JAS Targets 10 Per Cent Annual Growth in Domestic Production

The Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), through its ‘Eat what we grow, grow what we eat campaign,’ will be seeking to grow domestic crop production by 10 per cent per year as of 2016, in order to attain food security in Jamaica.

JAS President, Senator Norman Grant, made the disclosure, while addressing the 2015 Hague Agricultural and Livestock Show held on Wednesday (February 18) in Falmouth, Trelawny.

He said the campaign has been successful in boosting domestic production by 25 per cent since its launch in 2003, from 491,000 metric tonnes to 614,000 metric tonnes in 2014.

In addition, at the end of the third quarter in September 2014, the food import bill showed a reduction of US$14 million.

As part of efforts to boost production, the JAS President is urging the Government to put more idle state-owned lands into the hands of Jamaicans.

He noted that 2015 is being observed by the Food and Agricultural Organization, (FAO) as the year of soils, which will see major emphasis being placed on increasing agricultural production, and is an opportune time to make use of idle lands.

“The JAS will be seeking to work with our farmers in a deliberate way to ensure that we …get high productivity from the land,” he said.

Meanwhile, as the JAS celebrates its 120th anniversary this year, Senator Grant said the best years of the society “are yet to come”.

“Those who believe that the best years of the JAS are behind us, we are here to tell you that the best years are ahead of us, because … as a farmers’ organisation working in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), the 4-H clubs and all the agencies, we are going to see to it that we expand agricultural development,” Senator Grant declared.

“We are not in the JAS competing, we are complementing and we are working together for the development of agriculture,” he added.