Finding Fulfillment in Farming

Amri Campbell picking sorrel on her farm in Trinityville.

Dressed in a long-sleeve shirt, long pants, water boots and a wide rimmed hat, the petite woman handles a machete well and does quite a bit of planting and pruning herself. “By 10 o clock you do a lot of work, because you start by 6…and when the sun hot you can rest a little,” she shared.

In spite of the tough work that farming can be, the courageous middle aged cash crop farmer loves the land and has harboured dreams of farming for a long time. “I have loved farming since growing up. Although my father wasn’t into farming he was a fisherman, I have always loved the land, and I always love to plant and I always say given the opportunity and health wise if I can manage I would farm,” shared the soft-spoken woman. Now she takes much pride in the gungo peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, sorrel, plantains, ginger, pumpkins and hot peppers that create a menu of colours on her 8 acres of land and happily shares her produce with strangers and passersby. “If I plant pumpkin and somebody pass, I give…you see I reap this gungo now and I take to sell, I give some away,” she said smiling. Indeed it’s as though Amri has finally found real fulfillment in farming. Furthermore “being my own boss is excellent,” she opined.

Prior to doing her own farming business, Amri was somewhat involved in agriculture but as an employee in the declining banana industry. She was made redundant in 1997. However maybe this was a blessing in disguise for the woman of faith. “The banana was tough hard work. You had to put the thing on yu head and that was hard, so it close down and I went home and sat down thinking what to do. Well my son-in-law had this land and he knew I wanted something to do and I was looking a piece of land to farm and he say mommy why you don’t try and do the farming down there, it was woodland and he sent some money and I got a tractor and cleared some of the land,” she remembered. 

With much hard work and perseverance the farm has flourished over time. “We have a trench, a gully round there and so the first year the rain came it run through the place and it destroy everything so I had to get a backhoe clip the gully because if I wanted to do the farming I have to get the place in order so I clean the gully and what I got each year I put back in,” the small farmer explained. And recently she got an extra push to help her reap success on her farm, thanks to the European Union/ Christian Aid Sustainable Livelihoods Project being implemented by the Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre Ltd. WROC. “I benefit tremendously because I got a spray pan which I didn’t have, I got a fork which I didn’t have and the carrot that I sowed that’s where I got the seeds, I got cucumbers - lots of seed, tomatoes and so on, that’s where I started doing vegetables when I got those seeds,” she noted enthusiastically.

Moreover though Amri is good with a machete, she still needs help to prepare the land especially with forking and so the project provided female beneficiaries with funds to enable them to pay for labour. Executive Director of WROC Dorothy Whyte explained that “the reality is that there is some physical work that women are not necessarily able to do and so we are providing them with a little bit of funding to help with that.”

So now Amri is living her dream and making ends meet through tilling the soil. “I am independent not dependent on anyone, sometimes things are slow we don’t have much things to sell and do but normally while working (in previous jobs) I find that maybe what I would make in a month I can make it in a week in farming,” she beamed with pride. What’s more, the faithful farmer has never seen a crop spoil nor has she lost any produce to agriculture thieves.

Still, in spite of the successes, Amri like most rural farmers struggles with irregular weather patterns and the impact of climate change. Sometimes she faces drought conditions that can threaten her harvest; other times heavy rains prevent her from even accessing the farm. But the diligent small farmer works to overcome those challenges as best as she can. Indeed her determination is equal to the task. “Farming is hard work but you have to be determined, you have to decide to work. You have to have a goal and you work towards that goal,” she wisely advised.