Santa Cruz Goat Farmers Get Support

Goat farmers in Santa Cruz, St. Elizabeth, are benefiting from support to improve the health of their animals and boost meat and milk production.

The assistance, which is being provided under the Canada-funded Sustainable Agriculture in the Caribbean (SAC) project, includes technical training and goat tech pack distribution.

The tech packs contain specialised tools and products to safeguard the animals from pesticides and monitor their general health and development.

Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Hon. Floyd Green, in his address at the launch of the support at the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) in Santa Cruz on Friday (February 2), implored the farmers to invest in their operations to guarantee optimum profit.

“The healthier the animals the better price you can get, and that is why we [the Ministry] are here. We are going to carry you through a pilot project under our [SAC] programme that we do with Canada,” he noted.

Mr. Green assured the farmers of the Ministry’s support in enhancing the general health of their livestock.

“In fact, we have spent over a million dollars through the programme in putting together the packages for you, and you will get things like syringes, thermometers, medication and tape measure for your animals, and we will teach you how to use everything that you will get,” he noted.

The Minister said there is also opportunity to import animals to improve their breeding stock.

“If you want to bring in goats to build up your breeding stock, you can do that duty-free. If you want some semen to again build up your stock, we will provide that free of cost and we will also get an expert to come, especially if you have a group of farmers, to work with you on that,” he noted.

Minister Green highlighted the need to boost goat farming to reduce meat imports.

“We import about two million kilograms of mutton for over $1 billion so we need more people raising goats to ensure that we have that level of food security. So, we can transfer all of those funds and keep it here if we have more goat farmers,” he pointed out.