JAMAICA | Six Months After, Thousands of Farmers and Fishers Still Waiting For Help: PNP Demands Funded Recovery Plan and Digital Registry
Opposition Spokesman on Agriculture and Fisheries Dr Dayton Campbell
Kingston, Jamaica. June 4, 2026: Opposition Spokesman on Agriculture and Fisheries Dr Dayton Campbell has called on the Government to establish a permanent Agricultural and Fisheries Disaster Recovery Fund following Hurricane Melissa, which caused J$36.12 billion in direct agricultural damage and a wider sectoral impact assessed at over J$60 billion.
Speaking during the Sectoral Debate on Agriculture and Fisheries, Dr Campbell described walking through damaged farming communities in Eastern Westmoreland after the hurricane and called on the Government to move from improvised responses to a properly funded, permanently established national recovery mechanism.
"A farmer who lost yams, bananas, livestock, greenhouse infrastructure, and irrigation equipment does not need vague assurance. That farmer needs access to planting material, tools, feed, fencing, irrigation support, grant assistance, and technical guidance. Support that arrives too late is not recovery. It is damage control," lamented Campbell.
The fisheries sector alone suffered J$5.7 billion in damage. Forty-five per cent of the national fishing fleet was damaged or destroyed, and more than four thousand fishers were directly affected. Dr Campbell expressed deep concern that the proposed Phase Two Hurricane Melissa Recovery Programme, reported at J$250 million, was presented by the Ministry as being dependent on hoped-for support from the Ministry of Finance.
He described this as an inadequate response to the scale of the crisis and called on the Government to table a comprehensive recovery plan in Parliament within thirty days, detailing how many farmers and fishers have received assistance, how many remain unserved, what funds have been allocated and disbursed, and what the timeline for the next round of support will be.
Dr Campbell's central proposal is the establishment of a standing Agricultural and Fisheries Disaster Recovery Fund, activated automatically when a declared disaster causes damage above a defined threshold. He outlined five clear purposes for the fund: emergency grants to small farmers and fishers; replacement of critical productive assets; temporary livelihood support; rapid replanting and restocking; and resilience rebuilding.
He proposed that the fund be financed through a blended model combining annual national budget allocations, small resilience contributions from major agricultural and fisheries programmes, international climate finance, development partner grants, private sector partnerships, and affordable parametric insurance for small producers. Unused funds would roll over annually, building genuine national preparedness rather than requiring emergency appeals after each disaster.
In a related proposal, Dr Campbell called for the immediate establishment of a national digital disaster registry for agriculture and fisheries, enabling every farmer and fisher to be properly registered, mapped, and categorised before the next hurricane season arrives. He argued that the Government should not need to scramble to identify producers after a disaster has already occurred.
"The Government must stop starting from zero every single time disaster strikes rural Jamaica. A serious country prepares before the crisis. It puts systems in place before the storm arrives." stated Opposition Spokesperson Dr Dayton Campbell.
Dr Campbell also called for firm operational timelines to be embedded in law or policy: damage assessments beginning within 72 hours where conditions permit, preliminary parish reports completed within seven days, initial emergency assistance commencing within fourteen days, and a full national recovery plan published within thirty days of a major disaster.
To ensure transparency and public confidence, Dr Campbell proposed that the fund be supported by an independent oversight committee comprising representatives of the Ministry, the Opposition, farmers' organisations, fisherfolk organisations, civil society, technical experts, and Parliament. He called for the fund to be audited annually and for recovery reports to be published to Parliament within ninety days of every major disaster event.
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