ECONOMY-CARIBBEAN: Jamaica Bids to Revive Citrus Industry

By Zadie Neufville Reprint | | Print |

Zadie Neufville

BOG WALK, Jamaica, Jun 27 2001 (IPS) - Seven years after the citrus tristeza virus (CTV) began decimating the Jamaican citrus industry, the government is launching an effort to replace diseased trees.

Over the next five years, the Citrus Replanting Programme aims to replace just under one third of the estimated 9,000 hectares of citrus trees on the island. The project, which includes loans for replanting, registration of citrus trees and nurseries, and a census of trees and stock types, is expected to reverse a fall-off in production.

Cecil Bent, chairman of Citrus Growers, said the programme is good news for farmers but there will be no significant improvement in production until the new trees become productive in four or five years.

Citrus plants begin their production cycle four to five years after planted and reach full production between eight and ten years, Bent explained.

For a number of producers, the effort comes too late and does little to address the ravages of industry deregulation at home and rulings from the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation.

Project Coordinator Florence Young said the 20.4-million-dollar effort would distribute certified disease-free plants, replace diseased trees, and maintain a CTV-free industry.

Young, a plant pathologist, said 70 per cent of the island’s citrus trees were infected with the virus, which went undetected in Jamaica for more than 20 years. In 1993, the introduction of the brown citrus aphid – the most effective of the CTV vectors, or carriers – caused rapid spread of the virus in its most virulent form.

The most desirable citrus varieties are budded on sour orange rootstock – planting material that is vulnerable to the virus.

About 90 per cent of Jamaica’s citrus plants, most of them orange trees, must be replaced to stop the disease, which kills the plants in their most productive years, Bent said. Since 1993, he added, production has fallen to 3.4 million boxes, from 4.5 million.

Each box contains between 150 and 300 oranges, depending on the size of the fruit.

Nearly 10,000 farmers will benefit from the replanting programme’s loans, Young said. Farmers with up to 40 hectares of land will be offered loans equivalent to as much as 80 per cent of their cost to replace trees and those with more land will be offered loans to cover up to 70 per cent of the costs.

Percy Miller of Citrus Growers said each certified disease-free plant would sell for between 3.33 dollars and 4.44 dollars. Each plant and its new owner would be registered under the disease control programme.

A 1939 charter defines a citrus farmer as anyone with 10 fruit- bearing trees. Small farmers operate in groups, each supplying no less than 20,000 boxes, and are concentrated in the south coast parish of Clarendon.

Bent, a keen campaigner for the initiative, said he hopes it will bring back some of the farmers who were forced out of the industry. But he fears the money has come too late for many.

On the western end of the island, falling profits forced the sale of Montpelier, a 1,214-hectare citrus farm a few kilometres outside Montego Bay. Montpelier, owned by a local commercial bank, has lost about 60 per cent of its trees to CTV.

The Citrus Growers factory, located here in the island’s main citrus growing region, has seen its intake of fruits fall from 1.3 million boxes in 1992 to 400,000 last year. A processing plant in neighbouring Clarendon was closed because of inadequate supplies.

Peter McConnell, whose family owns United Estates, said that with world prices at a 30-year low, 3.5 million dollars in losses from theft, and a World Trade Organisation ruling under which exported fruit concentrate must include 50 percent imported content, the industry has simply become unprofitable for his company.

United Estates is the island’s largest citrus farm, with 2,194 hectares under cultivation. Battered by low export earnings, rising input costs and the burden of having to replant more than 50 per cent of its trees as a result of CTV, the farm is now up for sale.

An exporter of fresh fruit and concentrate, the company started its own replacement programme in 1994. But according to McConnell, replacing healthy productive plants with disease-free trees costs around 2,025dollars per hectare.

Bent said industry deregulation, which resulted in a mushrooming of juice factories, was partly to blame. The industry suffered even more damage as poachers flooded the market with sub-standard fruits, causing prices to fall and eroding market confidence.

The McConnell family is selling its business but Peter’s job as head of the non-governmental, non-profit Jamaica Citrus Protection Agency (JCPA) is to continue the work that United Estates began at the onset of the crisis.

Established in 1999, JCPA was mandated to monitor and enforce recently enacted citrus protection legislation. McConnell said that as soon as JCPA receives promised funding, it will launch a programme to educate farmers and home gardeners of the importance of planting only certified trees.