Opposition Spokesman on Agriculture and Rural Affairs Victor Wright’s analogy of the police killing of American George Floyd with the Government’s “disgraceful removal” of small farmers from the former Bernard Lodge Sugar Estate failed to ignite a response from State Minister Floyd Green on Wednesday.

But when the Trelawny North member of parliament used his Sectoral Debate presentation to touch on Jamaica’s growing food import bill, it evoked a strong response.

Wright, who is an agronomist, told the House of Representatives that for the calendar year 2019, Jamaica’s food import bill had gone past US$1 billion for the first time in history, with increases in most areas.

Accusing Wright of giving the impression that Irish potato importation was a recent strategy implemented by the governing Jamaica Labour Party, Green declared: “He is misleading the House in his pronouncements.”

Earlier, the North Trelawny member of parliament had failed to elicit a response when he informed the House that small farmers were relocated from some of the country’s most fertile land at Bernard Lodge with irrigation infrastructure valued at over a billion dollars and placed in a flood zone with unproductive and semi-saline soil.