Market and Retail Prices of Farm Produce Available on Ministry of Agriculture Website

Consumers in Kingston can now access information on the market and retail prices of farm produce on the Ministry of Agriculture’s website at www.moa.gov.jm.
The move, by the Ministry, is to give consumers particularly in Kingston and St. Andrew an opportunity to compare prices and do more budget wise purchasing.
The website listings are updated weekly and show produce being sold at 15 supermarkets and five municipal markets in the Corporate Area. Displayed are domestic food crops such as plantain, pumpkin, and several types of yams, carrots, cabbages, and lettuce.
Markets captured are Papine, Stony Hill, Cross Roads, Constant Spring and Coronation, while supermarkets cover a wide cross section of urban neighbourhoods including Barbican, Red Hills Road, Harbour View, Washington Boulevard and Liguanea.
Prices have been posted on the Ministry’s website over the past three weeks and the current listing shows markups ranging from 200 per cent to 300 per cent for various items.
Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Christopher Tufton, at the Hague Agricultural Show in Trelawny in February, announced the move to publish farm gate and retail prices of local produce, to complement other measures being undertaken to help consumers cushion the effects of rising food costs.
He said the measure would also allow greater transparency with respect to the pricing of food items and the distribution of markups from farm gate to the market or supermarket.
The Ministry plans to eventually publish the prices in the newspaper and list them on a billboard at its office compound on Old Hope Road.
In the meantime, the Ministry is placing renewed emphasis on agri-investment, highlighted earlier this month with the agri-investment seminar held at the Mona Visitors Lodge, and the recent launch of the Centre of Excellence at the Bodles Research Station in St. Catherine, as a hub for research, data collection and training.
There are also production and productivity programmes, such as the promotion of select crops based on marketing information, and assisting young persons with training to start farming ventures.
The Ministry has also doubled the corps of Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) extension officers, trained and equipped them with appropriate tools to better serve farmers and initiated financing initiatives for the agricultural sector.