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 per cent of fresh food comes from the coun­try’s own pro­duc­ers. Beryl caused JAM$6.5 bil­lion (about US$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 still cost more than twice what they did in De­cem­ber.

Ja­maica’s gov­ern­ment has pledged around JAM$2 bil­lion (US$12 mil­lion) to help farm­ers re­cov­er. But with al­most 50,000 grow­ers im­pact­ed, most have not yet re­ceived di­rect aid, and the needs go be­yond sup­ply­ing seed and restor­ing ir­ri­ga­tion lines. The hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tion CORE es­ti­mates be­tween 1,000 and 1,500 hous­es sus­tained dam­age across two of the worst-hit parish­es. Many farm­ers re­ly on what they sell from the sum­mer har­vest to pay the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­turn to school in Sep­tem­ber of their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren.

“There’s noth­ing to sell to sup­port their fam­i­lies,” said Taneshia Stoney Dry­den, CEO of the Unit­ed Way of Ja­maica. “With­out help­ing meet these ba­sic needs, grow­ers can’t get back to work.”

The small non­prof­it, run by an all-fe­male staff of five, formed a Farmer’s Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Fund af­ter the storm to pro­vide vouch­ers not just for farm equip­ment, seeds and ba­by chick­ens, but al­so for roof re­pairs, school­books and tu­ition fees.

A por­tion of the fund fo­cus­es specif­i­cal­ly on women, who com­prise one-third of the coun­try’s reg­is­tered farm­ers. Women can face out­sized bur­dens af­ter dis­as­ters. Be­ing dis­placed from their homes can put them and their chil­dren in less safe liv­ing sit­u­a­tions. In­ci­dences of gen­der-based vi­o­lence tend to go up af­ter emer­gen­cies. Fe­male heads of house­hold must jug­gle the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of re­build­ing, earn­ing in­come and car­ing for chil­dren and el­der­ly rel­a­tives.

“Fe­male-head­ed house­holds are of­ten left out of de­ci­sion-mak­ing and can be in­vis­i­ble if not in­ten­tion­al­ly sought out,” said Nicole Behnam, vice pres­i­dent of strat­e­gy and in­no­va­tion at the Cen­ter for Dis­as­ter Phil­an­thropy. “Pro­grammes that ad­dress their chal­lenges and sup­port their em­pow­er­ment are im­por­tant in all sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances, but most es­pe­cial­ly af­ter a dis­as­ter or cri­sis.”

Wis­dom, whose hus­band passed away 15 years ago and who cares for her adult niece with dis­abil­i­ties, is grate­ful for the sup­port. In Au­gust, The Unit­ed Way of Ja­maica gave her a vouch­er for JAM$250,000 (about US$1,600) for the sup­plies need­ed to re­build her roof. Her rel­a­tives, vol­un­teers from the com­mu­ni­ty and church mem­bers will do the labour.

When the work is fin­ished, Wis­dom will fi­nal­ly be able to re­move the gi­ant blue tarps she us­es to pro­tect her few re­main­ing be­long­ings. It will be eas­i­er to sleep with a re­al roof over her head. “It means a lot, be­cause it’s a start,” she said. “Af­ter the roof, I’ll come back around and can start do­ing my farm­ing again.”

Find­ing the farm­ers who need help most is not easy. Some farms are ac­ces­si­ble on­ly with off-road ve­hi­cles. Elec­tric­i­ty was not ful­ly re­stored in the worst-hit parish­es un­til Aug 29, hin­der­ing those af­fect­ed from reach­ing out for ser­vices.

The Unit­ed Way de­pends on a part­ner­ship with the Ja­maica Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety, a 130-year-old farmer-ad­vo­ca­cy or­gan­i­sa­tion us­ing its vast net­work of lo­cal branch­es to find vul­ner­a­ble farm­ers. A lo­cal pas­tor in Man­ches­ter found out about Wis­dom by check­ing in with the 70 mem­bers in her branch.

She al­so learned of Ky­a­cian Reid, a mel­on and sweet pep­per farmer grow­ing on a high swathe of land reach­able on­ly by a nar­row, rock-filled road.

Reid, 42, had picked a few bags of sweet pep­pers just be­fore Beryl struck, but de­cid­ed to wait a week be­fore har­vest­ing the rest along with the mel­ons. The storm took it all.

The moth­er of two be­gan farm­ing five years ago af­ter busi­ness at the bar and gro­cery she owned got too slow. She typ­i­cal­ly sold to a sup­pli­er who took the pro­duce to the busy Coro­na­tion Mar­ket in Kingston. With­out that mon­ey, Reid was strug­gling to pre­pare her son for the start of high school. “I was just clean­ing and pray­ing, ask­ing God to work it out,” she said.

Reid re­ceived a large Unit­ed Way of Ja­maica vouch­er she can re­deem at a farm store for the sup­plies she needs to clear her land and start over. The sup­port gives Reid a chance to grow her busi­ness, ex­tend­ing the farm and adding toma­toes and pi­geon peas. “What I was do­ing was small,” said Reid. “What I re­ceived is go­ing to take me very far.”

The Unit­ed Way of Ja­maica has raised about half of its goal of JAM$20 mil­lion (about US$120,000) for the Farmer’s Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Fund, with do­na­tions from cor­po­ra­tions like Citibank, Ja­maican ex­pats in the Unit­ed States and even a school­girls’ bake sale. It plans to give out an­oth­er tranche of vouch­ers in late Sep­tem­ber.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so think­ing about how it can help pre­pare the Ja­maica’s farm­ers­for stronger and more fre­quent storms brought on by cli­mate change, es­pe­cial­ly in the parish­es that hur­ri­canes have his­tor­i­cal­ly spared. “There hasn’t been a need or con­cern to look at how they build their homes,” said Stoney Dry­den.

Hur­ri­cane straps — met­al con­nec­tors that bind the roof and walls — would help, but they’re an op­tion few can af­ford or know about.

“For now, we will pro­vide sup­plies for the roof they had be­fore, but we will go through the re­silience coach­ing, en­cour­ag­ing them to in­vest in se­cure roof­ing and hur­ri­cane straps” said Stoney Dry­den. “If we de­vi­ate from that it would be cost­ly.” (AP)