Managing Director of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), Omar Sweeney, has indicated that the establishment of greenhouses or sheltered infrastructure at scale is one of the outcomes that will be pursued under the US$50-million Project ADAPT.
JSIF is the main implementing agency for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) project, which aims to enhance climate resilience of vulnerable farmers and is expected to impact approximately 700,000 farmers across six central parishes over five years.
It was officially announced during a Press Conference at Jamaica House in Kingston on Monday (March 30).
In his remarks, Mr. Sweeney outlined that greenhouses offer more reliable productivity.
He said while there will not be a full-scale moving away from open-field farming, greenhouses and sheltered infrastructure must become a central part of Jamaica's approach to agriculture.
"This is the project that will scale greenhouse and sheltered infrastructure in the country over the next five to six years," Mr. Sweeney affirmed.
© Adrian Walker
The JSIF Managing Director said the project will also seek to tackle food loss and waste.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has indicated that Jamaica loses between 30 and 40 per cent of the food produced in the agricultural ecosystem.
"When you have gluts, crops are wasted in the field. When you have storms, farmers cannot reap because there is nowhere to take the crops. This is the project that is going to bring cold storage to scale," Mr. Sweeney maintained.
He noted that once the greenhouses and cold storage facilities are built out, pilot farms will be established to train farmers in the use of this new infrastructure.
"If you put in the greenhouses, the sheltered infrastructure, and you put in the cold storage, you are going to have to change the way people do things. You are going to have to change the way people think as farmers. You may be farming to reap [for] storage, not reap to sell," Mr. Sweeney explained.
Meanwhile, the JSIF Managing Director noted that the GCF Project is expected to have three main outcomes.
"We expect enhanced knowledge of climate-resilient techniques and cold storage. We expect that the production systems in Jamaica are now going to change in terms of produce… and we also expect that we will now have greater resilience to what the environment will bring us. Not only hurricanes but that includes droughts," he detailed.
Project 'ADAPT Jamaica: Enhancing climate-change resilience of vulnerable smallholders in Central Jamaica' will be implemented in Trelawny, St. Ann, St. Elizabeth, Clarendon, St. Catherine, and Manchester.
These parishes supply approximately 70 per cent of the island's agricultural produce and suffered severe damage during the passage of Hurricane Melissa in October 2025.
Source: Jamaica Information Service
