Available labour imperative for growth in agriculture and the economy

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Lenworth Fulton.

LOW productivity in local agriculture is much a function of labour as it is for available financing, land, markets or supportive government policies.

Recently, the tourism sector was put at peril from labour unrest to the extent that the call has been made for a tourism joint industrial council. This is said to be a panacea for the hotel labour issue, but if so, would it also be the solution for agriculture and not the implementation of guidelines for the labour shortage that has been evident in the sector for more than three decades.

The sugar industry underwent massive decline from the late 1960s to current with production of sugar falling from 1,062 thousand tonnes to 35 thousand tonnes in 2023. This is attributed to labour shortage, poor productivity and the absence of modernisation, whilst our competitors from Brazil, India and other sugar-producing countries had at their disposal a cheaper labour force coupled with more advanced technology in their sugar cane industries. It was said that India and Brazil were producing sugar for US nine cents per pound compared to Jamaica at US 27 cents per pound due partly to labour issues.

Agriculture worldwide faces labour shortages. The USA and Canada have formal farm work programmes with less developed countries like Jamaica, other Caribbean states, Africa and South America countries, etc. Most citizens of developed countries shun agricultural labour and mechanisation can’t perform the entire set of activities on the farms.

Some farming enterprises are using robots, drones, mechanical harvestors and so on to enhance productivity and avoid human labour force.

The situation is challenging for the thriving Phillipines coconut industry where 3.5 million persons earn their living from coconut-related jobs reaping approximately 12 billion nuts per year compared to 126 million reaped in Jamaica annually.

It’s not surprising that a video surfaced from Thailand that farmers in the Phillipines have been using monkeys to reap coconuts at the rate of 1,000 nuts per day per monkey compared to an efficient human coconut picker that can only reap 80 coconuts per day.

Nontheless, animal rights activists sounded the alarm and discouraged the purchase of Phillipines coconut products. The Phillipines Government immediately disassociated itself from monkey labour. But I wonder if our farmers might suffer the same criticism from replacing human labour with donkeys and mules as beasts of burden from animal rights activists.

This labour nightmare must be confronted with research, improved legal framework, meaningful government policies and an aggressive public education programme.

The use of cheap labour through slavery and post-slavery colonialism is gone and labour must be treated as a factor of production coated with dignity and financial rewards and not from the harrow of what happened in 1781 with the Zong massacre where 130 Africans destined to Jamaica to be enslaved, were thrown in shark infested waters as cargo before the ship docked in Black River with the rest.

Cheap labour was at the root of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and even then, there were laws to protect the traders like William Gregson and none to protect the labourers.

Mr Gregson filed an insurance claim for the loss of the 130 slaves to the colonial Jamaican Authority but was unsuccessful. The claim was then made in Britain where it was granted on the grounds that these 130 Africans were not persons but cargo and traders can offload cargo when it’s advantageous to them.

Jamaica has developed strong labour laws and supporting institutions since Independence in 1962 such as Industrial Dispute Tribunal (IDT), legal structures like the trade unions and equal pay for all, and so on.

Let’s be cautious in this labour conundrum for all sectors of the economy and hold tight to the gains this country has made so far and never market us as cheap wage country or one where workers have no rights.

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