Can he do it?
Sam Wong Chew Onn doesn’t seem like the best candidate for the job of resurrecting Spring Plains, the hi-tech farm at the centre of Agro 21, a Government project which aimed to boost the agricultural sector by growing winter vegetables for export 20 years ago, but fell into scandal and ruin instead.
He’s 65 years old. He has no formal training in agriculture or any other related field. He’s not one of those filthy rich types who can afford to toss away millions on whimsical fancies, nor, to the best knowledge of those who know him, mad.
He’s not ignorant either – he’s well aware of the controversy that resurfaced in 1999 with the drug-trafficking conviction of Eli Tisona, the Israeli who invested in the farm in a joint venture with the Jamaica Labour Party government of the 1980s.
Tisona operated Spring Plains between 1982 and 1986, using the latest in Israeli technology to grow winter vegetables for the US and European markets. But the farm became bankrupt after losing an estimated $48 million and leaving debts of much more.
Tisona, who has now been confirmed to be an Israeli mobster, is now serving time in a US federal prison in Florida for laundering Colombian drug money through a family jewellery store.
However, the embrace he received from the Government in the 1980s was criticised by Anthony Abrahams, a former minister in the Labour Party Cabinet, after Tisona’s conviction.
Abrahams, who now co-hosts a morning radio talk show, The Breakfast Club, had charged that during an early 1980s visit to Israel, he was warned that Eli Tisona and his brother, Ezra, were named in a 1977 Knesset committee report as being among Israel’s 11 top drug mobsters.
Abrahams said that on his return to Jamaica, he told then prime minister, Edward Seaga, about the concerns, but very little was done about them.
However, the JLP rejected Abrahams’ claims, saying that a character check done on Eli Tisona in Israel had shown him to be clean.
“Whatever Mr Tisona may have done, for which he has now been convicted, was due to offences committed in the 1990s after he left Jamaica, not during the 1980s when the JLP was the government of Jamaica,” the party said at the time through its then general-secretary, Audley Shaw.
That controversy, though, has not daunted Wong Chew Onn, whose main concern at the moment is how to ensure the joint venture between his company, Hi-tech Farms Limited, and Hayean International, a Chinese group of investors, realises their ambitions to grow winter vegetables and tropical fruits on the 400-acre farm in Clarendon.
“Jamaica is one of the world’s best natural green houses,” he told the Sunday Observer last week. “If you have a place you call the land of wood and water, a place where bush grows naturally, then you can grow almost anything. The thing is to figure out what sort of edible bush, vegetation will grow.”
Armed with that belief, the sprightly golden ager is pumping the majority of his resources – time, energy, finances – into producing a variety of vegetables, fruits and vines, most of which are Chinese strains of tomatoes, celery, broccoli, cabbage, peppers, watermelons, canteloupe, cerassee, string beans, snow peas, radishes and corn, to name a few.
It’s not that he thinks he’s that much more skilled than the previous managers under whom the farm flopped.
“I’m no farmer,” he confessed. “The most I’ve done prior to this is plant a rose plant at home and water it and watch it grow. I never went to a university, but the good Lord gave me common sense and I have brought in people who have the necessary knowledge to make it work.”
But the most important ingredient that Wong Chew Onn is relying on to make the project work is integrity.
For, according to him, it was his personal integrity during his many years of work with Jampro, the Government’s investment promotions agency, that enabled him to make a convincing case for the viability of the farm.
“When you work with people for 10 years and they have never had a problem with your work and you take a proposal like this to them, they’ll not only listen, they’ll accept,” he said.
And integrity is what he intends to use to ensure that the farm doesn’t lose money as it did 20 years ago. “You have to bear economies of scale in mind and pump the money back into the business. agriculture will not work efficiently on a small scale.,” he said.
The idea for the proposal was born about six years ago when a group of Chinese investors indicated to Wong Chew Onn their willingness to invest in a winter vegetable project.
From there, it was an easy job for Wong Chew Onn to set up the necessary meetings that led to the leasing of the farm under a joint venture between Hi-Tech Farms and Hayean International.
For that was where his years of experience establishing contacts between Jamaica and China came into play.
Born in 1938 at his home on Princess Street in Downtown Kingston, Wong Chew Onn attended St George’s College for Boys up to fifth form. On leaving, he went into business with his father, Henry Wong Chew Onn, a Chinese migrant who came to Jamaica at the age of 14. In addition to the years he spent working in his father’s business where he designed a 17-year-long campaign to promote the “Fag” rice brand, Wong Chew Onn acquired an appreciation for the food business through his “Mr Spice” Crispylisious Chicken restaurant, which is now known as the Golden Wok.
He acquired additional business acumen through a company called General Industries Limited, which used to manufacture household supplies for cleaning as well as original electrical equipment for General Electric. He also served as chairman of the committee responsible for the twinning of Kingston and the Chinese city of Shenzhen, a post which provided a platform for him to forge many contacts between Jamaica and China.
Today, his approach to the farm is the same as it was to his previous ventures.
“There will be many challenges,” he admitted. “Pest control, the weather, markets.. but I have the advantage of being a businessman and other factors also work to our advantage. we have water – Milk River runs through the property which is well above the flood line – we have Chinese technology which shows us how to work with the weather and the world is moving away from meat consumption to vegetarianism. in about five years the demand for vegetables will soar,” he said.
By then, he hopes to acquire an additional 200 acres of land and to establish a self-sufficient, mechanised farm which will force small farmers to raise their standards.
“It’s not our intention to price the small farmers out of the market,” he said. “We will sell at comparable prices, but they will have to compete with our standards. the conventional approach of throwing vegetables into a sack and selling them as is, will not work. We will clean up our produce and ensure that our buyers don’t have all that work to do. we will be offering a very wide variety of produce for sale and small farmers who wish to keep up will have to raise their standards,” he said.