Consumers are being assured that there will be an adequate supply of chicken meat for the upcoming Christmas season.
This, according to Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Floyd Green, who says the poultry sub-sector is rebounding from the fallout experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl’s passage, just south of Jamaica on July 3.
He advised that the Ministry has been coordinating interventions with industry stakeholders, including providing chickens to hundreds of farmers to spur an early recovery in production.
“I want to assure people, based on the placements that we have made, [that] we will have a well-supplied Christmas with chicken meat. Rest assured [that] we are working with the farmers [to increase the production levels],” Mr. Green said.
He was speaking during the commissioning of the Caribbean Broilers (CB) Group’s tropical broiler system at the company’s Hill Run Farms, ‘The Nest’, in St. Catherine on Friday (October 25).
Mr. Green informed that since 2014, the broiler sector’s annual production outturn has grown by 25 per cent, moving from 110 million kilogrammes to 138 million kilogrammes, thereby making the island self-sufficient in chicken meat.
He said for the year, the sector is projected to grow by 3.4 per cent.
The Minister also said there has been significant growth in egg production, with the outturn moving from 166 million in 2016 to now being 255 million, while pointing out that, “we don’t import table eggs.”
“When we take the right policy decisions around agriculture, we can see the growth, we can see the sustainability, and we can feed ourselves,” he stated, adding that “we [also] have everything it takes to feed the entire Caribbean.”
Mr. Green, who underscored the need to boost research in agriculture in order to safeguard the industry, lauded the CB Group for investing in technologies that can protect the sector from the impact of climate change.
The Group has partnered with Devenish, a United Kingdom-based global leader in animal nutrition, to build the first research and development facility in the western hemisphere designed to improve broiler performance in tropical climates, at the Hill Run Farms.
Mr. Green said this undertaking demonstrates that ,“we can have the capacity to do the research needed to craft a new agriculture system.”