Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister, Hon Audley Shaw (left), admires a strawberry plant along with Winston Simpson, Principal Director for Field Services at the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), during a tour of the Newport-Fersan booth at the RADA Manchester Open Day , held at Books Park in Mandeville on March 22, 2019. At right is Senior Agronomist for Research and Development at Newport-Fersan, Denton Alvaranga.
Government, through the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, will be spending some $752 million in the 2019/20 fiscal year, under the National Farm Roads Project as part of the measures to boost market access through improved road infrastructure.
So far for Manchester, 13 roads or approximately seven kilometres have been refurbished at a cost of $42 million.
The National Farm Roads Project aims to provide improved direct market access for an estimated 11,506 farmers across the island.
While commending the Manchester farmers for being the “highest in agricultural productivity in Jamaica”, Minster Shaw, who was speaking at the Rural Agricultural Development Authority’s Manchester Open Day, held in Mandeville on March 22, 2019, noted that there was still a lot of work to do and urged them to produce more.
The agriculture minister said that the Ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Information and the Ministry of Health, will be putting together a school-feeding programme, where farmers will provide local produce to feed the children, which, he said, is more nutritious for them
Noting that the initiative will increase income for farmers, Minister Shaw said the school-feeding programme is one of four areas being targeted by the Ministry in ensuring that farmers can have guaranteed markets for their produce.
The others are the hotels that import food for guests; the Jamaican diaspora in the United Kingdom (UK), Canada and the United States (US); and the regional CARICOM market of 15 countries to which goods can be exported duty-free.
“Most of those (CARICOM) countries are so small, they cannot grow enough of what they eat,” Minister Shaw stated.
He said that the “Government must give farmers the confidence that when they invest in agriculture, they will have a guaranteed market for their produce”.
He noted that there are 20 containers of frozen vegetables imported into Jamaica every month, all of which can be grown in Jamaica.
“We have to plant more to reduce imports, and what cannot be sold fresh has to be processed similar to what obtains in large industrial countries,” he pointed out.
