Minister of Agriculture Floyd Green says 23 farm roads have been rehabilitated this year under the Government’s Farm Road Programme, which aims to ensure that farmers across the island have reliable and well-maintained roads for effective travel.

He said that material for an additional 13 roads is in procurement. The J$200 million increase for the programme will also facilitate the rehabilitation of 16 more farm roads.

“I have looked at the policy to see if we can allocate more per road. What we’ve had over the years is a cap on how much you allocate per road so that we can touch more roads because the need is so great. When we looked at it, we believe to really move the needle over the next five years, we need at least J$1 billion each year,” he told Our Today.

He shared that the initial budget for the programme for 2023/2024 was J$610 million, and the Government allotted an additional J$200 million in the third Supplementary Estimate. However, the plea for farm roads, particularly in rural St Andrew, is great and requires a larger budget.

“The need for farm roads is tremendous all over Jamaica, especially because over the past four decades, we haven’t really had an intensive programme. There were times when the farm road budget was J$200 million, which made it very difficult to do substantial work. A lot of the farm roads are more complex projects than even our main road networks because they are in deep rural Jamaica. They require a lot of drainage and things of that nature,” said Green.

Green, after his return to the Ministry of Agriculture, declared that greater emphasis would be placed on the Farm Road Programme after mounting requests from farmers.

According to the minister, more than 10,000 farmers are registered in Kingston and St Andrew.