We hope, as Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton promises it to be, that the $730-million grant from the European Union for a sector programme supported by the Food and Agriculture Organisation will be money well spent.

So, we expect three things from Dr Tufton and his team at the agriculture ministry:

that, as it ought to be with all government resources, there will be accountability and transparency.

that this project returns sustainable jobs in the farming sector.

that, as the minister proposes to be the case, it leads to a measurable advancement in Jamaica's food security.

We advance all these points seriously, but we make particular note of the last, given our habit in Jamaica to launch projects with great fanfare only for them to splutter along into unaccountable atrophy. This is particularly common in agriculture where many millions of dollars have been thrown, for instance, at enhancing dairy production, establishing tree crops or replanting citrus groves with not nearly enough to show for the expenditure.

Suspended scepticism

In this case, though, we suspend our scepticism for three reasons.

First, we sense in the recent appointment of technocratic leadership to various arms of the agricultural establishment an emerging resolve to modernise the sector and to do things differently. Jamaica's farm processes have to be brought to something, even if only approximating the early 21st century.

Second, the collapse of Jamaica's alumina sector and the decline in remittances wrought by the global recession may be forcing new thinking on the part of the government, faced with a potentially grave crisis in rural communities, given the problems with mining.

The last point relates to the first; the technocratic impulses on Dr Tufton's appointees will, hopefully, be a restraint on the minister's political instincts, should they arise for the worse. In other words, agriculture cannot be seen primarily as social welfare. Nor can schemes such as have been launched be sources of political pork.

But, as we have noted before, technocratic leadership and transformational projects won't succeed in creating and sustaining jobs unless they are underpinned by stern government policy, some of which may be politically risky.

Unaffordable cost

It is widely agreed that the US$800 million a year that Jamaica spend importing food is, in the long run, unaffordable. We have, in the past, largely covered this expenditure by borrowing, which is becoming increasingly difficult.

Our taste for imported foods has also been helped by the price at which they could be bought; that is, cheaper than home-grown stuff. Prices have increased because of the inability of some governments to maintain subsidies at past levels, and also because of the impact of global trade negotiations.

But, we do not necessarily hold Dr Tufton's view that they will be forever high. In any event, low farm productivity in Jamaica means that even with higher import costs the island's agricultural sector remains largely uncompetitive.

In that regard, this newspaper, as we have argued before, believes that tariff support for the island's farm sector is important. This can be done within the framewok of the international trade agreements.

The risk is in explaining the higher costs to a poltiical constituency, which simply has to be told that the trade-off is local jobs and preventing the collapse of rural Jamaica.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.