School Garden to Be Established at Wakefield Primary in Trelawny

The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining will be establishing a garden at Wakefield Primary School in Trelawny as part of the expanded National School Garden Programme.

Portfolio Minister, Hon. Floyd Green, who gave the commitment, said that in addition to providing healthy foods for the school-feeding programme, the garden will engage students in agriculture at an early age and strengthen the goal of food security.

He said the garden will also enable the school to earn an income from supplying produce to the wider community.

“We will have a team come visit with you and to see what the needs are, to ensure that you can become self-sufficient in your meals. Hopefully, that can lead to a robust breakfast programme, and also, you can make some money from your school garden to help upgrade your school.

“That is how we look at it; the school garden can be a major earner for our primary schools, and we have some very good examples across the island,” Minister Green said.

He was speaking at the recent handover of letters of possession to persons who occupy former sugar-cane lands at Old Hampden in Wakefield, Trelawny.

Minister Green congratulated the beneficiaries and urged them to put the lands to productive use.

He said that the Government intends to make former sugar lands in Trelawny available for farming.

“We want to transform Trelawny into an agricultural Mecca… . We’ve seen a lot of work in southern Trelawny in relation to yam but a lot of our expansive good, arable, agricultural land in the north still remain idle; we cannot allow that,” he noted.

He said that the lands will be used for cattle and goat rearing to increase protein production in the parish and for the cultivation of ackee, breadfruit and mango to meet demand in the overseas market.

Minister Green pointed out that there is also opportunity to earn from planting crops to supply the tourism sector.

“We have to provide the food for those people who come, so we have to ensure that all of the lands that are now idle, we put them into agricultural production, link them with the hotels and we supply them with what they need, and use that to ensure we see wealth for generations to come,” he said.

He pointed out that the Ministry will invest in the provision of irrigation systems and farm roads in the parish.