Massive Agri Target

The State-owned Agro-Investment Corporation has launched an ambitious drive to get at least 10,000 more acres of land into agricultural production over the next two years.

“The 10,000 acres will come from private sector, public sector, and we are looking at any lands that the Government owns to see to what extent we can have them into production,” CEO of Agro-Investment, Dr Al Powell, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

Agro-Investment is one of two entities recently mandated by Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Floyd Green to go on a drive across the country to engage and encourage private owners of farm lands to lease the lands to farmers.

The other entity is Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings Limited, which has been asked to accelerate the use of the many parcels of land it owns.

But Powell told the Observer that the drive by his entity to get idle farm lands into production was already well under way.

“We are developing a model — I hope it is sustainable — where we have people travelling weekly, fortnightly, all over the country to identify idle lands, and then we find people to farm those private lands and arrange some sort of help with the rental/lease agreement.

“In addition to that, we have a lot of Government lands, so we are also speaking to NLA (National Land Agency), which is the organisation having all Government lands under its control… to get additional lands, and we hope that at the end of the day we will put those old sugar cane lands… and a lot of other lands islandwide, into production,” said Powell.

He pointed out that Agro-Investment recently signed off on a deal involving a 333-acre private property in Elim, St Elizabeth, where a group of local and Canadian investors will be farming corn, ginger, turmeric, and other crops mainly for the export market.

“Once the lease is signed, in another week or so, I think the investors will start farming. They want to produce for the tourist market and the export sector,” said Powell.

He added that there is another overseas investor who is interested in 2,700 acres of land, also in Elim, to grow a variety of crops, and that deal could be signed shortly.

According to Powell, the scope of Agro-Investment has been adjusted, as it is now mandated to find investors for the agricultural sector, and it is targeting the Diaspora as it moves to become the leading agency for agricultural investments long before 2030, which was its initial target.

“So I am expecting that over the next two years we will be able to commence the process by having anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 acres of land in agriculture through our efforts, as the lands are available, and in many instances irrigation is available, which helps to drive production,” declared Powell.

In the meantime, Alecia Brown-Forbes, chief marketing officer of Agro-Investment, said the two Elim deals are part of the agency’s ‘Agriculture Land Owner Match Programme’, which links private owners of arable lands with individuals interested in farming.

“So we are going now more into persons with the private lands, because there is so much land that is here that is undeveloped,” said Brown-Forbes.

“Agro-Investment basically has a mandate to promote and facilitate agricultural investment and that is what we are hoping to accomplish going forward. We have a strategic plan, and over the next five years we are really looking to develop agriculture more in Jamaica.

“We are looking to put as much unused land into production as possible, and trying to get those investors. Initially, we were looking to get those large investors who wanted to lease 200, 300, 500 acres of land, now we are realising that persons really want to come into agriculture and can’t really afford to lease 100 acres, so if it is they want only 40 or 50 acres, we are here to support them,” added Brown-Forbes.

Agro-Investment is an agricultural investment facilitation, advisory and management company that functions as the business facilitation department within the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.