Agriculture
An Agricultural Report was given once or twice a week at Rally meetings. Everyone was kept informed on what was happening, and ideas and expertise were solicited from the whole community. Farm produce reports gave a sense of what crops were being grown, which would be available for kitchen use, what the anticipated dates of harvest were, etc. Among the crops were:
- leafy vegetables (greens, wild greens, eddoes, deer callaloo, sorrel, bok choy, mustard greens)
- root vegetables (radishes, sweet potatoes, eddoes, peanuts)
- beans (kidney beans, mung beans)
- fruits (watermelon, papaya, mangoes, pineapple, bananas)
- other garden vegetables (squash, cucumbers, eggplant, okra, pumpkin)
- rice
People discussed in the Roller Journals (January 78 to August 78) who worked in Agriculture are listed below:
|
COORDINATORS: Jim Morrell (Bogue) Jack Beam James “Reb” Edwards Darrell Devers AGRONOMY Russell Moton INSECTICIDES and CHEMICALS Ernestine Blair Mike Lund (Rozynko) Becky Flowers CULTIVATION Philip Blakey SAFETY STEWARD Danny Kutulas Processing Cassava Mill: Mary Wotherspoon Rice Mill: [being purchased] |
CROPS Fields (Cassava, Rice, Sweet Potato, Eddoes, Pineapple) Jan Wilsey Bananas: Danny Kutulas Anthony Ford Peanuts, & Sorrel: Jack Barron Nursery & Citrus: Gene Chaikin Vegetable Gardens: Jim Simpson Shirley Smith Frances Buckley Herb Gardens: Shirley Fields Earnestine March Senior Garden: Selika Bordenave Children’s Gardens: Frances Buckley |
ANIMALS Chickery: Rob Gieg Tommy Keaton Dairy Cows: Jim Morrell (Bogue) Marshall Farris Piggery: Wanda Swinney Guy Mitchell Small Animals/Veterinary: Selika Bordenave Christine Talley Edie Kutulas |
Assembled from lists and records found in the FBI documents, the jobs and workers listed in the Agricultural department are in this pdf file:
. Agricultural Department Jobs and Personnel Listing
From the July 1978 request to list Department jobs and workers comes this list:
1. Ag Personnel
Partial summary of pdf above:
| Title | Name |
| Farm Manager
Asst. Manager |
Jack Beam
Darrell Devers |
| Secretary | Carolyn Kirkendall (Thomas) |
| Bookkeeper, Radio | Jessie McNeal, Carol Dennis (McCoy) |
| Lab Tech | Becky Flowers |
| Agronomist | Russell Moton |
| Analysts: | Jan Wilsey, Gene Chaikin, Russell Moton, Becky Flowers, Jim Simpson, Rob Gieg, Phillip Blakey, Harold Bogue |
| Accounting | Tish Leroy |
| Floating Inspectors | Jan Wilsey, Gene Chaikin, Jim Morrell (Bogue), Jose Simon |
| Nursery | Gene Chaikin |
| Intensive Agriculture | Jan Wilsey, Gene Chaikin, Jim Simpson, Hue Fortson |
| Orchards | Glenda Polite (supervisor), Vern Gosney, Betty Moore |
| Heavy Equipment | Phillip Blakey, David George, Al Simon |
| Bananas | Danny Kutulas (supervisor), Lucioes Bryant, Sharon Kislingbury, Gary Tyler |
| Insecticide Control | Russell Moton (supervisor), Ernestine Blair (asst.) |
| Large Animals | Guy Mitchell (supervisor), Wanda Swinney, Walter Cartmell |
| Small Animals | Rob Gieg (supervisor), Tommy Keaton, Anthony Simon, Christine Talley |
| Inventory | Jerry Parks, Odell Blackwell |
| Wood Crew | Gerald Johnson (supervisor) |
| Land Clearing | Mike Touchette (supervisor), Emmitt Griffith, Stephan Jones, Al Simon |
| Food Vacuum Store | Ron Talley (supervisor), Herbert Newell |
| Herbal Garden/Kitchen | Russell Moton (supervisor), John Harris, Fannie Jordan, Earnestine March, Kevin “Freeze Dry” Smith |
| Field Work Supers | Jocelyn Carter, Tanya Cox, Shirley Smith, Teena Turner (Bogue) |
Some of the notes from Roller with
Agricultural Reports can be found:
Minutes and notes kept by Rally and Committee Secretaries cover some periods missing in the Roller Journals, specifically: July 78, September 78 and November 78. Because Agricultural Reports were part of the Peoples Forum (Rally) meetings, the Ag Reports and Rally minutes are intermixed. Comparing the Ag-Rally Meeting Notes [by Rally Secretaries] to Edith Roller’s notes could prove interesting.
(1) Page numbers contain the FBI FOIA CD source: CD#-Volume-pages, should you wish to look it up. That is, the page numbering carries the CD source details.(2) Bookmarks contain the RYMUR FBI HQ archive numbers for each section.
(3) Bookmarks give titles and dates of subsections in pdf files.
2. June Ag Reports, Ag Analysts Reports & Rally Reports
(includes 5 yr Swine Report & Chaikin’s Citrus Development Plans)
3. July Ag Reports, Ag Analysts Reports & Rally Reports
4. Planting Schedules & Projected Yields: July 78-Jan79
5. August Ag Reports, Ag Analysts Reports & Rally Reports
6. September Ag Reports, Ag Analysts Reports & Rally Reports
7. November Ag Products Report
The Temple’s Guyanese Articles of Association and the Land Lease had a purpose which served Peoples Temple (to provide means through which to sustain the community) as well as the government’s need to set up a demonstration farming project, to develop the Northwest region: more inhabitants, more farming, more industry. Though there was much mineral wealth, the land was considered “marginal” agricultural land, rather than “prime” – good for cassava, tropical fruits, and native plants, but largely untested and unproven for other crops. Everything Peoples Temple built in agriculture was with the help of the local native peoples and Governmental Agricultural agencies, which offered advice on how things were done in the fragile jungle ecology. Peoples Temple was also helping to explore and open agricultural possibilities.
Topsoil in the rainforest is negligible. Topsoil usually develops from a slow breakdown and accumulation of organic waste (leaves, trees, twigs, bark, etc) mixing with the clay and sand to make it more crumbly and “rich” in organic nutrients for growing plants. In the jungle where temperature and humidity are high most of the year, organic breakdown is very rapid. As a result, jungle topsoil is at most a few inches deep (compared to several feet in temperate climate). And, unless one is careful, tropical rains will wash most of the topsoil away from “open fields” of crops.
The agriculture of the local Amerindian population was “slash and burn.” A family would settle somewhere, work an area for several years and then move on to another, beginning the process in a new area, as the old area grew back.
The Temple tried to find what could be adapted, what could be added to, what could be brought in, and what industries might be developed. In the first years of development, Peoples Temple employed a Guyanese work crew of planting and development of about 30-50 people to work and teach their tropical agricultural skills to Jonestown’s pioneers. Some of the worker leaders, such as a man named Jupiter, are referred to in Roller’s journals and other records.
8. Peoples Temple Paylist for Fortnight Ending May 8, 1976
The first task of the work crews, of course, was the clear the land of jungle. After clearing an area, stumps and trees were gathered along a windrow in a field and burned. Bananas were fairly easily grown in the potash of the ashes from the burn feeding the plants. By 1977, the nascent community was selling bananas to the Guyanese Defense Force at Matthews Ridge.
One of Jonestown’s first priorities was to establish vegetable gardens to feed its small workforce and to prepare for the anticipated immigration. Rows and sections of raised earth were developed with the addition of fertilizer and organic wastes. Workers secured several boatloads of shell pieces – a shell-gravel – from shell reefs and beaches along the Guyana coast and added it to the soil to sweeten (lower the acidity) the soil, making it better for the vegetable crops familiar to North Americans. Okra grew well, as did eggplant and squash.
Local Crops: Eddoes and Cassava
Some tropical tubers such as eddoes (a cousin to Hawaiian poi) grew well in wet areas. The plant served a dual purpose, in that the community could use tubers as well as the greens.
Cassava grew almost anywhere, and as the main road in was fully cleared along the sides – it had to be cleared by about 50 feet on either side – cassava was planted there. The process was simple. You took an 18-inch piece of cassava stalk, made a hole with a stick, and planted the stalk into the ground. When it was ready, you would dig it up, and process the clump of tuberous roots, grating them, pressing the starch out of them and making bread and flour from the gratings. The three- to five-foot stalks were cut into 18-inch segments, and the process started over.
There are several types of cassava – sweet cassava, bitter cassava – with varied uses. Tapioca comes from the starchy cassava juice. One kind can be used for animal feeds and another can be used for making bread. Today one of Guyana’s largest agricultural crops is cassava.
The pioneers and Guyanese workers planted many acres of citrus and coffee. Some of the citrus was beginning to bear fruit, as was the papaya, pineapple and more. Sweet potato seemed to be a good crop and was into its third season in November 1978. Rice was far enough along – into its second crop – that the community had just purchased a rice mill.
Livestock
In addition to crops, Jonestown had done much work in raising animals as well. As early as 1974, the first “flat boxes” of baby chicks were flown in through Matthews Ridge. Anthony Simon was one of the first who worked with the “Chickery” as it was called. From some of the aerial photos, there seem to have been seven or eight buildings of chickens. The chickens gave eggs and eventually were slaughtered for their meat. Egg production reports showed about 167 dozen eggs per week, as reported in tape transcript from January 1978.
Tape Q 240 Transcript from January 19, 1978 Rally with Agricultural Report
The community had more difficulty with pigs, which seemed to have more problems in surviving in the jungle. Just as the pigs seemed to get going, many would die. There were several steers, cows and horses, and livestock managers had also started raising rabbits as well. The animals were all housed about two miles from the central area of Jonestown.
– Don Beck