Banana, plantain sector looking to rebound

The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining is implementing measures to help the banana and plantain industry bounce back, following the passage of Hurricane Melissa last October.

Senior strategist, consultant and advisor to the permanent secretary in the ministry, Michael Pryce, told a recent Jamaica Information Service (JIS) Think Tank that the category-five hurricane left 95 per cent of the country's banana and plantain crop destroyed in its wake.

"We immediately started efforts to resuscitate bananas after the hurricane, and we injected, as a ministry, $100 million into special fertilisers for bananas," he said. The programme is being implemented by The Banana Board and the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, and is expected to assist approximately 5,000 banana and plantain farmers and rehabilitate more than 2,500 hectares of damaged farms. Pryce pointed out that, while the crop is on its way to recovery, they take eight to nine months to come back to production.

"We went down to five per cent [so] there is no banana now. But, within the next two or three months, we should be having full-fledged banana production," he noted.

Pryce stressed, however, that Jamaica is not considering importing bananas, as the region is under severe threat of Tropical Race 4 disease, which affects the crop.