THE Central Jamaica Social Development Initiative (CJSDI) through its ‘Home Grown Produce’ brand is not only aiming to help reduce food imports but also to provide jobs to numerous young people in the parish of Clarendon.
“Now this is the concept behind Home Grown Produce — it was born out of a project that we had partnered with the United States Agency for International Development down by Four Paths, where we would train youths 18-35 in red peas farming,” project officer for CJSDI, Oshane Jarrett, explained.
“What we would do is take them through a three-week workshop where, after that workshop, we would give them the red peas seedlings and farming tools, and then they would provide the land by way of proving they have access to land. Following that, we would purchase the finished product from them,” he continued.
Jarrett said that at the end of the three-month harvesting period, following the purchasing of the red peas from the farmers, they are packaged and resold to supermarkets and wholesales.
In addition to red peas, Home Grown Produce also farms and packages ginger, peanuts and pimento with hopes to add tomatoes, cucumber and sweet peppers in the near future.
Currently the brand’s supply chain consists of Loshusan Supermarket, but they have recently acquired their distribution licence from Progressive Foods to supply their chains islandwide. Jarrett added that they also plan to enter into discussions with Hi-Lo to see if they can get Home Grown Produce on their shelves.
According to the project officer, they have 40 acres of land under production and 75 persons in total working on the project overall. However, he pointed out that only 40 are active farmers, with 20 working in Four Paths, Clarendon, and the other half working in Spalding.
“However, this is a small amount compared to what we are importing. Over the past two years, over 2.5 billion dollars of red peas alone have been imported, so we are only scratching the surface. So what we are aiming to do is to use young men and women to help build Jamaica and grow Jamaica, but also to grow themselves, because you can’t grow your country if you can’t grow yourself. That’s what we are about.”
The 25-year-old explained that he got involved in the project as a volunteer, having been unemployed at the time.
“I got involved through the company of Mr Damian Young, who is the managing director of Central Jamaica Social Development Initiative.
Well I just spoke to him and said, Mr Young, I’d definitely love to be involved in something that can impact the youths because we have too many young people just throwing their lives away and it makes no sense you say we want to build Jamaica. But you’re not in the active process. So that’s how I got involved,” Jarrett recalled.
The project officer, who has an associate degree in business administration, stated that although it’s been a year now, they are “growing from strength to strength” and his knowledge of the agriculture sector has been expanded.
“Previously, I had little experience in agriculture, however, because of this project it has actually forced me to broaden my horizons where the knowledge of agriculture is concerned — the planting, best practices, and how it actually affects the environment,” Jarrett said.
He added: “Currently I see myself taking agriculture from the grass roots level where you go into the fields, to the value added aspect of it; so I see myself in agriculture a good while to come.”