US$200m irrigation project coming for Pedro Plains
Published:Thursday | August 3, 2023 | 12:08 AM
The Government is set to undertake a US$200-million irrigation programme under which water from the Black River will be used to irrigate an estimated 4,000 hectares of the Pedro Plains in St Elizabeth.
Ground will be broken next year for what will be Jamaica’s biggest venture into irrigation, Floyd Green, minister of agriculture, fisheries and mining, said as he addressed the Jamaica School of Agriculture Batch of 1973’s Golden Anniversary Banquet at the Medallion Hall Hotel in St Andrew last Saturday.
The banquet was the second item on the three-day golden anniversary celebration hosted by the JAS batch of 1973, with the curtain-raiser item being a meet-and-greet session at the Jamaica 4-H Clubs Headquarters on Old Hope Road in Kingston 6 on July 28. The banquet was followed by a thanksgiving service at the Church of the Open Bible on Washington Boulevard in St Andrew as well as a brunch at the nearby Pembroke Hall High School.
Green underscored the need for Jamaica to invest heavily in putting more land under irrigated water as one of the measures to address the significant threats to open-field farming posed by climate change fallout. He explained that of the 200,000 hectares of arable land identified in Jamaica, only a mere 31,000 hectares was irrigated.
The irrigation project, he said, was in keeping with four main pillars the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining had prioritised for mobilising resources to address, in ramping up food security, developing agro-businesses, enhancing the application of climate smart technologies and significantly increasing food exports.
“I won’t go into the praedial larceny issue but you know that that is one of the major barriers in relation to small ruminants sector,” he admitted, promising to give an update soon.
Jamaica’s annual food export bill hovers around US$1 billion and Green admitted some failing on the part of Government in this regard.
“We are also embarking in areas where we see that unfortunately we have allowed importation to drive us and have not ramped up local production to treat with that issue. So 80 per cent of what we consider goat meat is imported. Unfortunately, 80 per cent of the goat meat (chevon) you eat is actually curried mutton because it is sheep largely that is imported,” the minister said.