Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Floyd Green has de­scribed the dam­age to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor as “cat­a­stroph­ic” not­ing that it has de­liv­ered a crip­pling blow to farm­ers, fish­ers and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties whose liveli­hoods are now at ex­treme risk.

In a state­ment on Thurs­day, Green al­so made a pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mate of dam­age due to Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, ex­ceed­ing J$20 bil­lion.

He added that tech­nocrats with­in the min­istry point­ed out that fi­nal fig­ures are ex­pect­ed to rise as sev­er­al se­vere­ly im­pact­ed ar­eas re­main in­ac­ces­si­ble.

Ac­cord­ing to Green,  ear­ly re­ports in­di­cate near to­tal dev­as­ta­tion in key crop lines, in­clud­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 90 per cent loss of ba­nana and plan­tain and sig­nif­i­cant de­struc­tion across veg­eta­bles, tu­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly yam, and fruit trees.

Pre­lim­i­nary live­stock as­sess­ments show ma­jor dis­rup­tion, in­clud­ing the loss of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the lay­er flock.

Fish­eries have al­so been se­vere­ly hit, with 25 per cent of the is­land’s fish­ing fleet de­stroyed and 41 per cent of aqua­cul­ture farm­ers re­port­ing dam­age.

The Min­is­ter al­so not­ed that these fig­ures rep­re­sent on­ly the ini­tial as­sess­ments and that teams are work­ing at pace to com­plete full eval­u­a­tions by next Mon­day.

He said the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO),  has de­ployed a dis­as­ter as­sess­ment spe­cial­ist to sup­port the process and help guide the tech­ni­cal re­sponse.

Green em­pha­sised that the Min­istry has al­ready ac­ti­vat­ed its re­cov­ery plan to sta­bilise in­comes and be­gin restora­tion across the worst-af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

He said im­me­di­ate ac­tions in­clude, sup­port to sal­vage crops through crit­i­cal in­puts such as fer­tilis­ers and oth­er treat­ments, emer­gency sourc­ing of in­puts us­ing spe­cial pro­cure­ment chan­nels and the strength­en­ing of mar­ket link­ages to en­sure that avail­able sup­plies are rapid­ly ab­sorbed.

The Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter lament­ed that many fam­i­lies de­pend di­rect­ly on the sec­tor, and their abil­i­ty to earn has been se­vere­ly com­pro­mised.

He as­sured that the Min­istry will move ur­gent­ly to sup­port re­cov­ery and to en­sure that farm­ers and fish­ers can re­build.

The Min­is­ter said he will up­date par­lia­ment next week on the full ex­tent of the dam­age and present the pro­gramme of re­sponse.

He al­so reaf­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to restor­ing the pro­duc­tive base of the agri­cul­ture and fish­eries sec­tor and en­sur­ing that af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties are sup­port­ed through­out the re­cov­ery ef­fort.

CMC/jm/kb/2025

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Nov. 7, CMC –