Gambling with the soil

Climate change is one term with which the smallest of small farmers in St Thomas should now be familiar. Joan Buchanan, a 53-year-old farming veteran, knows this as intimately as she knows when her bananas are market ready.

Buchanan remembers the years when she could set her pot on the fire from predictable earnings of her work and send her children to school dressed in 'good clothes' too. But, in recent years, with hurricanes producing frequent rains, floods and blistering heat, farming is a gamble worse than buying the games that people play, Buchanan says.

When The Sunday Gleaner - in late July - visited her farm, located on a few acres outside of Seaforth, the callaloo was spotted with white fly disease as was the gungo, which otherwise would provide a sure income for the Christmas season.

This is an excerpt from an article published in the Jamaica Gleaner on Sunday, August 10, 2008. You can read the entire article at the Jamaica Gleaner website.