With our verdant and relatively generous supply of land, Jamaica will always have an agricultural sector. That is a great blessing. If, however, we wish to develop our economy rapidly and multiply the value of our agricultural output through agro industry, we must as a first priority grow our industrial sector. At all costs, we must avoid approaching our development from the wrong end.

Recent comments on this issue seem to have been designed to confuse, perhaps deliberately, to suit the purpose of those who wish to argue against industrialisation. To be abundantly and unambiguously clear: the issue is not whether we should choose agriculture over industry or the converse, or whether we should replace some agricultural imports with local agricultural production, or even whether Minister Christopher Tufton is doing a good job. There is no case being made to ignore agriculture. I have argued that agriculture is very important and that our farmers and their workers deserve a chance to earn better incomes. The principle of import substitution is not being challenged and is acknowledged to have much merit. Tufton is certainly recognised to be doing a good job in lifting agricultural output. So much so, I have argued that he could be more productively deployed elsewhere.

Issue of direction

The real issue is about the direction that our country's development should take: an agriculture-based strategy or an industrialisation-led path. Jamaica experienced its most significant and rapid growth during the periods of greatest industrial development: in the 1950s and '60s. Our periods of economic decline have been marked by declines in manufacturing. The parlous state of our economy today is largely the consequence of the anti-industrialisation policies and the near destruction of the industrial sector begun in the 1990s and which continue to this day.

The enormous capacity of industrial production to create economic value out of primary raw materials cannot be overstated. Bauxite, which Jamaica produces, represents just about six per cent of the price of primary aluminium, which in turn accounts for no more than a third of the price of the final aluminium pot, foil or Mag Wheel used by the final consumer, making bauxite's contribution to the end product no more than three per cent.

Agricultural products are not very different. Data from the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) show that the more industrialised economies add greater value to their agricultural output than the less industrialised. These data show that the most industrialised country in the hemisphere, the United States of America, adds 10 and a half times more value to its agricultural output, and Canada adds seven and a half times. By contrast, unindustrialised economies add very little. Jamaica, for example, adds only nine-tenths the value of its agriculture, and Costa Rica, which is somewhat more industrialised adds twice as much.

The lesson is clear: industrialisation is the force that drives agro-industrial development, not the growth of agriculture. That is why the symbiosis which exists between agriculture and industry is far greater in industrialised economies than in those that are agriculture based. The high levels of wealth generated from industrial activities allow industrialised countries to subsidise their agriculture and makes it possible for agriculture to remain an economically viable option for capital and labour.

Manufacturing linkages

No one can dispute the fact that industrial production accumulates capital at a much faster rate than agriculture and is more likely to be able to assist agriculture than the converse. Manufacturing is also rich in linkages: backward, forward and horizontal. No other sector has the capacity to link back to primary industries, forward to services, including tourism, and horizontally to a multiplicity of small businesses involved in the production of goods and services.

One reason often posited for prioritising agriculture is food security. Countries which have reason to fear the possibility of military blockades or embargoes resulting from war or other geopolitical conflicts see investments in agriculture as vital to their national security. However, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, countries at Jamaica's stage of development which have no military relevance or geopolitical strategic value have no reason to set any such national-security priority.

Our principal food-security strategy should be to build up our store of wealth to enable us to finance the food we need and put ourselves in a position to support our agricultural sector, to help it better utilise available land resources and maintain a stable socio-economic base for our rural population. Barbados, Cayman, The Bahamas and Bermuda are among the most prosperous and peaceful countries in the region. They have little land on which to produce food but have far greater food security than Jamaica, because they have wealth. It is the overall wealth we create that will give us food security, not our land. Singapore grows virtually no food but on my visits there, I have not seen a people with a greater abundance and variety of food.

The economic mission of our country cannot be simply to feed ourselves but must be to bring vibrancy and vitality to our economy and to make our people prosperous. Across the world, within regions and between regions, industrialisation is the reason for the success of one economy over another. This does not preclude the development of agro industry, but we must not be misled into believing that it is necessary to produce large quantities of a particular agricultural product to be able to develop an agro-industrial enterprise.

Fine Swiss, Dutch and Belgian dark chocolates do not rely on cocoa grown within their borders. In Jamaica, one of our most successful agriculture-based companies, Jamaica Producers Group, though still anchored in agriculture, has gradually morphed into an even more successful manufacturing and commercial enterprise for good reasons, not the least of which is the vulnerability of agriculture to the vagaries of weather.

Stimulate economy?

Trinidad has demonstrated that agro-industrial enterprises can be built on agricultural products it hardly grows. Are we to wait until half our island is covered with the relevant crops before we can develop successful agro-industrial enterprises? Or should we do as Trinidad has: stimulate our economy toward industrialisation to reap the high wealth-creating potential of agro industry based on both locally grown and imported agricultural products? No one can question whether Trinidad is now better positioned to subsidise the development of its agriculture than Jamaica is. Every country can add some value to its agricultural output. The amount each country adds reflects its level of industrialisation, not the quantity of primary agricultural goods it produces.

If we are ever to succeed in leading ourselves out of the economic cul-de-sac into which we have driven, we must rid ourselves of the long-held myths and sacred cows which have caused us to become an oddity in today's rapidly industrialising world - myths like the assertion that owning our own airline is essential to the survival of our tourism industry; that we cannot compete in manufacturing because of the existence of China and the fact that we don't have oil; that food security is about growing our own food and not about creating the wealth necessary to afford the food we need.

Government must understand that its duty is not to kow-tow to these sacred cows and myths, but to engage and organise the capital, human and natural resources available to us to achieve maximum output and give our country the best chance to develop and our people the best opportunity to be prosperous.

Many who are prepared to preserve these sacred cows have also tended to scoff at the idea of import substitution for manufactured goods and its potential for replacing over US$4 billion of imports. At the same time, they passionately embrace the concept as it relates to the things we can grow and gather: things with less than three per cent of the import-saving potential of manufactured goods. Few will say it, but this irrational dichotomy of attitudes can only be explained by the presence of an underlying belief that Jamaicans are not capable of competitively producing complex things and have a competence level limited to producing simple things.

As a Jamaican, I am offended by this view. Our history does not support it, nor does our performance in other fields of endeavour. We were leaders in manufacturing among developing countries in the past. Aspects of our industrial-development model were replicated in Singapore, and today, that country is a developed First World economy. Those who would lead us away from an industrialisation path and on to a course led by agriculture must tell the people of Jamaica why they should be prepared to accept the economic results of agriculture-led Tanzania at US$500 per capita and not aspire to the outcome of industry-driven Singapore at US$40,000.

Claude Clarke is a former trade minister and manufacturer. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.