The Editor, Sir:

The article on the US$900m agriculture myth by Claude Clarke in The Sunday Gleaner was interesting and had important points in its body, but there was quite a bit missing in its arguments that led to the several flawed conclusions I believe it has drawn.

I liken it to flawed directions which, when given to a traveller, leads followers to an incorrect destination where they are all standing around, questioning how they ended up there rather than where they intended.

The contributor concludes that stronger emphasis on agriculture is the wrong approach since other more advanced countries have left that agricultural-reliance strategy. His creation of a false choice that we should choose either industrialisation or agriculture is another example of flawed reasoning.

Said he: "Primary agriculture represents no more than 10 per cent of [the $900m]. The remaining 90 per cent is the value added by the industrial-production process. Our huge food import bill is, therefore, far more an opportunity for local manufacturing than it is for agriculture."

Same flawed conclusion

The last point is the right answer but the author wastes not one sentence more exploring this approach. Neither does the exposé pursue what could have changed since the decimation of the manufacturing industry, which could make the outcome different this time. It seems bent on reaching the same flawed conclusion that the article ends at.

Importing less and relying on Jamaican-grown products more not only costs less, puts more of our people to work, uses less foreign exchange, develops our logistics and operational capabilities and begins to revamp our manufacturing sector, but it uses the resources we have at our disposal and acknowledges the stark realities facing us - one of which is that our literacy rate has deteriorated significantly since our earlier years.

The contributor is correct in his intimation that an overall coordinating strategy is missing, which ties in several of the resource pools and advantages present in the economy. The conclusions that seem to dismiss each of the current approaches as fruitless is fairly shallow.

There is an implicit devaluation in things local when compared to things 'international' in several of the arguments of the essay. For example, if we were to grow an item that we could eat and import less of a value-added processed food, the implication is that such a step would be a retrograde one. That is flawed at its foundation and shallow in its analysis.

Specifically, should we grow more sorrel, drink more sorrel juice and import less cranberry juice, it seems to be arguing that we would be worse off because developed countries are drinking processed cranberry 'juice'. What passes for juice in our supermarkets is often varieties of water and fructose. Our sorrel or 'June plum', with particles and lumps, could be far superior to the imports.

Similarly, the products we import that are value-added are largely grown in an agricultural monoculture mode that subjects the food to more pesticides, processing, lower nutritional content and less biodiversity that could be proven to elevate our vulnerability to all forms of diseases.

I invite him to retest his conclusions with new eyes and talent and not to continue to assume that his analysis must be conducted in isolation. Our collective futures depend on our ability to collaborate intelligently and objectively. He has much to offer but far less than what is required for an answer.

I am, etc.,

LEO WILLIAMS

williamsaleo@hotmail.com

Kingston 6