‘Trees can make you money’
FROM private timber production to agro-forestry, there is money to be made from investing in trees.
The only trouble is that to realise success, there must be buy in from current and prospective tree growers and help from the government.
“We need the support of some consistent encouragement from Government. It doesn’t need to pump in money but we need consistent encouragement. And everybody needs to buy in,” said Guy Symes, secretary of the Jamaica Tree Growers Association (JTGA).
He was speaking with the Observer following Tuesday’s national seminar on investment opportunities in forestry, held at the Spanish Court Hotel in Kingston. The seminar was hosted by the JTGA.
“The cassava idea is a great one. We had it before Mr (Chris) Tufton talked about it. But by him talking, it took on a different direction. We need to single out things (like that) and encourage them — soil conservation, watershed management, growing trees for protective cover, growing trees for timber, growing trees to produce fruit. We need to have these people articulating and encouraging our people to get on with it,” added the man, who is also managing director of the Forest Conservancy.
At the same time, Symes noted the variety of options in agro-forestry, for example, that farmers and others with land have to make money.
“The space in between the trees can be used to generate an income. We are talking here about agro-forestry in the sense that we mix the cultivation of inter-crops (fruits, vegetables and/or produce) with the long-term crop (trees) for short-term gain,” he said.
“Some farmers traditionally have done it in their little backyard and so on. But this can be a system that is used to maximise the larger farms. And even the large farmers who have land to go into trees, they can also inter-crop in the short term with crops they can market and provide them with an income,” Symes added.
He noted that among the items that can be planted are vegetables, cassava cocoa, as well as high-value spices such as Tumeric, ginger or for small farmers we are even talking about growing vanilla.
“Vanilla is a climbing orchid, which, when it flowers, has to be pollinated by hand. It cannot be pollinated mechanically — bees don’t normally pollinate it. In order to get the beans, you have to do it by hand. This type of operation suits a small grower,” Symes explained.
“If you have a whole batch of small growers in a community doing things like that in high volume of what is a high value product, they can co-operatively create a processing plant because you have to process the bean and together they can share in that kind of industry. But the vanilla needs the shade of a tree crop,” he added.