Packages being delivered

FAO works with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to help female farmers and vulnerable families recover better from COVID-19 during the Christmas season

For many farmers, 2020 was the year of plenty. A year where there would be plenty to harvest and plenty to earn, and then came COVID-19. Many farmers lost thousands of dollars’ worth of produce and access to already competitive market outlets. Livelihoods, household incomes and the ability to meet basic needs were affected, especially for those in rural and peri-rural areas who rely heavily on the agriculture sector. Amidst these challenges, emerged newly at risk and vulnerable families and children who are ineligible for benefits under the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), but even in the darkest times, there is hope.

Recognising the wide range of socio-economic effects, and learning from the Ebola crisis of 2014, the United Nations Secretary General introduced the United Nations COVID-19 Response and Recovery Trust Fund. Jamaica, becoming one of a few middle-income countries to benefit from this fund, is working on specific interventions to reduce the social impact and promote economic responses to COVID19.

Through the Fund, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Representation in Jamaica is helping to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to deliver social protection to vulnerable groups some of whom are beneficiaries of the PATH programme, with a keen focus on women and children.

For many female-headed households in rural and peri-rural areas who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, COVID-19 has compounded the challenges they face on a daily basis. The impacts of climate change that lead to extreme drought or high intensity rainfall, is now accompanied by the difficulty in finding market outlets for their produce due to the decline in tourism and entertainment activities.

In order to curb the effects of the pandemic on food systems and livelihoods, the project will boost the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries’ ability to purchase local produce from female farmers through its Agriculture Produce Acquisition Programme. The Fund will therefore support approximately 1,000 female-headed householders, who are also farmers in select rural parishes, by providing them with a secure market for their agricultural produce.

In partnership with UNICEF, the project will also strengthen the economic safety net for vulnerable families through the provision of social relief care, sanitation and food packages.

These packages will include locally grown fruits, ground provision, condiments and vegetables procured from the female farmers in the project, which will help in meeting the food and nutrition demands of these vulnerable families. In so doing, the farmers will have an even more secure market and over 1,000 vulnerable families, especially those with children, will become the recipients of nutritional meal packages to help in offsetting the costs of food.

Everton Robinson, FAO Project Coordinator, commented that four participating farms in Yallas and Willowfield, two of which are female owned, were determined to rebound from the recent floods and were already stacked with acreages of onion, cucumber, plantain, bananas, and sweet potato to be purchased as a part of the programme.

Thanks to the support of RADA and the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, hundreds of food packages containing green and ripe plantains and bananas, papaya, thyme, scallion, lettuce, cabbage, ginger, pineapple, papaya, sweet potato, carrot, eggs among other produce continue to be distributed over the holidays.

The two-fold advantage of the project was carefully designed to safeguard and protect the country’s newly at risk and vulnerable and support local supply chains in the agricultural sector whilst ensuring that families who face the highest food and nutrition vulnerability resulting from the pandemic are protected.  

Clifton Wilson, Assistant FAO Representative remarks that the project aims to help those who are high risk as well as those who, prior to COVID-19, were not considered highly at risk and vulnerable. He highlighted that the project takes a targeted approach to supporting newly vulnerable households and easing the burden on female farmers to find markets while sustaining their incomes and providing family support during the pandemic. He remarked that it will also give families who have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 one less thing to worry about.

As we continue through the Christmas season and as the measures necessary to slow the virus continue, FAO and the Ministries will continue to work together to recover better by providing relief to a significant number of farmers and rural communities adversely affected by COVID-19 to ensure that no one is left behind.