Chronic short-sightedness is one of our biggest Achilles heels. It is an open secret that our growth and development are being severely retarded by an oversupply of myopic thinkers whose default position is “It can’t be done,” or “It will never work.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that far too many who have been entrusted with great power and responsibility over many decades have totally failed to embrace and facilitate timely innovation.

Professor Patrick Lumumba, renowned African scholar and director of the Kenya School of Law, in one of his famous public lectures, submitted that if African societies are to be successfully reimagined, given the burden of colonialism, it is absolutely necessary to ask: Whose box is this? Where did it come from? And, why? Translated, he means African peoples have to begin to think differently, unconventionally, and from new perspectives.

I agree.

Here at home we need more leaders to adopt the kind of mindset encouraged by Professor Lumumba. I believe we have the ability to create pathways that are suited to our needs, and are, simultaneously, regionally and globally relevant.

Beating the odds

An enduring example of a Jamaican who used his genius to create a pathway suited to our unique needs, yet also regionally and globally relevant, was Thomas Phillip Lecky.

The 12th of 13 children, he was born on December 31, 1904. Early accounts of his life say he had a natural love for animals. He spent an immense amount of time playing with, examining, and asking questions about animals.

Lecky’s father, who was a small farmer, encouraged the development of his son’s inquiring mind by teaching him all he knew about farming.

Life was hard for young Lecky. Tilling the soil was back-breaking work, primarily due to the absence of mechanisation. However, his upbringing in Swift River, in western Portland, was greatly advantageous too; in that he developed numerous and invaluable life lessons. For example, he learned from early that “his back needed to be broad”, as we say in local parlance — personal resilience.

Thomas Phillip Lecky faced and overcame huge obstacles during his life. He was told that breeding cattle specifically suited to Jamaican conditions would take generations and, at best, would not happen in his lifetime. Lecky did not allow myopic thinkers to douse his creativity and natural genius. He was convinced that it was possible to produce a breed of cattle suited for Jamaica’s hilly terrain and to meet our meat and milk production needs.

During his walk to and from school Lecky could not help but notice the struggles with poverty of his neighbours. The poverty was in stark contrast to the immense beauty of the slopes of Blue Mountain near to where he grew up. His resolved from very early was that he would do something to lessen if not eradicate the abject poverty of his neighbours.

The majority black and dispossessed population did not have many post primary educational opportunities in the 1800s and early 1900s. Only a smidgen of blacks could afford to send their children to England to get an education. For the vast majority, agricultural school or teachers’ college, specifically The Mico Teachers’ College, was the only ladder to climb from primary education.

Why?

The answer, in large part, can be found in an understanding of who was a labourer.

Colonialism was fuelled by a ‘labouring class’. Labourers did not own land. Labourers existed to work the land of the land-owning elite, predominately, white. Therefore, very little consideration was given to education for the majority black population beyond primary school — albeit that the Church did try to set up secondary schools in many parts of the island. These secondary schools were populated at the outset mostly by the children of those who could not afford the expensive ship ride to England to get secondary and post-secondary education.

Lecky’s parents did not have the resources to send him to England. Fate, however, had mapped out a different route for young Lecky. At age 17, he won a merit scholarship to attend the Farm School at Hope Gardens in St Andrew — now part of the College of Arts and Sciences (CASE) in Portland).

Learning in action

Aristotle famously said, “The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.” Lecky did put his knowledge to action throughout his life.

In his wonderful autobiography, published in 1994, Cattle and I, Lecky spoke lovingly about the day when his chords of nationalism first reached a crescendo. He noted that the West Indies Cricket Team was playing in Britain. A professor of genetics said to Lecky, “You cannot call the Negroes a great race because they are brilliant at the start but poor at the finish.” From that terrible incident he vowed to do a job for his country and see it completed, even if it meant devoting his entire life to it.

He was a nationalist.

A very insightful article by noted researcher and education specialist Dr Rebecca Tortello, titled ‘Famous Jamaican Scientist Dreamers Among Us — The Father of Jamaican Cattle’, in The Gleaner of July 23, 2003, noted among other things: “Lecky began to dream of a new breed of cattle, a Jamaican breed. He turned his attention to the study of animal genetics and earned degrees in agriculture from McGill University and animal husbandry from Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph. At Guelph he focused on evaluating cross-breeding as a means of acclimatising European cattle to Jamaica’s environment. He concluded that the answer was not an acclimatised European breed, but a new breed; a completely adapted tropical breed.

He returned to Jamaica in 1935 and started to test his ideas. He used two lines of cattle and began to select bulls for breeding from the best-producing cows in Jamaica. In 1949 Lecky gathered his documentation and travelled to the University of Edinburgh, where he used this research as the basis for his doctorate. His dissertation, entitled ‘Genetic improvement in diary cattle in the tropics’ presented his ideas for developing a tropical dairy breed and catapulted him to international acclaim. It considered the two main processes by which species or breeds adapt to new environments — natural selection and mutation.

Natural selection dates as far back as Charles Darwin and is essentially the idea of survival of the fittest. Those members of a breed with qualities most suited to a location will survive and dominate. Mutation is the idea that actual changes are made in genes themselves for many different reasons. After a period of time the gene pool of a later generation may therefore differ from the original gene pool. Lecky noted this in animals he observed in Jamaica, where some cattle showed significant improvements after a period of 20 years. (The Gleaner, July 23, 2003)

Dr Tortello, in the mentioned percipient piece, also noted that: “By the early 1950s, Lecky saw his ideas realised, and the first examples of genetically bred cattle, named Jamaica Hope, were ready. They were a combination of the British Jersey cow (small, and light feeding) with the Holstein (heavy milk producers) and the Indian Sahiwal breed (disease resistant and adapted to the tropics). The Jamaica Hope could produce up to an average of 12 litres of milk a day — 3 times that produced by other cattle on the island.

“Lecky’s work revolutionised the Jamaican dairy industry and, indeed, the dairy industry around the world. Scientists from many different countries flocked to Jamaica to see what he had done. Lecky’s work impacted on the development of cattle in many tropical countries.”

Great hurdles

Several accounts agree that Lecky did not have an easy climb to the top.

Consider this: “Coming back to Jamaica I was not wanted,” said Dr Lecky in a revealing two-part documentary by the National Library of Jamaica. He continued, “I had to go out to a private farm to work again that was not wanted, because the people who could employ you did not want anybody of my training. It became cumbersome to them because the salary they paid preyed on their nerves and beside that they preferred to have someone whose labour they could rob. I came into the government service at a lower salary. I was drawing 160 pounds a year with board and lodging at Hope when I left. When I came back, I got 132 pounds working with the Government at Holmwood Technical High School,” Lecky submitted.

These are the kinds of obstacles Lecky faced after he got back from Canada with a first degree in animal husbandry.

His journey to a doctorate was doubly hard. There are documented accounts in which deliberate attempts were made to credit his work to others. The overt message to Lecky was conspicuous. There was no such thing as a black Jamaican scientist.

Elaborate attempts were made to frustrate him. And some who were close to him also tried to sabotage his work and block him from promotion. For example, in 1949, while he was on approved study leave to do a PhD in genetics at the University of Edinburgh, some here at home, for reasons best known to them, tried to derail his breeding work. ‘Bad mind’ is not a new phenomenon.

Despite the sabotage and professional jealousies, Lecky is today known worldwide as the scientist who created a new diary breed, the Jamaica Hope, and three Jamaican meat breeds — the Jamaica Brahman, the Jamaica Red, and the Jamaica Black. Jamaica and the tropical world owe Dr Lecky a great debt of gratitude.

He has several peer-reviewed publications to his credit. He also wrote several papers that have been delivered at international conferences.

It is documented that Dr Lecky got offers to work in Australia, several countries in Africa, and was offered opportunities to remain in England after he completed his PhD.

Lecky remained in Jamaica.

In the National Library of Jamaica documentary mentioned, Lecky noted that on one occasion he said, among other things, to a persistent recruiter: “Your country has the money to employ anybody of my calibre. My country cannot employ me; my country does not understand who I am. Therefore, it was obvious, I have to remain and do the work for my country.”

Lecky never forgot his early days in Swift River and his desire to help his neighbours. He retired from the government service in 1965, but continued to act as a consultant right up until his death in 1994. In recognition for his role as a renowned Jamaican scientist, he was invested with Jamaica’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Merit, for work of national and international importance, in 1978.

Lecky is also the recipient of several honours and awards, among them:

• 1959 – Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for meritorious and devoted service to agriculture

• 1970 – first recipient of the Norman Manley Award for Excellence

• 1971 – Doctor of Science (honoris causa), The University of the West Indies

• 1987 – The Mutual Security Foundation Outstanding Achievement Award

• 1989 – Fellow of the Jamaican Society for Agricultural Sciences

• 1992 – induction into the Professional Societies Association in Jamaica

We have a practice of putting only our national heroes and former prime ministers on our national currency denominations — Noel “Crab” Nethersole, minister of finance, 1955-59, the exception. I think we need to interrupt that tradition with the inclusion of Dr Thomas Phillip Lecky on a future banknote. I think he more than earned such an honour.

I think our Order of National Hero should also be conferred upon Dr Thomas Phillip Lecky. He was the first Jamaican to earn a PhD in livestock genetics. His work is used as a guide all over the world. He has also done pioneering work in poultry and general farm management that is utilised around the globe. He is a great example of Jamaican nationalism.

Dr Lecky “made the weather”. He represents the best of us and the best in us.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist and a senior advisor to the minister of education & youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.