Jamaica's female farmers rebuild after Hurricane Beryl
More than two months after Hurricane Beryl, the strongest July Atlantic hurricane on record, some farmers in Jamaica are still unable to restore their crops and repair their homes
CROSS KEYS, Jamaica — Alance Wisdom got inside her home just in time to watch the ceiling of her front room collapse. As the rain rushed in, a violent wind ripped at the roof, piece by piece.
“Everything just fell,” Wisdom, 79, said of the day Hurricane Beryl, the strongest July Atlantic hurricane on record, skirted Jamaica’s southern coast. “Before dark, everything was on the ground.”
The flooding destroyed nearly all of Wisdom’s belongings in the small, brightly painted home she’s lived in for more than 30 years. Below the steep hill her house sits on, two acres of land where she grew cabbage, sweet peppers and cucumbers were flattened.
“That’s what we depend on, and there’s nothing to sell,” she said, sitting outside her tarp-covered home on an especially hot day in late August.
Two months after Beryl, thousands of farmers like Wisdom have still not recovered. The hurricane caught many in Jamaica unprepared. A storm of its magnitude had not hit since Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 — and the island’s south coast, which bore the brunt of the damage, is typically less prone to hurricanes than the eastern side.
The blow to farming impacts all of Jamaica, where an estimated 85% of fresh food comes from the country’s own producers. Beryl caused 6.5 billion Jamaican dollars (about $41 million) in agricultural and fishing losses, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining. Prices of certain fruits and vegetables have skyrocketed since the storm, if the items can be found at all. In the last week of August, local plummy tomatoes
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