By Maria Alejandra Cardona
NEW HOLLAND, ST. ELIZABETH, Jamaica (Reuters) -Designed to withstand 150-mph winds, the egg farm Osbourne Brumley built with his life savings in western Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish proved no match for Category 5 Hurricane Melissa.
On Tuesday, Melissa’s 185-mph (298-kph) winds tore across the western side of the island, damaging Brumley’s facility and killing thousands of chickens.
St. Elizabeth, considered Jamaica’s breadbasket, was left reeling after the storm, which flattened fields of yams, pumpkins, potatoes, and cassava in western Jamaica and caused losses among livestock.
EGG SHORTAGE FEARED
The damage has stirred fears the country of 2.8 million people, where at least 28 people died because of the storm, could face shortages of food staples as farmers struggle to recover and replant.
Brumley, 69, who expects losses on his uninsured J$540-million ($3.37-million) investment, warns Melissa’s blow could trigger a “massive” egg shortage on the island.
The storm ripped the roofs from two birdhouses, collapsing the heavy metal feed silo and other equipment. With no electricity for automated feeders and staff shortages caused by the storm, Brumley fears the remaining birds will soon perish.
Brumley’s other farm in Springfield, 10 miles (16 km) away, was also destroyed. His facilities combined produced 75,000 eggs daily, supplying over 200 supermarkets across six parishes and 14 hotels.
“They’re gonna be in trouble,” he said. “There’s no other egg farm in Jamaica the size of mine.”
Before Melissa, eggs were already scarce following Hurricane Beryl, which grazed Jamaica’s southern coast in July 2024 as a Category 4 storm, damaging crops and livestock across farming parishes Clarendon, Manchester and St. Elizabeth and producing temporary shortages of vegetables and produce.
“We are going to be short on food,” said Ricardo Williams, 33, who helps his father farm cassava, corn, potatoes and pumpkins in Mitcham, St. Elizabeth.
Other farmers agreed, saying livestock losses and destroyed fields mean some crops will not return until at least February, and that where produce survives, some prices could double.
FARM PLAN COMING
Agriculture Minister Floyd Green said Melissa will have “a crippling effect on our agricultural sector” because some of the hardest-hit parishes are also the most productive. A fuller scope of the damage, he added, will not be known until assessments are completed this week.
Once the evaluation is done, Green said, a disaster-recovery task force will devise a plan to boost output from the least-affected parishes. Assistance will also come from international partners and Jamaica’s disaster-insurance funds. The country, in the interim, will rely more on imports, such as liquid eggs, to stabilize supplies.
“It’s not going to be a quick recovery,” Green acknowledged, but he expressed confidence in the resilience of farmers. “Once you provide them with opportunity and make it easy for them to start again, then they will.”
(Reporting by Zahra Burton and Maria Alejandra Cardona in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle and Rod Nickel)
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