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HIGHGATE, Jamaica

Seraldo Henry swings open the wooden-frame door of the sprawling plastic-covered structure, surveys his rows of gourmet bell peppers for signs of a destructive bacteria, and then breaths a sigh of relief. A high school graduate who once dreamed of becoming an electrical engineer, Henry, 26, never envisioned himself as a farmer. Then he discovered the greenhouse technology that would change his future and help forge an agricultural renaissance in a nation that imports more than half its food.

“We are making money. And it’s good to know you are contributing to the economy of the country,” Henry said as he checked his sweet pepper plants in the family’s homemade 5,000-square-foot greenhouse for Bacterial Wilt, which already wiped out one harvest.

From the interior highlands to low lying communities, vegetable-growing greenhouses are transforming this island paradise while revolutionizing farming in communities increasingly vulnerable to Mother Nature’s unpredictability.

In less than four years, Jamaica has evolved from a nation struggling to cut back its dependence on imported tomatoes and bell peppers to one where crops grown inside sterilized covered structures satisfy local consumption. The project has been so successful that the government is now seeking to export food grown inside the greenhouses.

“It really is a shift in terms of the image and profile of agriculture,” said Alfred Dunkley, agriculture marketing extension officer for St. Mary, a banana-growing parish in northeastern Jamaica that is quickly emerging as a vegetable market, thanks to more than two dozen greenhouses.

First introduced to Jamaican farmers by the U.S. government in 2005, the technology was initially met with reluctance by farmers who were unwilling to change their traditional farming methods even as the Jamaican government pushed to reduce its food import bill and increase access to locally grown food. Canada later offered $5 million to expand the greenhouse program with more local government involvement. Today, 90 percent of the government’s agriculture specialists have been trained in the technology; greenhouse space has nearly doubled; and once skeptical farmers are now among the biggest advocates.

“Farmers are now believing and embracing the technology,” said Opal Whyte, greenhouse project manager in Jamaica’s Rural Agricultural Development Authority.

Research is currently taking place with cantaloupes and Jamaica’s highly potent, popular ginger.

“The results are encouraging,” Whyte said about a two-year-old study where researchers have been growing ginger offshoots or “slips” in greenhouses to improve ginger production and quality. “When the comparison is made in terms of the potency of the ginger from the greenhouse, the results are comparable. It’s just as good.” She added, “The greenhouse provides the quality standards that our end users want and our farmers can satisfy our local market once they are energized and organized.’’

Another proof of the greenhouse success: last year’s imports statistics. In a recent meeting with South Florida’s burgeoning Jamaican-American community, former Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton, who oversaw the program before taking over the ministry of investment and commerce this summer, said that for the first time in years, Jamaica, which imports more than 60 percent of its food, didn’t have to import colored, or “gourmet,” bell peppers.

But there are challenges. The $17,500 start-up costs to install a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse is more than many can afford in a country still recuperating from an economic downturn. And even with the government’s policy of protecting local production by limiting imports, and requiring waivers from importers, greenhouse growers find themselves competing for a tiny market share. This is especially true when traditional farms have a successful harvest; local consumers don’t differentiate between a tomato grown in a greenhouse and one on a regular farm.

Recognizing the challenges, Whyte said the country is ready to export its success. “We cannot eat all of the food we produce in Jamaica,’’ she said. “Our next step is to create external markets.”

This means finding a way to satisfy U.S. government standards with fumigating, but also competing with large commercial greenhouse farmers in Mexico, Costa Rica and even the United States. The cost of production in those nations is far less than in Jamaica, where high electricity costs — five times that of the U.S.— force farmers to rely on cooling fans as protection against fungus and natural sunlight for ripening.

“When I speak to potential investors, I tell them to ‘come, but come with your own market,’ ” Whyte said. “Their market cannot be the same local market that our farmers are competing with.”

Ryan Chung, 27, agrees. A University of Southern California graduate with a degree in corporate finance, Chung is chief farmer, marketer and all-around troubleshooter for his hydroponic tomato greenhouse business in Little Bay, a community in nearby Port Maria, the parish’s capital.

Unlike Henry’s “low-cost” greenhouse of wooden beams and river water irrigation system, Chung’s $110,000 investment on his family’s 150-acre plot include two snazzy high tech structures with steel beams, automatic timers for drip irrigation and perlite, a sterile mineral material that helps reduce disease.

But even with his modernized greenhouses, imported seeds from Holland and specialized variety of tomatoes — his berry tomato crop fetches three to five times the price of regular tomatoes – Chung concedes it’s a tough venture.

“When I am producing, it looks very pretty. But from a business standpoint, it’s a whole different ball game,” said Chung, who visits greenhouses in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Europe in search of designs and seeds, and has gathered an impressive network of high-end supermarkets and hotels as customers.

“It’s a high risk business. It is very hard to produce. Temperature is a big problem, pests and disease are also a big problem; so are sales,’’ he said. “A lot of farmers get into this business believing you can just grow tomatoes and they will sell. You need a lot of contacts, networking.”