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Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, wants law enforcement authorities to get tougher on praedial larcenists. He told a July 8 Post-Cabinet Press Briefing at Jamaica House that almost $5 billion is lost each year through farm theft and stressed that the issue should be treated as priority. Dr. Tufton informed that he has already met with...

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, has said that he will be seeking greater collaboration with the private sector this year, particularly in setting up proper post-harvesting infrastructure. Among the areas to be focussed on are reaping, warehousing or storage, grading and sorting, value-added processing, marketing and distribution. One of the projects he pointed to is the...

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, has announced a number of initiatives which the Ministry will be introducing to intensify agricultural production within the island. Among the measures to be introduced is the establishment of an Agro-Investment Corporation, which is intended to package and promote medium and large scale investments in an effort to drive production in...

The Jamalco bauxite plant is reporting record production figures for the first six months of the year, with output at 3, 944 metric tonnes of alumina per day, exceeding the projected daily target of 3,650 metric tonnes. The company was also able to meet 100 per cent of its specifications for the period, and only "fell" to 99 per cent...

As part of measures to protect the country's fish stock, the Government has announced a ban on the use of mechanical guns for fishing, effective March 31, 2010. "We are not banning spear fishing, what we are saying is that we are going to embark on a programme to replace, at the cost of the Government, the mechanical spear guns...

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is in the process of merging the Agricultural Development Corporation, the Agricultural Support Services and Productive Projects Fund Limited to form the Agro-Invest Corporation. "What this entity will do is address the investment strategy in agriculture," said portfolio Minister, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, in his contribution to the 2009/10 Sectoral Debate in the House...

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Dr. Christopher Tufton is touting cassava as having made significant strides during the past year, with a number of products on the market. Making his contribution to the Sectoral Debate Tuesday (July 7), Dr. Tufton applauded some private sector entities for having taken up the challenge of producing value-added products from cassava. He singled out...

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, has said that his Ministry will be introducing several measures this year to address the challenges facing small farmers seeking to access credit from financial institutions. Dr. Tufton, who was speaking in the Sectoral Debate in Parliament on July 7, said that the main challenge is to ensure that once funds...

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, has lauded the efforts of JP Tropical Foods/St Mary Farm in producing value added products like chips from locally grown foods, including cassava. Dr. Tufton, who was touring the farm on Friday (July 3) to view its recovery from the devastation of its banana cultivation by Hurricane Dean in 2007, said...

Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, expressed his pleasure that test plots for the new variety of MD2 pineapples are flourishing in Jamaica, while touring pilot projects in St Mary on Friday (July 3). The Minister said he first saw this variety of pineapples when he visited Costa Rica last year, and had discussions with the Costa Rican Minister...

Jamaica is currently in the middle of reaping its first crop of rice grown under the Amity Hall Rice Project in St. Catherine. Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, and stakeholders in the sector were invited to the farm on July 6, for a tour of the facilities and to sample the first of the crop in...

Prime Minister the Hon. Bruce Golding told this morning's session of the 30th regular meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of Caricom that the European Commission (EC) has presented a revised schedule for the reduction of tariffs on bananas from the non-African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries. Mr. Golding was making his report as chair of...