Promises of irrigation to Wakefield, St John farmers under the Project Phoenix programme have failed to bear fruit, they have declared, prompting them to ask for an urgent audience with Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
Irate farmers met on Thursday, saying they had complained bitterly but in vain to the authorities about the water supply problems for more than a year.
They called on Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir to join the Prime Minister on a visit to their farms so they could highlight their grievances.
“We want the Prime Minister to come and take a look at what is going on here because it feels as though we are talking to deaf ears,” one of the farmers said. “This water problem has been going on for too long and if agriculture is as important as touted by this government, we need some relief. So this is our plea to you, Prime Minister, come and look at what is going on with Wakefield.”
In the first quarter of 2022, land plots at the sprawling plantation that lies just north of Four Roads were handed over to more than 25 people in the community who expressed an interest in farming for Project Phoenix. There are more than ten active farmers on the project.
Although the Wakefield area is known for high rainfall, the district has been severely affected by drought-like conditions and intense heat since last January. Meteorologists have predicted that the 2024 dry season will be more severe than last year.
There is no piping system on the project that enables the farmers to access water from the Barbados Water Authority (BWA), even though some farmers said they have applied and paid connection fees for service.
The farmers said they were told that when the Home Ownership Providing Energy (HOPE) houses at neighbouring Four Roads and Pool were completed, they, too, would be hooked up to the mains.
Water trucks from the Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (BADMC) are scheduled to fill the farmers’ water tanks every week, but the crop producers said the service had slowed down and farmers on the hillside did not get any water as the access road was in too poor a state for a tanker to drive on.
Spokeswoman Maria Simpson said the biggest concerns facing the farmers are water, an access road and monkeys.
“The water truck can only supply the farmers at the side of the road but those up the hill cannot get any water. There is an access road that leads to the hill but it wants work. Because of the size and weight of the truck, it is very difficult for it to get up top of the hill and down in the back,” she lamented.
“We paid to get the thick bush along the track cleared in order for our vehicles to access the hill in the first place. When the rain falls, the area becomes waterlogged and no vehicle can get up there. A number of us got stuck up there, even the fire truck and water truck on previous occasions.
“A drainage system to stop a part of the road from sinking was implemented at the bottom of the road, which was in the path of a watercourse, and we were promised that a road would be built here so that rainfall or sunshine the water truck could access,” the farmer added.
Simpson said that over the past several months, farmers were collecting waste material from construction sites to fill in parts of the road that had sunk over time after heavy rainfall, but that was unsustainable.
“It is not fair that they gave us ground, knowing that we need to get access to water, and it is not happening the way it is supposed to be,” she said. “We do not get the type of production we would like out here because we have no support and it is too much pressure on us. If you don’t cultivate the land within a certain timeframe, you are evicted but how can you plant without water? And those who have been struggling to produce cannot reach optimal yields.”
The farmers noted that the Ministry of Transport is building a new road along the bridge less than five metres away from the road.
“We even tried to get the old milling material from that bridge to put on the road but we couldn’t get it and it was dumped over the same bridge,” one of them said. “How are we expected to increase production next year with the 25 by 25 initiative and there is no water and we can’t get production going up here?”
Barbados TODAY’s efforts to reach an official at the BADMC for comment were unsuccessful.
The farmers said they are bedevilled by a troop of more than 30 monkeys living in a nearby mango patch. They said the animals raided their gardens and even started to attack ground provisions such as yams and sweet potatoes.
“The monkeys even pull cassava,” a farmer said.
Despite repeated calls to monkey hunters attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, they said, none ever showed up.
sheriabrathwaite@barbadostoday.bb
