Published: Thursday October 15, 2009
Writing about birdwatching, his favourite hobby, might not have placed John Fletcher in the spotlight, but with his letter to the editor in August, the agriculture fanatic has had the light on him, and has basked in every moment.
"I feel very proud indeed," said Fletcher, as he gazed lovingly at a citation of his letter that was presented to him at The Gleaner Company's North Street office in Kingston recently.
He said he wrote many letters to the editor but they did not leave his presence because he was not satisfied with them, did not want to hurt anyone's feelings or thought it was an unpopular point of view. However, he could not keep from writing about an article that was published in The Sunday Gleaner.
"I totally agree that a new approach to agriculture is necessary and that real government commitment is needed rather than the empty talk of the last 40 years," he wrote.
Fletcher said: "There is enough land and manpower here to make Jamaica completely self-sufficient in food (except for grain to make flour) if only farmers could be assured of "secure ownership of their land, protection from praedial larceny, provision of technical expertise and development of marketing systems."
60 years in food processing
He said he has been involved in different sectors dealing with food processing, spanning almost 60 years. He was born in London and came to Jamaica at 20 years old.
"I liked it so much I stayed," he said, adding that apart from spending three years in Belize, he has not lived anywhere else. He said he married a Kingstonian and has two sons and two grandsons; he has no plans to leave. "As you can see, I am not going anywhere," he added with a chuckle.
In the future, the director of Country Traders would like to see better government support for agriculture. "Every government talks about agriculture as being important but very few put major drive behind."
He said Dr Christopher Tufton, minister of agriculture, has an idea of where he intends to take the issue, but a major problem is that "we still are saddled with the old plantation type of agriculture" which focuses on sugar.
"That's dying," he said. "So we have to break out of that but, in order to use that land properly, we need 21st-century agriculture. We can't say take over Bernard Lodge or Duckenfield and farm it with cutlass and hoe," he declared.
He said if the right methods were used, the local markets would be flooded with produce: "So we will have to have factories now that can convert those things into exportable products."