A long-running infrastructure crisis that has crippled agricultural activity in Dominica’s Salisbury constituency is back in the national spotlight, as Opposition Leader and local Member of Parliament Jesma Paul-Victor has pushed the government for a holistic, long-term program to rehabilitate and maintain the territory’s network of farm access roads.
Decades of inadequate road upkeep have created cascading harms for local agricultural producers, Paul-Victor explained during her address to parliament on the national budget. She laid out the all-too-common cycle facing Salisbury farmers: after investing months of backbreaking labor into clearing land, planting crops, and tending to harvests, many are unable to move their perishable fruits and vegetables to regional and national markets due to impassable rural roads after bad weather.
These delays do not just amount to minor inconvenience, the opposition leader stressed. Perishable produce can spoil quickly when transport is held up, turning months of work into waste. The ripple effects of this persistent infrastructure failure extend far beyond individual farms, she noted, including lost household income for agricultural workers, squandered labor, reduced domestic food supplies for local communities, and forfeited opportunities to tap into profitable export markets.
Paul-Victor rejected the common practice of only completing temporary pothole patching after heavy rainfalls as an insufficient solution. Instead, she called for a comprehensive engineering-focused approach to road improvements, including the installation of effective drainage systems, targeted slope stabilization in high-risk areas, long-lasting durable road surfacing, and scheduled routine maintenance to prevent roads from falling back into disrepair.
Notably, she also urged that all new and upgraded agricultural infrastructure be designed with climate resilience in mind, built to withstand the more intense rainfall, severe flooding, and landslides that have become increasingly common amid global climate change. Frameed properly, Paul-Victor argued, upgraded farm roads are not just an infrastructure expense – they are a high-return economic investment that will cut transportation costs for farmers, slash costly post-harvest losses, and boost the take-home income for thousands of agricultural households across the constituency.
Alongside road repairs, Paul-Victor also drew attention to another critical unaddressed infrastructure gap: hundreds of acres of productive farmland in Salisbury are currently only accessible by fording an unbridged river. While the crossing is passable during the dry season, it quickly becomes dangerous or completely impassable after even moderate rainfall, she explained. A single heavy storm can lock dozens of farmers out of their land for days, preventing them from tending growing crops, delivering fertilizer and new planting material, and collecting ready-to-harvest produce for market. In many cases, producers are forced to wait multiple days for water levels to recede before they can access their property, leading to further spoilage and lost sales.
Beyond economic losses, the unbridged crossing creates a life-threatening safety hazard, Paul-Victor emphasized. Farmers are regularly forced to navigate rushing, rising waters while carrying heavy produce, farm chemicals, tools and heavy equipment, putting their lives at risk simply to access their own land. “Farmers should never be forced to choose between protecting their livelihoods and risking serious personal injury just to reach their fields,” she said.
This lack of safe, reliable access adds another layer of economic and food security harm, mirroring the impacts of poor road conditions: reduced agricultural output, less available food for local consumers, and missed market opportunities for producers. Paul-Victor closed her address by calling on the national government to prioritize investment in resilient, farm-focused infrastructure across Salisbury to support the constituency’s critical agricultural sector.