Jamaica's female farmers rebuild after Hurricane Beryl through women-led cash voucher program

CROSS KEYS, Jamaica (AP) — Alance Wisdom got inside her home just in time to watch the ceiling of her front room collapse. As the rain rushed in, a violent wind ripped at the roof, piece by piece.

“Everything just fell,” Wisdom, 79, said of the day Hurricane Beryl, the strongest July Atlantic hurricane on record, skirted Jamaica’s southern coast. “Before dark, everything was on the ground.”

The flooding destroyed nearly all of Wisdom’s belongings in the small, brightly painted home she’s lived in for more than 30 years. Below the steep hill her house sits on, two acres of land where she grew cabbage, sweet peppers and cucumbers were flattened.

“That’s what we depend on, and there’s nothing to sell,” she said, sitting outside her tarp-covered home on an especially hot day in late August.

Two months after Beryl, thousands of farmers like Wisdom have still not recovered. The hurricane caught many in Jamaica unprepared. A storm of its magnitude had not hit since Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 — and the island’s south coast, which bore the brunt of the damage, is typically less prone to hurricanes than the eastern side.

The blow to farming impacts all of Jamaica, where an estimated 85% of fresh food comes from the country’s own producers. Beryl caused 6.5 billion Jamaican dollars (about $41 million) in agricultural and fishing losses, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining. Prices of certain fruits and vegetables have skyrocketed since the storm, if the items can be found at all. In the last week of August, local plummy tomatoes still cost more than twice what they did in December.

Jamaica’s government has pledged around 2 billion Jamaican dollars ($12 million) to help farmers recover. But with almost 50,000 growers impacted, most have not yet received direct aid, and the needs go beyond supplying seed and restoring irrigation lines. The humanitarian organization CORE estimates between 1,000-1,500 houses sustained damage across two of the worst-hit parishes. Many growers rely on what they sell from the summer harvest to pay their children's enrollment fees for the new school year.

“There's nothing to sell to support their families,” said Taneshia Stoney Dryden, CEO of the United Way of Jamaica. “Without helping meet these basic needs, growers can’t get back to work.”

The small nonprofit, run by an all-female staff of five, formed a Farmer's Rehabilitation Fund after the storm to provide vouchers not just for farm equipment, seeds and baby chickens, but for roof repairs, schoolbooks and tuition fees.

A portion of the fund focuses specifically on female growers, who make up one-third of the country’s registered farmers. Women can face outsized burdens after disasters. Being displaced from their homes can put them and their children in less safe living situations. Incidences of gender-based violence tend to go up after emergencies. Female heads of household must juggle the responsibilities of rebuilding, earning income and caring for children and elderly relatives.

“Female-headed households are often left out of decision-making and can be invisible if not intentionally sought out,” said Nicole Behnam, vice president of strategy and innovation at the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. “Programs that address their challenges and support their empowerment are important in all situations and circumstances, but most especially after a disaster or crisis.”

Wisdom, whose husband passed away 15 years ago and who cares for her adult niece with disabilities, is grateful for the support. In August, The United Way of Jamaica gave her a voucher for 250,000 Jamaican dollars (about $1,600) for the supplies needed to rebuild her roof. Her relatives, volunteers from the community and church members will do the labor.

When the work is finished, Wisdom will finally be able to remove the giant blue tarps she uses to protect her few remaining belongings. It will be easier to sleep with a real roof over her head. “It means a lot, because it’s a start,” she said. “After the roof, I’ll come back around and can start doing my farming again.”

Finding the growers who need help most is not easy. Some farms are accessible only with off-road vehicles. Electricity was not fully restored in the worst-hit parishes until Aug. 29, hindering those affected from reaching out for services.

The United Way depends on a partnership with the Jamaica Agricultural Society, a 130-year-old farmer advocacy organization using its vast network of local branches to find vulnerable farmers. A local pastor in Manchester found out about Wisdom by checking in with the 70 members in her branch.

She also learned of Kyacian Reid, a melon and sweet pepper farmer growing on a high swath of land reachable only by a narrow, rock-filled road.

Reid, 42, had picked a few bags of sweet peppers just before Beryl struck, but decided to wait a week before harvesting the rest along with the melons. The storm took it all.

The mother of two began farming five years ago after business at the bar and grocery she owned got too slow. She typically sold to a supplier who took the produce to the busy Coronation Market in Kingston. Without that money, Reid was struggling to prepare her son for the start of high school. “I was just cleaning and praying, asking God to work it out,” she said.

Reid received a large United Way of Jamaica voucher she can redeem at a farm store for the supplies she needs to clear her land and start over. The support gives Reid a chance to grow her business, extending the farm and adding tomatoes and gungo peas. “What I was doing was small,” said Reid. “What I received is going to take me very far.”

The United Way of Jamaica has raised about half of their goal of 20 million Jamaican dollars (about $120,000) for the Farmer's Rehabilitation Fund, with donations from corporations like Citi, Jamaican expats in the United States and even a schoolgirls’ bake sale. It plans to give out another tranche of vouchers in late September.

The organization is also thinking about how it can help prepare the country's growers for stronger and more frequent storms brought on by climate change, especially in the parishes that hurricanes have historically spared. “There hasn’t been a need or concern to look at how they build their homes,” said Stoney Dryden.

Hurricane straps — metal connectors that bind the roof and walls — would help, but they’re an option few can afford or know about.

“For now we will provide supplies for the roof they had before, but we will go through the resilience coaching, encouraging them to invest in secure roofing and hurricane straps" said Stoney Dryden. “If we deviate from that it would be costly.”

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