KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The government has started distributing payments to thousands of coffee growers to help them recover from Hurricane Ivan, which devastated their fields in 2004.About 3,200 farmers across the Caribbean island will get a portion of a Jamaican $70 million (US$1.02 million) pay-out from the Coffee Industry Board, according to Norman Grant, president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society.

"There's a feeling of better late than never from the farmers," Grant said. "They can now use this money to prepare" for this year's crop.

Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke said the growers were selected from a group of about 5,870 farmers whose fields were ravaged by the storm. He said investigations revealed that hundreds of claims made to the board's insurance company were false.

The brunt of the storm's damage occurred in Jamaica's famous coffee-growing Blue Mountain region.

Jamaican coffee farmers, most of whom work in cooperatives and sell their beans to the Coffee Industry Board, had paid insurance on their land through the government-run board to Dyoll Insurance Company, which had filed for bankruptcy and was placed in liquidation in early 2005.