lenkys', 'Real Niggas', 'Daddys' and 'Junior Troopers'
The Clarendon crisis is typical of what plagues the whole middle belt - from the hills of St Thomas and St Andrew through St Catherine, Clarendon, parts of Manchester, Upper Trelawny, inland St Elizabeth, to the hills of Westmorland, Hanover and St James. In other words, more or less the whole of small farming Jamaica is experiencing severe economic and social decay.
Clarendon history
Historically, Clarendon is the classic sugar parish of Jamaica. This was due not only to the presence of Monymusk and New Yarmouth but of the old Sevens Estate and the northern Clarendon side. With the contraction in the sugar industry in the 1960s, the economy of Clarendon entered into secular decline. At the same time a small and relatively affluent professional and business class emerged in the mining and service sectors around May Pen.
The hills of Clarendon have a long tradition of coffee growing, which developed after the collapse of coffee production in Haiti following the revolution. A Nigerian travelling through the beautiful hills of Northern Clarendon would find it pleasantly familiar. This should come as no surprise. Large numbers of people were sold into slavery and brought from Eastern Nigeria to work on coffee properties - Igbos and others shipped out like cattle through Old Calabar. Accordingly, Nigerian films enjoy widespread popularity with the people and place names like Mocho tell the story.
Northern Clarendon is a major centre of African cultural heritage in Jamaica. Southern Clarendon, likewise, is a major centre of Indian culture in Jamaica. In and around May Pen, as names such as 'Suckie' and 'Mahabir' indicate, the two cultures have often come together in a unique blend.
Clarendon was also the source of some famous English fortunes. It was in Clarendon that the Anglo-Welsh Pennant family - Tory to the gills - made their fortune in the 18th century, using slave-generated money to buy themselves into the aristocracy as the first Baron Penrhyn in 1763. This is why you have Pennants in Clarendon and Penrhyn Castle in Wales.
Edward Long, the author of that well-known 18th century pro-slavery tome, The History of Jamaica, was the son of Samuel Long of Longville and Lucky Valley. He was married to Mary Ballard of Ballard's Valley fame and also connected to the Beckford family of Beckford Kraal. Michael Vermont's research has established that the parish records of Clarendon note the marriage of one Elizabeth Robotham to one James Flavel on November 5, 1725 - the earliest mention of that family name in the historical record of Jamaica to date.
Our common responsibility
All this helps to reminds us of our common responsibility for the state in which Jamaica finds itself today. You cannot understand the inner rage and the urge to violence which present-day inequalities generate if you do not bring this historical background to the fore. One of the reasons why poverty and inequality generate such ruthless inter-personal violence is that it's not just a matter of economics. It's economics, and class, and race, and culture, and history combined - a fatal brew. Jamaica is like South Africa and Brazil in that regard. If you speak to many young people in Clarendon today they will tell you that they are living through a contemporary slavery.
A fresh approach to our rural crisis is needed of a different nature from what Chris Tufton envisages. There are many prominent persons in Jamaican society with their roots in Clarendon. Omar Davies for one, Peter Bunting for another, Faye Ellington for a third, and Michael Stern for a fourth - just to mention a few. A group of such persons need to rope in across party lines as a Parish Development Committee as a matter of urgency.
Reforming the security forces and better police work is crucial. However, as recent events dramatically demonstrate, given the prevalence of police corruption, providing information to the police is signing your own death warrant. Throwing better security at our rural crisis is important but will not solve the problem. A more thoughtful and far-reaching approach is urgently needed.
