The updates sent by friends and neighbours on WhatsApp confirmed what fisher Prince Davis already feared: Hurricane Melissa put a hole in the stern of his 15-metre fishing boat, and damaged the cabin and back deck. His father’s boat was nowhere to be found. The roof of the house Davis and his parents shared in the small Jamaican fishing community of White House in Westmoreland parish was also destroyed.
Davis was in Nicaragua, where he’d flown shortly before the storm to find new customers for his fish business. But now his livelihood, and the livelihoods of many in his community, were in peril. “It’s going to be very rough” said Davis. “With the damage now, no one will be buying products.” About 29 kilometres northwest in Amity, also in Westmoreland parish, Denver Thorpe lost 15 acres of mango trees and two greenhouses on his farm.
“There’s absolutely nothing,” said Thorpe, a farmer and regional manager for the Jamaica Agricultural Society, a farmer advocacy organisation. Hurricane Melissa is blamed for at least 19 deaths in Jamaica, bringing catastrophic winds up to 298 kph and storm surge that wrecked homes and public infrastructure. While official damage assessments are still underway, experts said it’s already clear that one of the strongest landfalling Atlantic
hurricanes ever recorded also dealt a devastating blow to tens of thousands of Jamaican fishers and farmers who feed their families and nearby communities. Similar impacts will be felt by some of Cuba and Haiti’s small producers, said Lola Castro, World Food Program regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “I would say every (crop) that was on the path has been damaged, there’s no discussion on that,” said Castro. “Some of the fruit trees may be recovered, some of the temporary crops will not be recovered at all.”
The destruction will impact how residents earn income and feed their families at a time when they must also rebuild homes and communities. There were already 10 million food-insecure people across the affected countries of Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, said Castro. The WFP does not have that data for Cuba.
In Jamaica, the destruction comes just 15 months after Hurricane Beryl impacted more than 50,000 farmers and 11,000 fishers, and caused $4.73 billion Jamaican dollars (about $29 million) in losses, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining. “We were just about turning the corner,” said Thorpe. Jamaica’s agriculture ministry did not respond to questions about sector impacts, but the country has more than 200,000 farmers tending livestock and growing bananas, melons, cocoa and much more.
The food produced is for domestic consumption and export - Jamaica is one of the world’s largest yam exporters and its coffee growers generate $25 million annually, according to the Jamaica Coffee Exporters Association. Around 80 per cent are small-scale producers, working on 2 hectares of land or less, said Donovan Campbell, geography professor and director of the University of the West Indies’ western campus. “Small-scale fishing and small-scale farming is what most people use to make a living,” he said. “It is really the lifeblood of the most vulnerable in our society.”