JAMAICA | Why Housing Developments Must Make Room for Food Security

KINGSTON,  Jamaica, April 26, 2025 - By Lenworth Fulton - The asphalt and concrete spreads like a dark tide across Jamaica's once-fertile lands, swallowing acre after acre of soil that once fed a nation. We are witnessing nothing short of agricultural suicide—a country eager to house its people while forgetting that homes without food security are merely waiting rooms for hunger.

Agricultural production continues its alarming decline while food imports surge to unprecedented levels. Resources promised by successive administrations remain phantom commitments, written in political ink that fades faster than campaign posters after election day. Meanwhile, the concrete hardens over our arable land.

Imagine the dystopian future looming on our horizon: rows upon rows of pristine houses stretching across Jamaica, their architectural symmetry mocking the chaos of empty pantries and dry taps within. 

A country of beautiful homes where not a drop of potable water nor morsel of locally-grown food can be found, because our government sleepwalked through the crisis of food security planning.

Thousands of acres of prime agricultural lands have been sacrificed on the altar of housing development in every parish, with little regard for where tomorrow's meals will come from. St. Catherine bears the deepest scars, with massive developments at Bernard Lodge, Eltham, Angels, and Caymanas Estate transforming fertile fields into subdivision spreadsheets.

The irony cuts deep when we look backward through Jamaica's history. We must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: as descendants of slaves, our relationship with agriculture is deeply scarred. 

For centuries, food production was inextricably linked with either the crack of a whip driving brutal plantation labor, or desperate hillside cultivation as freed people struggled to eke out a miserable existence. 

The fruits of the land were reserved for the plantocracy, not those whose blood and sweat nourished the soil. This post-slavery psychology—a complex tangle of trauma, resistance, and necessity—is what we've been struggling to overcome for four hundred years.

Despite this painful legacy, in the 1880s, the colonial government—hardly known for its benevolence—had the foresight to allocate five-acre plots to those disadvantaged by slavery. These settlers created integrated living spaces: dwellings surrounded by food farms and water catchments.

By the 1930s, these humble beginnings had blossomed into self-sufficient districts that understood the sacred trinity of shelter, food, and water.

These communities weren't accidents of history but deliberate acts of planning, later bolstered by Norman Manley's Social Welfare Commission and supported by the United Fruit Company, which contributed one cent per bunch of exported bananas—creating Jamaica's first private sector agricultural fund.

The Commission enhanced these communities with schools, roads, water tanks, and one of the region's most effective agricultural extension services.

We need not look far for successful modern examples. The Nyerere Farm, Smithfield, and Shettlewood model in Hanover, as well as Mafoota in St. James—visionary projects implemented by Michael Manley and his team, including former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson—demonstrated a profound understanding of the interconnected challenges of shelter and food security.

These developments weren't merely places to live; they were self-sustaining communities where housing and agriculture existed in symbiotic relationship.

Fast forward to today, where the National Housing Trust (NHT) has financed thousands of homes across Jamaica with an obsessive focus on shelter, while paying lip service—if that—to food production and water harvesting. This despite bulldozing agricultural lands to make way for these developments.

The current NHT model is a carbon copy of North American and European approaches—regions where farmlands are protected and kept separate from residential areas. But Jamaica, with its precious little land area, cannot afford this luxury of separation. We require an integrated approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of our basic needs.

What we need is a dramatic rethinking of residential development: each housing scheme should reserve at least twenty-five percent of its total land for technologically-driven agriculture. Imagine hydroponic systems rising alongside new homes, vegetable gardens and fruit trees integrated into community spaces. 

Residents would become both producers and consumers in a hyperlocal food system, with children raised understanding that food doesn't originate in supermarket freezers but from the earth beneath their feet.

This reserved agricultural land could be managed by homeowners on a strata basis, ensuring both productivity and profit while creating employment and skills development opportunities within communities.

The environmental benefits would be substantial: carbon sequestration, organic waste composting, biodiversity preservation, and a welcome departure from the concrete jungles that have become the hallmark of modern development. 

Our housing schemes could transform from heat-trapping expanses of pavement and roofing into living, breathing communities where the boundary between dwelling and farmland blurs into sustainable harmony.

It's time for Jamaica to reject the false choice between housing and agriculture. We need both, and we need them integrated. The path forward isn't paved with concrete but planted with possibility—a vision where development nourishes both body and soul, where communities are measured not just by the number of units built but by their capacity to sustain themselves.

The alternative is a country of beautiful homes and empty stomachs. Is that really the Jamaica we're building

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