 In Jamaica, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, together with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and local farmers are showing us exactly how to transform the national agricultural sector and boost production as a part of post-COVID-19 recovery efforts. The crop of choice to start this transformation process was ginger. Marketing is a challenge when you don't know all right if I rip my ginger and know exactly where to take it. That might affect farmers expanding on their own, but marketing is one of the major challenges. If we can find a market, then that would be good. So many times we have planted and we can't even identify what disease or what type of fungicide to use. In the early 90s, we had an issue with rhizomerate, which is a disease that affects the rhizome of the ginger and that wiped out the ginger by mid-1990s. There's no cure for the ginger rhizomerate, so it's a challenge for farmers. At this point in time, I think we're at our lowest level in terms of production. This is what the rhizome is. So glad. Why should we send out the raw bulk, low-grade, low-value item for somewhere else to appreciate it and then we repurchase from them? Jamaican ginger is world-renowned for its superior pungency and potency. The country has been producing high-quality ginger for decades and over this time became prominent on global markets, also finding favor as a crop with significant value-added potential. We started exporting ginger sometime in the 40s. At that time, we used to be a very large exporter of ginger. Outbreaks of the ginger rhizome rot disease, GRR, have devastated farmer yields and spread across the island, leading to declines in annual ginger production, leaving huge gaps on the local and international shelves, as well as creating great losses in revenue. Whenever you have a spike in the rhizome rot, farmers encounter significant loss. Farmers have lost up to 100% of their crop. If the farmers are not earning enough to satisfy their needs, allowing them to know and support the crops that they are growing, it's just not going to make sense for them. The Jamaican ginger, being the best in the world, really need to know takes its right for place. FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, formerly MECAF, have been working in response to this crisis, not only to help the industry recover, but to transform it. At the center of this effort, a full-value chain approach, a keen eye pointed at every facet of production, from seed to plant to plate. There are processors here with the facility to move from fresh produced ginger up the value The problem has always been the availability of the raw material. So once we can address the issue of producing good quality fresh ginger, we have the facility to now capitalize on producing the finished products. We do very little believe that the Jamaican ginger is a tremendous potential for the country. It does carry a lot of opportunities in terms of the value added potential. Ginger is seen as one of those nutricidal crops. There is no doubt that the demand for ginger is going to canonize it. So I believe that if we can find clean planting material, now is the time that we'll be able to get larger farmers to come in. It's the right time now. Integral to this approach was building a new business model for the ginger industry using. Certified clean ginger planting material derived from a tissue culture to mitigate disease. The certification program serves as a main tool to clean up and remove the rot. Currently under the ginger program, we have a team of persons from labs, including a scientific research council, the Northern Caribbean University and here at Borders are collaborating in producing ginger plantlets. We are multiplying the numbers so that they're enough to go out into a pilot program and then we'll expand and upscale the program. Benefit for certification is very important to have a wide pool of clean planting material then it eliminates our cultural disparage. Each facet supports a business model built around collaboration, an initiative to grow the sector to ensure it is stable over time and crucially profitable for all. It is quite possible that we can move ginger up the value chain. Why should we send out the raw bulk, low grade, low value item for somewhere else to appreciate it and then we repurchase from them? How do we get as much of it as possible to happen in Jamaica because whether we like it or not it's going to happen. Extracts will be made, products will be made. We may end up importing many of these as body care products, as hair care products and we glory in the brand names that come back to us when we could be deriving the value from what is initially ours. By taking a market oriented approach to developing the sector this initiative has inspired the interest of local farmers and processors to invest in the industry. In order to be able to bring all the different actors, all the information, all the evidence together, we need such structure approach and work step by step with each of the actors. Value chain development needs strong technical expertise and facilitation to support actors in each of the steps. FAO has been providing technical support to government of Jamaica in revitalizing the ginger industry since 2016. Over the years we have carried out numerous training programs in ginger production and value chain development with the aim of ensuring that we are helping to rebuild an industry that can respond to any challenges ahead. Jack Brown, the FAO and the R&D of the ministry have been working over the last year or so collectively to build the industry model, identify the gaps that exist. These works over the year has brought us to the point of now seeing success in the industry being re-established. This is exciting for us because it has laid the platform for not only ginger but what is possible with the industries we regulate. The main reason for doing this public-private partnership, it is to ensure the sustainability of the program. The ministry is willing and able to provide a tissue culture planting material but for it to become commercially viable and sustainable we need a cooperation of the private sector to help to fund the long-term establishment of these greenhouses to be able to upscale production enough to provide for the markets with a local and international. We anticipate we are a private sector partner cooperating with us to be encouraging farmers to work in partnership under contracts so the farmers will be able to have secure funding each year and also secure supply for the processor. Most of the farmers that we work with are contracted farmers so we negotiate the terms in terms of the quantities and the price with them before the crop goes into the ground. The farmers actually need that because most of them cannot find the ready financing. You know there are several benefits from being a contract farmer. One, it allows you to access financing once you have your collateral. It's easier to go to the bank with a contract to show them exactly where actually going to be selling your produce. The contractor knows exactly at what price he's going to get so he can actually go to his market and negotiate along the line knowing that his raw material will be coming in at a particular price point. The private sector is so important in the work that we're promoting because without the private sector we will not be able to achieve the transformations that we aspire. Those transformations have to do you know with new technologies, with innovation, with needed investment. So the private sector is critical to bring in those elements and in addition the experience of the private sector in developing in product development in market development is critical if you want to see agriculture as a business. For FAO, this initiative illustrates the power of the market-driven value chain approach which applies a clear strategic action plan and a strong collaboration between partners. Brand Jamaica is a powerful brand when it comes out to quality, when it comes out to certain products which is best in its class worldwide. Our competitors globally they're always finding ways of improving their production and making the best of the conditions that they're producing in order for Jamaica's ginger to be competitive, not just locally but also internationally. We need to have continuous research on ways of improving our yields, improving our productivity and I think starting at research around the plant, clean planting material is the way to go. The value chain approach helps to connect all the major players in the production. We cannot achieve sustainable value chain development work in piecemeal. Collaboration is at the heart of every effort that we're doing and that we should be doing in the future. The role played by the regulators, the lab technicians, the business players, each one have a unique role to provide and the unique techniques that they have. With a missing link it creates a dysfunction in the entire value chain and it will not work. The approach has worked very well in Jamaica in the case of ginger because we have managed to put together evidence, information that are necessary to articulate a business model that has convinced and attracted you know different actors in the value chain including from the public sector, including from the private sector. Jack, I believe that this is the way to develop the industry over the long term to ensure that there is linkage between producers and processors. So it is rather than just a farm-based rudimentary thing, we cannot be looking at people who go through colleges, people who go through chemical degrees, people who go through chemical engineering being involved in the process of conversion to the higher value, they will look at people doing their food production and various applications, we can take that intermediary thing and convert it to something else. So what we then have leaving Jamaica rather than containers of just raw ginger would be no containers of branded products, finished goods which now improve the reputation of the country and improve the inflows and the GDP of the country. I am very optimistic about developing value chains in Jamaica based on the experience that we have had with ginger. The model that we are building and solidifying and improving as we go in Jamaica can be an excellent reference for all the Caribbean countries. We are a tourist nation which means that persons that are coming in so you want to introduce them to these goods as they come in and then that could open the market for exports so in terms of a future for Jamaica it looks bright. Over the next five years we anticipate to improve yields, increase acreage, reduce farmer risk, increase local ginger processing and attract U.S. dollar investment into the sector. I'm excited for what lays ahead, I'm really very optimistic and know that all our hard work is going to come to fruition. I have nothing, nothing, we are going to plant any other cup right now while you're trying ginger.