Female Farmer Busy Managing Three Locations

Twenty-seven years ago, Julie Bryson-Hing walked out of a restaurant job after one too many disputes with her boss.

She initially decided to open a restaurant of her own, but after assessing the overhead costs, she took a detour to the farm.

“So, I go to check my sister… and she was saying to me I could plant a bag of Irish potato. And then I plant it and then I go to my stepfather land and I plant some yam. And from there, that’s where I start farming,” Mrs. Bryson-Hing recalls.

Today, she is not just surviving, she is managing a multi-location agricultural enterprise spanning Spaldings in Clarendon; and Pike District and Mandeville in Manchester.

Across these three plots Mrs. Bryson-Hing cultivates a variety of crops, including yam, sweet potato, Irish potato, cabbage, sweet pepper and hot pepper.

Mrs. Bryson-Hing is among women farmers worldwide who are being celebrated in 2026, which has been designated the International Year of the Woman Farmer by the United Nations.

The celebration is led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and highlights women’s roles in food security and rural resilience, with the aim of closing the gender gap in resources, land and technology.

Mrs. Bryson-Hing describes agriculture as her ‘9-to-5’, which has enabled her to purchase a piece of land where she is currently constructing her home, a pickup truck and a car.

However, beneath these markers of success, she has experienced a rollercoaster in farming that often leaves her leaning on her faith in God.

“The thing about it, it’s not all the while you put in, you get out of the farm. Sometimes you lose many crops behind one another, just lose, lose, before you can reap and succeed from one good one,” Mrs. Bryson-Hing tells JIS News.

She recalls a recent incident when she was in desperate need of cash, and she planted a crop of 10,000 cabbage on a drip-hose irrigation system “to make a fast money”.

The farmer explains that she invested $14,000 in seeds, paid a greenhouse technician $70,000 to nurture the seedlings, hired labourers to prepare the land for planting and paid another person $5,000 plus lunch to spray the crop twice weekly.

Mrs. Bryson-Hing tells JIS News that the cabbage grew to perfection but when it came time to sell the crop to the higglers, they purchased it for only $20 per pound.

“Would you believe me that I sell one Hi Ace bus full of cabbage one day for $40,000 and that was for 2,000 pounds of cabbage. So, doing farming, I’m just doing it because I love it. If I check up how much I spend each time in the ground, I’m not going to do farming,” she says.

While acknowledging that consumers work hard and need affordable food, Mrs. Bryson-Hing maintains that farmers cannot continue cultivating crops only to sell them at margins that barely cover utility bills.

For women in agriculture, the hurdles are often doubled. Mrs. Bryson-Hing notes that because of the intense physical demands, she has to pay for almost all the labour on her farms.

While she boasts a loyal team of five men who support her, she faces an insidious threat that she cannot control – praedial larceny.

Despite the numerous issues she faces as a woman farmer, Mrs. Bryson-Hing refuses to throw in the towel.

She is also encouraging other women to stick with farming, especially if it is a job they love.

“If I’m going to leave farming to go out there to work for $16,000 a week, that wouldn’t make any sense. So, if you can do your little garden and have your little thing and sell… it’s way better. It’s struggling you know… but it’s my 9-to-5 and… I wouldn’t give up on farming. Not so easy,” Mrs. Bryson-Hing emphasises.

Undeterred by recent agricultural challenges, Mrs. Bryson-Hing has her sights firmly set on the future.

Her immediate plans include rebuilding the chicken coop destroyed by Hurricane Melissa to restart her poultry operations.

Looking ahead, she also plans to introduce layer chickens for egg production and expand her operation into small ruminant farming with goats.