The Rise, Fall and Future of the Jamaican Peasantry

Abstract

This article examines the crisis of the Jamaican peasantry. Jamaica's peasants are struggling against pressures old and new, with the burden of their spatial inheritance magnified by a withering state, rising food imports following trade liberalisation, and oft-conflictive social relations. It begins by examining the historical formation of the peasantry after Emancipation, emphasising the unevenness of the landscape and the tensions between individualism and cooperation, before describing the protracted process of de-peasantisation, which has sped under structural adjustment reforms. Current conditions and future prospects are assessed through the insights and experiences of peasant farmers situated on the periphery of a plantation landscape. Ultimately, the future of peasant farming in Jamaica is seen to be bound up foremost in the struggle for land reform, and it is hoped that the current de-stabilisation of the plantation system will provide a new window for historic change.

Notes

1 On a per capita level, Jamaica's remittance earnings are the largest in the Americas.

2 A phrase coined by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

3 The plantation landscape forces many Jamaican peasants to clear and cultivate steep, unstable and highly erodible slopes. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jamaica had one of the highest annual rates of deforestation in the world, with severe soil and water conservation problems as a result [Weis, 2000.

4 In addition to their control of the best land, planters were aided by: debt peonage; laws restricting the survey, partition and sale of land to ex-slaves; a regressive system of land taxation; and an exclusionary political system which ensured their dominance of public expenditure and access to capital and credit.

5 The dókpwê was a cooperative work group mobilised for agriculture and other tasks. It was a source of pleasure and pride, with work treated as recreation and interwoven with contests, singing, and feasting [Herskovits, 1967.

6 Thomas 1996 also blames the paternalism of the bourgeois leadership from above for the lack of support.

7 Some exploited areas were eventually recovered for cattle pastures, while others were simply left as the toxic red mud lakes that still dot Jamaica's interior.

8 In 1965, sugar production peaked at 520,000 tonnes; since the 1970s, it has averaged less than 40 per cent of that level.

9 In contrast to previous land settlement efforts where land could be purchased, only a leasehold model of distribution was pursued. To get idle lands in production the state leased land from private owners for 5–10 years (serving idle land orders that it must be brought into production or leased, either to the government or independently), and in turn leased these to peasants at low interest rates, who were also supported by credit in kind (e.g. fertiliser, seeds, herbicides, or insecticides) and extension service. From 1973 to 1980, Land Lease distributed nearly 30,000 ha (70,000 acres) to 36,000 farmers (most, who were formerly landless) on short, medium and long-term leases with extendable terms. The leasehold model was chosen for a variety of reasons: so poor farmers' limited capital would be used for on-farm investments; so the state would have leverage to promote necessary productive policies; and to inhibit land speculation, fragmentation, and under-cultivation [Augustin, 1992.

10 Weis 2004a examines the impacts of structural adjustment on Jamaica's agricultural sector in more detail.

11 Patois developed as planters, as a precaution against organising, sought to maintain slave populations on their estates that came from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in West Africa. Slaves used and modified pieces of English as a common ground to facilitate communication, typically piecing them together with the syntax of their native languages in a fusion that evolved orally over centuries and served as the first (and often only) language of rural blacks.

12 Historically, the fertile coastal plains surrounding Annotto Bay were monopolised by sugar plantations while the small and medium-sized farms on the surrounding hillsides were significant producers of both domestic and export crops, predominantly bananas, but also sugar and cocoa. However, in the early 1980s the Grays Inn sugar factory closed, and the Jamaica Producers Group – an amalgam of Jamaican and foreign capital and the island's largest banana growers – came to occupy most of the coastal lowlands with a long-term state lease. The land was subsequently transformed from sugar into the St. Mary Banana Estates. With plantations and large commercial farms coming to dominate banana exports in Jamaica during the 1980s, banana production was de-emphasised on peasant farms throughout the region. Peasants also ceased farming sugar cane commercially with the closure of the Grays Inn factory.

13 The demise of cooperative labour arrangements and the expense of hiring workers also have environmental ramifications. While many of the older farmers farm close to organically out of necessity or tradition, the use of agro-chemicals is increasing, especially amongst young farmers and those working on a larger scale, as it is much less labour intensive and longer lasting to spray gramazone than to clean weeds manually. So while the ‘green’ case for land reform is compelling, the rising chemical intensity of peasant agriculture has serious environmental health implications that must be accounted for when discussing alternatives [Weis, 2004b.

14 Common fowl are used for home consumption, while ‘broilers’ and ‘layers’ are raised commercially (from imported stock) and kept in coops.

15 Beans are one of a significant number of vegetables that were once primarily produced locally but are now being imported in greater volume, in some instances wiping out local production altogether.

16 Marijuana is a crop that is widely held to be Jamaica's largest agro-export. However, unless directly involved in selling it to tourists, peasants do not profit much from its cultivation, as it sells very cheaply within Jamaica. Only those who can grow large quantities and have the means to export can reap significant profits. No participants cultivated marijuana on any more than a tiny scale, mostly for personal use. One farmer who noted that he ‘can make a little off it’, but felt he couldn't plant enough to make much money without attract policing, described this peculiar suppression: ‘me na see why dem shouldn't let it go, cuz it a bush … look here, rum worse den de ganja, an dem fine wit rum … make no sense … dem have helicopter drive over an search fi de ganja, foolishness’.

17 Land terracing in Jamaica is extremely rare outside of lucrative Blue Mountain coffee estates. The most common soil conservation strategy used by peasants is to dig trenches across the contours of the field, directing them into gullies to reduce the speed and volume of rainfall flowing over the land during the wet seasons. Another basic way some peasants protect soil in the short term is by cutting tall grass for mulch, or placing ‘trash’ from large foliage to hold the soil and its moisture. In contrast, others believe that however steep the land, it must be kept as ‘clean’ as possible to inhibit the spread of disease and pests and to reduce competition for nutrients, and thus leave barren ground between crops, with obvious impacts for erosion.

18 One farmer described how ‘when rain fall, you hafi swim ‘pon dem here road’.

19 The competitive squeeze for vegetables is intensified by the rising costs of production, as some vegetables are planted from hybrid rather than saved seeds, and expensive herbicides and pesticides are increasingly deemed necessary, since organic sprays or pest mitigating cropping strategies very rare.

20 In the past, higglers were largely dependent on public transport (trains and buses), but private vehicles are increasingly how produce now reaches markets. The rise in vehicle ownership is part of why higglering at the farm-gate has become an increasingly male activity, though selling at the market is still an overwhelmingly female vocation. Whether farmers perceive changing gender dynamics and trust at the farm-gate to be related was not explored.

21 Farmers dealing with relatively low volumes and high seasonal variability are extremely concerned with maximising per unit margins, and find that informal outlets or selling themselves provide higher returns for lower volumes, as the cooperatives pay for a truck-driver, an administrator, and a marketing director, as well as the local selectors. Overlapping production between farmers when there are limited orders has often led to a rationing of the sales that farmers were anticipating, a source of much frustration.

22 The rise in combative, individualistic social ethics is no doubt linked at some level to the shortage of opportunities coupled with the fiercely competitive economic climate fostered by structural adjustment [Weis, 2005. Praedial larceny epitomises the ‘anarchy that flows from “go it alone” ideology – not “public first, self second” that brings out the best in human nature, but “some must get rich first” that brings out the worst’ [Hinton, 2000: 227–8].

23 The narratives of loss and frustration are often heart rending. The most agonising was that of one 65-year-old farmer, who described his ordeal a few years ago around Christmas: ‘It was a Friday night, de 15 of December, me an [a friend] come my yard an a we a talk about de tiefs dem, cuz him get a hard time by de tiefs dem too ya know … So me an him talk ‘bout de tiefs dat night, I tink it was a full moon too, jus like tonight. At de same time, dey're tiefing me up … because in de morning, de Sat'day morning, I carry de goats an go down to do some work, an when I come up to de top dere, de first plantain root you reach to, I see it cut out by de heart. I come down to de next one I see it now, an I come across here an I check, an its 12, so I go down dere to see if I see anybody making any move. So me tink its 12 dem tiefing me … an when I go back up me find 7 more, say 19, an when me walk again an do some work, me find 13 more. 19 an 13 is 32, my god, it like dem sting an pull out 32 [his entire pre-Christmas harvest] … 32 man. Had me a likkle Christmas because me did plan fi me to cut dem dat week dere you know’. A nearby farmer recounted how sad it was to witness this event: ‘You see dat likkle friendly man, him turn colour, like a sickness take him. When we see him walk ‘pon de road, him tremble … when it come ‘pon Christmas … him couldn't even buy cake, because it only is dat him sell an make a market. How you feel mon? Good god you plant it, an when you go an look back you see a man go an cut it out. You don't leave one … ‘im will turn you off a your nest like a mongoose will turn a fowl off a her nest’.

24 One tall, imposing farmer epitomises this approach, as few see his equally large smile. His warm, friendly demeanour has been mostly kept from others since he moved to the district more than five years ago, reserved for choice private encounters. He avoids leaving his farm other than to buy basic supplies, sell his produce and fetch his water, ensuring his mysterious aura. He explained his relative immunity to theft laughing: ‘dem ‘fraid a me around here, hafi talk tough … Me na grudge, me na tief, me na hate … me jus keep to meself’. Another farmer has taken a similar approach for three years since moving to his current community, explaining that: ‘like how I talk to you, I doesn't talk to someone else, dem doesn't know me … de more people dem a see you, dem a have eye ‘pon you … If dem use to me it harder, dem doesn't use to me, dey doesn't know where me is, dey doesn't know where me come from, dem doesn't know my name or nutin’, is only one an two people know my name’.

25 While many old farmers use marijuana to help them work, some see it as being part of the ‘lazy’, idling youth culture, as one farmer in his fifties explained: ‘when me smoke it, me sharpen me cutlass and me do a portion a work, an by de time me tired an look back nuff work me a do.’ He contrasted this with the youth: ‘Dem sit down an jus burn it an burn it … an get weak. If you smoke it you hafi have someting a make your body spin, dat you can sweat.

26 This is further evident in how many farming parents struggle to get their children to help them on the farm, even if they wouldn't want them there in the long term. One old woman described how she can't get her teenage grandson (whom she and her husband have raised) to climb their ackee and mango trees, forcing her husband in his late sixties to harvest their huge trees against her wishes: ‘me na like him to climb tree now, him na young ya know’. Another old farmer, trying desperately to get help from his children with no success, explained his frustration: ‘outta 7 sons, none goin’ to do what I'm doin, deir na goin’ to do nuting, no one … what me take from me grandfather an father, me try to give to me children but dem na wanna tek it. Me daughters na want to sell because dem a high school girls now, and don't want people to see dem on de street selling’.

27 Two polls from 2000 reflect how widespread these perceptions are: one found that ‘two-thirds of Jamaica's over 18 population see no hope in the country for the island's young people’, and describes a picture of ‘gloom and despair’ and ‘landscape of hopelessness’ [Observer, 2000a, while another found that two-thirds of Jamaicans would migrate immediately if they could [Observer, 2000b.

28 Many farmers similarly see the eroding viability of farming as being at the crux of Jamaica's broader social and economic woes – ‘what break down de economy of Jamaica’, as one put it.

29 Weis 2004b develops the obstacles and technical issues surrounding land reform in Jamaica in more detail.